Chapter One Introduction
1.1Research background of the study
English, as an international language in the global village, plays an inseparable rolein communication. With its great importance as a communication tool, English hasattracted a large number of non-English major learners, especially the college students.For them, English writing competence not only means high scores in examinations likeCollege English Test Band 4 (CET-4) or College English Test Band 6 (CET-6), but alsohelps their job application and future career. However, for the Chinese non-Englishmajor students, writing has always been a tricky task. According to Swain (qtd. in YangLuxin, 26-29), writing, as one of the comprehensible language output methods, is acognitive tool which helps inpiduals internalize and externalize internalized thinking.Comparing with the other three basic language skills- listening, speaking and reading,writing is obviously considered as a much more difficult skill.In spite of the great importance attached to English writing, the current situation ofEnglish writing teaching is worrisome in that the college students’ writing ability is farfrom satisfactory. It was reported that the students’ writing scores in CET-4 and CET-6were much lower than the passing scores (Yang Rong, 2005, 79), even many a studentin key colleges and universities failed to pass the writing part. The students have littleinterests in English writing, and they are afraid to write (Deng Juan, 2002, 205). Howto write English has become a common problem among the students. Under thissituation, the researchers made an attempt to find the underlying reasons. They foundthat the current type of assessment could not meet the students’ needs for Englishwriting.
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1.2Significance of the study
With the help of the instruments of writing tests, questionnaire, observation,interviews and portfolios, the current empirical study was designed to apply a teachingmodel of formative assessment based on process approach to college English writing. Ithad both academic and practical significance. The humanistic formative assessment aims to promote the authentic developmentof learners. Many scholars regarded it as an influential theory in educationalassessment area (Black and William, 1998b; Bell and Cowie, 2001; Cao Rongping, 2012). However, the current related studies in China put emphasis on its theories. Andmost of the related empirical studies selected the students from elementary and middleschools as subjects. The researchers seldom conducted empirical studies in college.This study integrated process approach into formative assessment theoretically andimplemented a designed model to college English writing teaching in practice.Satisfactory results were gained. Therefore, it was a contribution to English writingteaching research.
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Chapter TwoLiterature Review
2.1 Formative assessment
This section gave an introduction to formative assessment, including itsdefinitions, a comparison between it and summative assessment, and itscharacteristics, ways and tools as well as its theoretical bases. The terms of “class evaluation or classroom-based evaluation”, “classroomassessment”, “school-based assessment”, “portfolio assessment”, or “assessment forlearning” were used to refer to formative assessment. Different scholars gave differentdefinitions of formative assessment. Some contributive definitions are listed asfollowing:“A type of assessment embedded in the learning process that incorporatesformative feedback to students’ learning performance from multiple assessors, whichbecomes a major source of learning assistance in the learning process. It can be used toshape and improve students’ competence during the learning process” (Sadler, 1989,124).“The process of appraising, judging or evaluating students’ work or performanceand using this to shape and improve students’ competence” (Gipps, 2002, 78).“The process used by teachers and students to recognize and respond to studentslearning in order to enhance that learning, during the learning” (Cowie and Bell, 1996,102).
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2.2 Previous studies on formative assessment
For a fairly long time summative assessment has always occupied a vital position ineducational assessment. In about 1970s, formative assessment, as a new form ofassessment in education, was put forward and existed as the contrary of summativeassessment since then. Generally, the history of formative assessment in westerncountries started from the 1970s. After that, formative assessment gradually gainedextensive attention both in academic circle and in educational circle. It was in the 1980sthat the foreign studies on formative assessment began to flourish. In China, theconcept of formative assessment was firstly introduced in the 1980s. The currentstudies on this subject are still at an initial stage. The concept of “formative assessment” was firstly introduced in Scriven’s workMethodology of Evaluation in 1967. It was advocated to be used in a curriculum reform.Then Bloom officially used the term “formative assessment” in its currentlyacknowledged meaning. He distinguished formative assessment from summativeassessment. From the 1960s to 1970s, formative assessment was still a supplementarypart for traditional summative assessment (Lynch, 2001).
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Chapter Three Methodology ....... 27
3.1 Research questions and hypotheses.....27
3.2 Subjects......28
3.3 Instruments .......29
3.3.1 Quantitative instrument .........29
3.3.2 Qualitative instruments..........30
3.4 Research procedure ........32
3.5 Data collection.........36
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ...... 38
4.1 Quantitative analysis ......38
4.1.1 Data analysis of pretest and posttest....38
4.1.2 Data analysis of the questionnaire .......41
4.2 Qualitative analysis ........46
4.2.1 Data analysis of the observation..........47
4.2.2 Data analysis of the interviews.....47
4.2.3 Data analysis of the portfolios......50
4.3 Discussion.........51
Chapter Five Conclusion ...... 52
5.1 Major findings .........52
5.2 Implications ......54
5.3 Limitations........56
5.4 Suggestions for future study.........56
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Quantitative analysis
Section 3.31 has introduced the quantitative instruments for this study: pretest,posttest and questionnaire. The analyses of the data gathered through the twoinstruments were presented as follows with a main purpose to address the first and thesecond research question. The number of collected writing samples for CC and EC were 64 and 43respectively. As no one was absent both in pretest and posttest, the number of analyzedwriting samples was the same in pretest and posttest both for CC and for EC. The dataof pretest and posttest was processed by the T-test through SPSS 16.0. The table belowdisplayed the independent sample T-test results of the scores between CC and EC inpretest. Before the experiment, all subjects from both CC and EC took the pretest. Theresults turned out that there was no significant statistic difference between CC and EC.The two mean scores were almost the same, only the mean score of CC was 0.18 pointhigher than EC. The P-value (Sig. (2-tailed)) was 0.63, higher than 0.05, indicating nosubstantial difference between CC and EC. The standard deviation of CC was higherthan that of EC, which could be attributed to the larger size of CC. Therefore, it couldbe concluded that the English writing of students in CC and EC were at the same levelbefore the experiment. If the situation changed after the experimental class applied theformative assessment based on process approach, this kind of assessment was differentfrom the traditional assessment, that is, it was either unfavourable, or beneficial tostudents’ English writing.
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Conclusion
This chapter presented the major findings and implications at first. From the dataanalyses in chapter four, the three research questions posed in Section 3.1 could beanswered and the corresponding hypotheses were verified. Then the researcher madesome implications of effective implementing formative assessment based on processapproach to English writing. Lastly, the limitations of this study were pointed out andsuggestions for future research were modestly made. The first research question was: compared with the traditional assessment, is theformative assessment based on process approach more effective in improving collegestudents’ writing?In Section 4.11, the independent sample T-test results and paired samples T-testresults showed that although both of the two assessments had positive influence on thestudents’ writing, the students under the formative assessment based on processapproach made more progress than those under the traditional assessment. Thus thisquestion can be clearly answered: the formative assessment based on process approachis more effective in improving college students’ English writing than the traditionalassessment.
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References (omitted)