Formative assessment of writing in English as a foreign language

Recognizing the importance of formative assessment, this mixed-methods study investigates how four teachers and 100 students respond to the new emphasis on formative assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing classes in Norway. While previous studies have examined formative assessment in oral classroom interactions and focused on either studying students or teachers, little research has been conducted on formative assessment of writing where both students and teachers are studied. As such, this study provides new insight. The findings mostly indicate that contradictions are prevalent amongst teachers’ and students’ perceptions of formative assessment of writing. The contradictions revolve around feedback, grades, text revision, self-assessment, and student involvement. The identified contradictions suggest the need for developing a mutual understanding of formative assessment in order to make it useful and meaningful.     

Using teacher inquiry to support technology-enhanced formative assessment: a review of the literature to inform a new method

In this paper we review the literature on teacher inquiry (TI) to explore the possibility that this process can equip teachers to investigate students’ learning as a step towards the process of formative assessment. We draw a distinction between formative assessment and summative forms of assessment [CRELL. (2009). The transition to computer-based assessment: New approaches to skills assessment and implications for large-scale testing. In F. Scheuermann & J. Björnsson (Eds.), JRC Scientific and technical reports. Ispra: Author; Webb, M. (2010). Beginning teacher education and collaborative formative e-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35, 597–618; EACEA. (2009). National testing of pupils in Europe: Objectives, organisation and use of results. Brussels: Eurydice; OECD. (2010b). Assessing the effects of ICT in education (F. Scheuermann & E. Pedró, Eds.). Paris: JRC, OECD]. Our review of TI is combined with a review of the research concerning the way that practices with technology can support the assessment process. We conclude with a comparison of TI and teacher design research from which we extract the characteristics for a method of TI that can be used to develop technology-enhanced formative assessment: teacher inquiry into student learning. In this review, our primary focus is upon enabling teachers to use technology effectively to inquire about their students’ learning progress.     

Embodied learning and teaching approaches in language education: A mixed studies review

The notion of embodied learning has gained ground in educational sciences over the last decade and has made its way to language education with researchers acknowledging language learning as an embodied process. This mixed studies review aggregates and reviews empirical research, published from 1990 to 2020, using embodied learning approaches in language education. The review focuses on embodied approaches in learning and teaching first, second, and foreign languages at various educational levels. It encompasses 41 empirical studies with a majority published between 2019 and 2020, suggesting that the research area is growing rapidly. The results show that the studies align with two strands: (1) embodied learning through orchestrating embodied language learning and teaching, and (2) embodied learning in naturally occurring language learning interactions. The review identifies various embodied learning activities and presents how they contribute to language learning and teaching in different ways. The review proposes an understanding of embodied language learning that holds potentials to engage learners holistically, while simultaneously promoting language learning skills and adding emotional and motivational benefits to language learning.     

Incorporating formative assessment in Iranian EFL writing: a case study

Undergraduate students' experience of assessment in universities is usually of summative assessment which provides only limited information to help students improve their performance. By contrast, formative assessment is informative and forward-looking, possessing the leverage to inform students of their day-to-day progress and inform teachers of how to better tailor their instruction to students' immediate learning needs. Despite these potentials, studies carried out on the use of formative assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts are somehow rare. The current study reports on incorporating formative assessment in an L2 writing course in Iran. The analysis of data from pre- and post-study writing tasks, pre- and post-study questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews revealed that first-year undergraduate students were offered opportunities to improve various aspects of their writing and to develop positive attitudes toward writing as well as formative assessment. However, the students reported several challenges that could have implications for the further implementation of formative assessment in similar contexts.     

Teaching the writing of psychological reports through formative assessment: peer and teacher review

This paper describes the teaching of psychological report writing at Karolinska Institutet and the efforts to improve it through the introduction of formative assessment applied as peer and teacher review. 48 fourth-year psychology students were required to write a psychological report. Half of the students also participated in a non-mandatory peer review of a first draft. All students handed in a preliminary version of the report, had it reviewed by the teachers and made alterations before handing in a final version. The results showed that both peer review and teacher review were valuable methods in the teaching of psychological report writing.     

Triangulation of language assessment modes: learning benefits and socio-cognitive prospects

An experimental design was adopted in the present study to cross-compare the effect of two formative assessments, namely peer assessment (PA) and teacher assessment (TA), with summative assessment (SA) on the improvement of language learners’ writing skill and self-efficacy. Writing excellence was operationalized by structural (grammar), lexical (word choice), and discoursal (cohesion and coherence) well-formedness. Furthermore, focused group interview was run to elicit the learners' attitudes and preferences toward type of assessment. Three cohorts of proficiency-matched language learners sat for a semester-long experimentation (20 sessions × 90 min = 30 h) and three testing sessions. The results revealed that PA group significantly improved in the writing skill, but TA and SA groups did not. Self-efficacy was not enhanced in any of the assessment groups under study. The interviews and follow-up member checkings indicated that the pupils did not have positive attitudes toward PA and preferred TA. Among the sources of this disfavor, they referred to misunderstanding, lack of knowledge or attention, tiredness, poor handwriting of the assesse, shyness, friendship bias, and even feeling not qualified enough to judge their peers’ tasks. Overall, then, the study reported a mismatch between the students’ actual performance and attitudinal beliefs under different assessment conditions, implying that (a) Iranian students are more inclined toward teacher-dominated pedagogies and (b) triangulation of assessment modes provides more reliable optimal results.     

Students’ assessment preferences and approaches to learning: can formative assessment make a difference?

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the relationships between hands‐on experiences with formative assessment, students’ assessment preferences and their approaches to learning. The sample consisted of 108 university first‐year Bachelor’s students studying criminology. Data were obtained using the Revised two‐factor study process questionnaire (R‐SPQ‐2F) and the Assessment preferences inventory (API). The study shows that differences in assessment preferences are correlated with differences in approach to learning. Students’ preferences for assessment methods with higher‐order thinking tasks are significantly lower after actual experience with a formative assessment. Moreover, students also changed their approaches to learning after hands‐on experience with a formative mode of assessment. Surprisingly, this change evinced a more ‘surface approach’ to learning. Nevertheless, this is in line with other recent research findings. The paper ends with some possible explanations, and new directions for research are proposed.     

二语习得理论及其对提高外语教学的启示

英语学习中的二语习得和学得概念并不是对立的,它们之间存在着内在的关系性。这种关系性对外语教学具有一定的启示:即不可忽视的基本语法;使用可行性的和得体性的语言;营造适宜的语言学习环境。     

Developing the theory of formative assessment

Whilst many definitions of formative assessment have been offered, there is no clear rationale to define and delimit it within broader theories of pedagogy. This paper aims to offer such a rationale, within a framework which can also unify the diverse set of practices which have been described as formative. The analysis is used to relate formative assessment both to other pedagogic initiatives, notably cognitive acceleration and dynamic assessment, and to some of the existing literature on models of self-regulated learning and on classroom discourse. This framework should indicate potentially fruitful lines for further enquiry, whilst at the same time opening up new ways of helping teachers to implement formative practices more effectively.

The influence of study of a second language on improvement in spelling

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which study of Latin might influence high school students' improvement in spelling. Skilled and less skilled spellers who chose to study Latin or other second languages in ninth-grade were given a standardized and an experimental spelling test, which allowed for a comparison of their spelling of words of Latin and Greek origin, both in the fall of their ninth-grade and the spring of their eleventh-grade year. While skilled spellers generally made greater progress than less skilled spellers, the students of Latin did not outperform students of other second languages either on the standardized spelling test or specifically on words of Latin origin. Analysis of errors on the experimental test indicated that certain words of Latin origin were misspelled as frequently by eleventh as by ninth graders; these may have affected the lower rate of improvement on words of Latin origin, in contrast to the words of Greek origin. The results suggest particular ways in which the relationship of spelling proficiency and study of language might be investigated further.     

Enhancing English among second language learners: the pre‐school years

Informed by knowledge of linguistics, research findings in the areas of monolingual and bilingual acquisition, dyslexia and speech therapy clinical practice, five factors are proposed to argue that the acquisition of English by young non‐native learners can be enhanced by learning activities which take into account factors of developmental sequence in language acquisition, language‐specific properties, the relationship between oral and written language, the what‐to‐learn‐first issue and the quality of the language input. Proper language goals can be set and appropriate activities designed, only if the language input provider interacts with a learner in a concrete activity while being sensitive to the developmental trajectory of monolingual speaking children, the development of the less dominant language in a bilingual child, the prosodic and phonological differences between the learner's mother tongue and the target language, the importance of phonological awareness which defines dyslexia, the use of non‐abstract language structures grounded in concrete lexical items in the early stage of language acquisition and the strategy of expanding learners' utterance by one element as used in speech therapy.     

Evaluating the reliability of a detailed analytic scoring rubric for foreign language writing

The demand for valid and reliable methods of assessing second and foreign language writing has grown in significance in recent years. One such method is the timed writing test which has a central place in many testing contexts internationally. The reliability of this test method is heavily influenced by the scoring procedures, including the rating scale to be used and the success with which raters can apply the scale. Reliability is crucial because important decisions and inferences about test takers are often made on the basis of test scores. Determining the reliability of the scoring procedure frequently involves examining the consistency with which raters assign scores. This article presents an analysis of the rating of two sets of timed tests written by intermediate level learners of German as a foreign language (n = 47) by two independent raters who used a newly developed detailed scoring rubric containing several categories. The article discusses how the rubric was developed to reflect a particular construct of writing proficiency. Implications for the reliability of the scoring procedure are explored, and considerations for more extensive cross-language research are discussed.     

A critical analysis of the use of formative assessment in schools

The literature is replete with exhortations about the need for teachers to use formative assessment. Clearly there are many advantages in doing so. Yet, empirical studies reveal that there is very little evidence that formative assessment is used frequently in classrooms. It is necessary to examine the reasons, why this is the case and to look for possible solutions to the problem.     

Predicting human judgments of essay quality in both integrated and independent second language writing samples: A comparison study

This study explores whether linguistic features can predict second language writing proficiency in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT) integrated and independent writing tasks and, if so, whether there are differences and similarities in the two sets of predictive linguistic features. Linguistic features related to lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, cohesion, and basic text information were investigated in relation to the writing scores for both integrated and independent samples. The results of this study show that linguistic features can be used to significantly predict essay scores in the integrated as well as the independent writing. When comparing across the two writing tasks, there are both similarities and differences in the two sets of predictive features. For instance, lexical sophistication was found to be a significant predictor for both tasks while features such as verbs in 3rd person singular form and semantic similarity were only significant predictors for the integrated task. These findings demonstrate that evaluation of the two writing tasks rely on similar and distinct features, and are at least partially assessed using different linguistic criteria. Implications of these findings for the assessment of second language (L2) writing are also discussed.     

Self-assessment of writing in independent language learning programs: The value of annotated samples

The availability of multi-media technologies in education has made the option of independent learning increasingly attractive. Whilst independent learning presents learners with a more flexible learning context, it also presents new challenges in assessment in that the onus is placed upon the learners themselves to monitor and evaluate their own learning.This paper reports on the development of an approach to learner self-assessment which aims to facilitate the self-assessment of performance on extended-response writing tasks. Whilst such tasks are typical within current approaches to communicative language learning, a review of the self-assessment literature reveals no precedent for how actual task performance might be effectively and reliably self-assessed. A methodology was therefore developed which used annotated samples of learner-produced texts, where the annotations would elucidate both the criteria by which performance should be judged and the standards expected, thus enabling learners to assess their own performances by comparing their work with these samples. The methodology was trialled on a small sample of students. It was found to be both reliable and useful, allowing students not only to accurately evaluate their own performance but also to learn new language skills from the samples.     

Control-value appraisals,achievement emotions,and foreign language performance: A latent interaction analysis

Based on control-value theory (CVT), this study (N = 550 Chinese university students) examined relations between control-value appraisals, subsequent achievement emotions, and resulting performance in foreign language (FL) learning. The results show that perceived control and value related positively to positive emotions (enjoyment, hope, pride) and FL performance, and negatively to negative emotions (anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, boredom). Control and value interacted in predicting all eight emotions and FL performance. The multiplicative impact of the appraisals on performance was mediated by four of the focal emotions. These findings elucidate the impact of appraisals and emotions on achievement and support the generalizability of CVT to foreign language learning. Directions for future research and implications for education are discussed.     

The impact of formative assessment on student achievement: A study of the effects of changes to classroom practice after a comprehensive professional development programme

A random sample of 22 Year 4 teachers in mathematics from a middle-sized Swedish municipality participated in a teacher professional development programme in formative assessment. The content of the programme was formative assessment conceptualised as a unity of different, integrated strategies. The study examines the effects on student achievement of the changes in the teachers’ formative classroom practice that followed the professional development input. Results show that, after controlling for pretest scores, the classes in the intervention group significantly outperformed the classes in the control group in a posttest administered one school year after the end of the programme (p = 0.036, d = 0.66). The study contributes to the understanding of under-studied areas of the impact of professional development in formative assessment, and the impact of teacher practice based on formative assessment conceptualised as a unity of different formative assessment strategies.     

Views and practices from the chalkface: development of a formative assessment multimedia learning environment

Recently, technology-supported formative assessment has caught researchers’ increasing attention. Most of the relevant studies have been carried out in experimental situations to demonstrate the effectiveness of technology-supported formative assessment for learning. However, little is still known about how technology-supported formative assessment is viewed and experienced by teachers in their classrooms. To fill this gap, this study investigated teachers’ voices and practices when they used a formative assessment multimedia learning environment (FAMLE) in their classrooms during three semesters, which involved continuous platform refinement. The findings show that the teachers encountered a number of problems in four major aspects, namely students’ engagement, assessment task design, feedback and follow-up issues. FAMLE went through corresponding refinement in two rounds. A change was evident in teachers’ pedagogical practice of FAMLE from summative and revision use, diagnostic use, to integrative use.