Abstract:Formative assessment attaches more importance to learners’ needs, study process, expectedgoals and students’ initiative in learning. Feedback and reflection in formative assessment are usefulto collect information to guide teaching and learning. According to the literature review and thestudy, it seems obvious that formative assessment has a positive effect on students’ EPS learning.Effective implementation of formative assessment can promote students’ learning abilitysignificantly.In the study, the teacher adopted formative assessment and summative assessment in theexperimental class and control class and examined carefully students’ total score achieved in twoformal presentation (comprehensive EPS skill) and module score ( comprehensive language abilityand presentation skill).

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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background
Education evaluation is an essential part in classroom teaching and learning, which has a directimpact on the arrangement of teaching contents, the selection of teaching methods, and the result ofteaching. Therefore, a scientific and systematic evaluation system is quite significant in achievingcourse objectives, refining teaching methods and raising teaching level, which is also required as adriving force to encourage and stimulate learners in language learning.Curriculum evaluation affects the students' attitude, learning interest and motivation to greatextent. Recently, it can be typically classified as summative evaluation and formativeevaluation(also known as diagnostic evaluation).Over the years, college English evaluationdepended mostly on summative assessment, which was regarded as an useful way of testifying andselecting the excellent. Most teachers valued scores on final exam or level exam( CET-4 ,CET-6)excessively as an evaluation standard of students' learning feedback and teachers’ teaching level, inthat case, teaching and learning result could not be fully reported because no all-roundachievements were reflected. Therefore, some people argue that it can’t meet the needs forcomprehensive skills of English learners. Under such situation, students learn knowledge for thesake of examination, and teachers just pass on some solving skills dealt with questions inexamination. (Hua, 1998) This evaluation approach neglects the students’ subjectivity, initiative andcreativity during the learning process , which is not conductive or helpful to the reform of Englishteaching methods and content.
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1.2 Aims and significance of the study
With the purpose of modifying long-term summative-evaluation-domination, College EnglishCurriculum Pedagogical Requirements ( Revised, 2007) was issued by the Ministry of Education ,in the requirements of enhancing and developing learners’ astronomy in English learning.An adequate and systematic evaluation system is of great significance not only for teachers’ instructions design, teaching arrangement, and students’ absorption and accumulation from them,but also for students monitoring their learning effect, tracking progress and formulating thefollow-up plans respectively. In the past decades, summative evaluation was widely used in theteaching of college English and English professional courses in China’s most colleges. Students hasbeen long judged and delimited in the certain level by the scores on standardized exams (CET-4,CET-6, TOFEL, IELTS, GRE, etc), therefore, some deformed learning modes exclusively focusedon the analysis of options of questions and the growth of solving skills correspondingly, which isunbeneficial to the popularization and use of English as a practical language. In such situation,formative evaluation , a comprehensive evaluation system integrated various concrete waysto judgethe study, is urgently required, whose purposes and objectives tend to be obvious: 1) Students alterstudy strategy and set down new goals by means of new assessment system, 2) Learning astronomyis channeled into the process of daily self-study, thereby strengthening the learning motivation andlearning preference.3) Knowledge students has gained should be taken into practice in daily use,that is to make study serve practical purpose.4) Monitoring of learning process and application ofknowledge should be reinforced while weakening the importance of grade on exam.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Education assessment in the west
Scholars in the educational field began to use the concept of assessment in the early 19thcentury, it experienced four stages, the first is called measurement stage ( from the early 19thcentury to 1930s), the second is description stage(from 1930s to 1950s), the third is judgmentstage(from 1950s to 1970s) and the forth named social construction stage(from 1970s to present).(Yang Yijun, 1988; Guba and Lincoln, 1989; Li Yanbing, 1998; Gredler, 1999). Each stage issymbolized by emergence of some certain assessment models put forward by some scholars andresearchers.Along with many alternative theories about assessment promoted rapidly for past decades,formative assessment research abroad has become more standardized and normalized. One of thesymbolic innovations was that the aims of these alternative modes of assessment were providinglearners with a learning environment in which students have access to present and be involved tothe utmost.
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2.2 Education assessment in China
The study of formative evaluation abroad lasts many years and has attained some significantachievements, both practically and theoretically. In China, with more and more concern aboutcollege English teaching and students’ learning from class as well after class, college educators alsoconducted a lot of researches on the application of different teaching assessments and evaluationwhich range from small- class teaching track to large-class teaching feedback.Traditionally, English education in China is mainly teacher-centered , in which way studentsdepends largely on teachers’ in-class lecture based on the fundamental knowledge , with result ofassessment and evaluation of teaching and learning mostly decided by scores of one or a fewexams.Given the situation, , Beijing Foreign Studies University conducted a survey of a ssessmentby means of questionnaires testing over sampling national college English bachelor teaching but didnot propose the concept of formative evaluation until 1980s. Through research, the purpose offormative evaluation, the principles of formative evaluation and strategies of formative evaluationare interpreted in detail by Mr.Hu (2003:109-111) and Mr. Yan (2005), and meanwhile, they alsoinvestigated the significances and feasibilityof formative evaluation methods; Liu (2003) adoptedformative evaluation into the use of set-up and development in his own teaching activities. TheCollege English Curriculum Requirements (Trial edition) issued by Ministry of Education(2004)

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Chapter Three The Research Design and Methodology .....17
3.1 Research objectives ......17
3.1.1 Hypothesis .........17
3.1.2 Experimental objectives......17
3.2 Subjects .......173.3 Instruments ........18
Chapter Four Experiment of Applying Formative Assessment to the Course ...23
4.1 An introduction of EPS.......23
4.1.1 Comparison between public speaking and conversation ........23
4.1.2 Key elements in speech communication process ........23
4.2 The relationship between assessment and English public speaking teaching .....25
4.3 The ways to assess speaking skills formatively ....26
4.4 The features of formative assessment of EPS .......27
4.5 Factors of formative assessment of EPS .........28
4.6 Setting up scoring criteria ........29
4.7 Experiment ........30
Chapter Five Research Analysis .........37
5.1 Research Results and Analysis.......37
5.1.1 Students’Change in Attitudes towards EPS Learning......37
5.1.2 Improvements of Learning Abilities ....38
5.2 The Results of study .....38
5.3The Effect of Formative Assessment of EPS .........40

Chapter Five Research Analysis

5.1 Research Results and Analysis
The most procedure and the contains of the experiment about students in two parallel classes( experimental class and control class) have been introduced in detail the earlier part, so thecorresponding results and discussion should be presented in the following part.In a general way, the accomplishment of formative assessment for the entire semester for EnglishPublic Speaking did have produced many positive changes not only in students’attitudes but also intheir learning ability as expected at the start of the experiment. Their vocabulary, listening, reading,writing and skills of making a speech have been greatly enhanced since they often do some roleplays in class and they also give some presentation about different topics.5.1.1 Students’ Change in Attitudes towards EPS LearningFinally, the study have achieved two objectives: first the attitudes of the students toward EnglishPublic Speaking learning have changed dramatically and the ability to study independently also hasgreatly improved. These changes of students will be analyzed and discussed in the following part.Positivity and attitude of the students’have an important effect in college English PublicSpeaking learning, so all these factors would not be ignored in college English Public Speaking. Inthe experiment, the emotional factors of the students including their positivity, interest, confidence,and cooperation between the students refer to students’ attitudes toward English Public Speaking.The specific information about these issues is shown in the following figure.

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Conclusion

Formative assessment attaches more importance to learners’ needs, study process, expectedgoals and students’ initiative in learning. Feedback and reflection in formative assessment are usefulto collect information to guide teaching and learning. According to the literature review and thestudy, it seems obvious that formative assessment has a positive effect on students’ EPS learning.Effective implementation of formative assessment can promote students’ learning abilitysignificantly.In the study, the teacher adopted formative assessment and summative assessment in theexperimental class and control class and examined carefully students’ total score achieved in twoformal presentation (comprehensive EPS skill) and module score ( comprehensive language abilityand presentation skill).
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Reference (omitted)