ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTRUCTORS’ PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

Abstract

Formative assessment is a kind of evaluation that takes place during the course of learning. In this type of assessment, the teacher and the students are actively engaged in the process of learning to discover whether the learning targets are achieved or not (Black & William, 2009). The teachers who use formative assessment modify their teaching strategies according to the learner needs. The learners become more independent as they learn to evaluate their own progress. The main goal of this study was to investigate English language teachers’ perceptions and practices of formative assessment. In addition to discover the types of formative assessment English language instructors’ prefer to use. This study was conducted with 50 English language instructors who teach at Salahaddin University in Erbil, Iraq in 2018-2019 academic year. In this study, quantitative research design was used. The data of this study was gathered via a questionnaire that was originally developed by Pat-El et al. (2013) and later adapted by Öz (2014). The findings of this study revealed that language instructors are well-aware of the importance of giving support to their students in the language learning process. It also became clear that all of the language instructors give feedback about the examination results yet less than half of them ignore sharing the examination papers with the students, which rarely help the learners to learn from their mistakes and/or their weaknesses to improve their language skills as pointed out by many researchers (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007; Black & William, 1998; Herrera, Murry & Cabral, 2007). Almost all of the instructors in the present study are open to make modifications in their teaching practices on noticing any problems in students’ achievement of their learning goals and most of them are well aware of the importance of using questioning strategies to improve student learning. The findings of the study showed that the instructors prefer using the Multiple-choice and the Short-answer Exam methods of assessment the most, which are not considered as methods of formative assessment. The second most frequently preferred assessment methods are Essays; Fill in the Blanks, True and False, Matching, Oral Presentation, Peer Assessment and Group Work exams. Finally, Oral exams, Drama, Project, Portfolio, Performance Assessment, SelfAssessment, Observation Form, Structured Grid, are Rubric considered as the third preferred methods of assessment by English instructors.