【正文】 Don’t make fun of others’ ideasGive other a chance to talkAccept majority rule without rancorCompletes assigned tasks on time Table 4: Oral presentation checklistCriteria to be assessedExcellent Good AverageDifficultUnableOral EnglishExpress his idea smoothlyUse attractive pictures and wordsProper body language and gestureTable 5: Selfassessment ChecklistName: ________________ Date: ___________________The things I can doAlwaysSometimeSeldomNeverI can take part in the petition actively.I can understand the reading passage.I can understand the oral questions.I can answer the questions.I can choose the right answers.I can write out the main ideas.I’ve known some background information of the textI can talk about perseverance and success.Total(Luo Shaoxi, 2003: 26) Following making the portfolios, the teacher also made plenty of observations, for observations are the basic mode to evaluate the students. According to the requirements of the formative assessment, the evaluator should observe the students systematically or individually, continuously or discontinuously, directly or indirectly and make an elaborate record. Bloom pointed out that “the purpose of formative observations was to make sure of the degrees and the parts of the learning tasks. Its aim was to help the students or the teachers to concentrate on the special study which they must do in order to achieve more improvement.”(1981: 75) As a consequence, the teacher provided these collected records to students so that the students could know their own actual learning behaviors. By the observations, she also knew what the students had learned, what activities and learning materials the students liked, what kind of learning strategies were the most effective and so on. Data collection and analysisIn order to enhance students’ learning, teacher used formative assessment instead of traditional one. The experiment began in Class 15 from October 8th, 2007 to November 16th, 2007. At the end of the experiment, the data collected through two questionnaires before and after the experiment were pared. The questionnaire that consists of eleven items is made up of two parts. The two parts are designed to get information about the students’ learning interest, and their attitudes towards English classroom assessment. Students have to choose one from the given three choices. The questionnaire was used twice for the same class before and after the action research.Table 6: Questionnaire Data: Interests in English LearningABCNumberPercentageNumber PercentageNumberPercentageItem1Pre4173916610Post561000000Item2Pre11203664916Post4071916713Item3Pre264613231526Post437759814Item4Pre15273563610Post203517291634Item5Pre152721382035Post305415261120Item6Pre18323050814Post20358142850Item7Pre152727481425Post152727481425 A. Yes/Agree B. No/Disagree C. A little/ Sometimes By changing the assessment methods, most of the students appeared new attitude toward English learning. The students found more fresh things in English learning. When the teacher carried out new assessment methods, students gradually changed their passive attitude toward classroom actions. Students liked to show their opinions actively. More and more participants got involved in the class activities. The figures in item 1 show that 100% of the participants have a clear understanding the importance of English. But before experiment the percentage was 73. Their attitude towards English and English learning has changed a lot.From item 2 to 4, the different responses show the respondents have found much more interests in English and EFL learning. The result on item3 shows that there were 64% of the students like English, while in prequestionnaire there were only 16% of the students. So the data show that the formative assessment can arouse students’ great interest towards English. Most students have changed too much so that the teacher can look forward to a better result of the students’ achievements.Item 5, 6 and 7 concern the students’ selfconfidence in EFL learning. It reflects that more students believed they had made good progress and could do a better job. Table 7: Questionnaire data。 Upshur, 2001: 99).What kinds of work are kept in portfolios?Portfolios can include samples of writing, lists of books that have been read, book reports, taperecordings of speaking samples, favorite short stories, and so on. The number of pieces is to be limited. How much work should be kept in portfolios should be decided by teachers and students together so that the students maintain ownership of and responsibility for their portfolios.Portfolios can make students bee the agents of reflection and decisionmaking and thus give them control of their own learning. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own learning, to assess their own strengths and weakness, and to identify their own goals for learning.From Table 1 (Genesee amp。 Bell,1996:4).“Formative assessment has been defined as the process of appraising, judging or evaluating students’ work or performance and using this to shape and improve students’ petence”(Gipps,1994).According to Black and William “Formative assessment include all those activities undertaken by teachers, or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (1998).All these definitions emphasize that assessment is formative in its function only when action is taken to improve students