Implementation of formative assessment and its effect in an Armenian Setting

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate what effect formative assessment can have on the achievement of the students learning English in an Armenian setting. The study was quasi-experimental and was carried out in the ExperimentalEnglish Classes (EEC) at the American University of Armenia (AUA). Two groups were involved in the study, the experimental and the comparison.The experimental group received treatmentand the comparison group did not. Besides, the current research was aiming to find out the students’ perceptions and attitude towards formative assessment.The instruments that were used for collecting data were a pretest and a posttest, a questionnaire and field notes. The data collected from the pre and post tests between the two groups were analyzed using the parametric Independent Samples T Test and the non parametric Mann-Whitney U Test, in order to see the difference of their performance during and after the treatment. For the within group comparison, the parametric paired sample and the non parametric Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Tests were implemented. The data collected through the questionnaire wereanalyzed qualitatively. The results revealed that that there was a significant differencein both groups during the performance of pretest and the posttest. However, the major limitation of the study should be taken into account. Because of some incorrectness and circumstances, the students’ first exam of the course was taken as a pretest and during the test the experimental group performed better than the comparison group. In addition, during the post test the comparison group revealed better results. This can be proved through the results obtained by the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test comparing the effect sizes (r=0.81 (experimental) and r=1.61 (comparison)) of the two groups during the pretest and the posttest. So, it can be inferred that though both groups performed hr8better results during the posttest, the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between the implementation of formative assessment and the students’ achievement is not rejected. The qualitative data were in the form of questionnaires and field notes. The results obtained through the questionnaires revealed that the students’ attitude towards formative assessmentwas positive. The field notes served as perceptions of the classes on the part of the teacherabout the treatment in the experimental group and the core procedure of the class.