ESL teachers' perceptions and practices on formative assessments in classroom

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the perception of English teachers on formative assessment in secondary schools. It also aims to determine their current understanding on formative assessment, their practices of formative language assessment and to discover the challenges they might perceived when implementing formative language assessment especially in classroom situation and how they overcome the challenges. A descriptive-correlation research design was employed to allow both quantitative and qualitative description of the relevant features of data collected. The study involved the use of questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Purposive sampling was employed to English teachers from selected schools in Kuantan district. Data collected was analyzed using the SPSS software and the data gathered from interview responses were compared to probe the related understandings and experiences of English teachers. Majority of ESL teachers understand the main concepts of formative assessment although some of the teachers have misconceptions on formative assessment. The findings also indicated the challenges that ESL teachers perceived in implementing formative assessment. The challenge of entering the online data was identified to be the major reason that made the report of assessment seems burdensome to the teachers.