The Impact of Systematic Implementation of Formative Assessment (Fa) on Efl Learners' Affect
1.IntroductionIt has been claimed that formative assessment (FA) or assessment for learning (AFL) is one of the effective means to improve the quality of learning and teaching and is effective in pedagogy (Black Wiliam, 1998; Oswalt, 2013; Popham, 2006) Crooks (1988) reports that classroom evaluation guides students' judgment of what is important to learn, affects their motivation to learn, forms their self perception of competence, helps them make decisions about what and how much to study, consolidates learning, and impacts the development of their learning strategies and skills. Additionally, assessment for learning has a significant impact on learning because it can help students improve their learning and remain confident to move to productive levels (Stiggins, 2002) On the other hand, improving teaching and learning situations has always been a great challenge for people involved in education, in general and language education in particular. A large body of research indicates that FA or AFL, if properly implemented, will improve students' mastery of what is being taught in class and will enhance performance on tests (Black Wiliam, 1998a, 1998b) In addition to this, most of the time, AFL requires students to become personally involved in monitoring and adjusting how they are attempting to learn. This kind of assessment leads to students' achievement (Wiliam, Harrison, and Black ,2004) Therefore, it seems probable that FA also has an impact on students' affect, that is, students' personal perceptions and predispositions about their learning (Stiggins Popham, 2008).2.Literature ReviewAccording to Clark (2010) the origin of FA can be found in the idea of providing feedback. However, feedback is not always formative; it is formative when students are provided with scaffolding instructions or thoughtful questioning that lead to further enquiry which help us reach desired learning goals. Therefore, feedback becomes formative when learners are in the following situations: engaged in a process that focuses on metacognitive strategies that can be generalized to performance more generally, supported in their efforts to think about their own thinking, understand the relationship between their previous performance, their current understanding, and clearly defined success criteria, positioned as the agent improving and initiating their own learning. (p. 344)Perhaps because of the effect that FA has on students' learning, Black (2002) prefers the term 'AFL' In this sense, FA is considered as any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting pupils' learning. An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as feedback by teachers and by their pupils in assessing themselves and each other, to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment, Black believes, becomes formative when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs. Furthermore, Wiliam (2010) believes that when we add the term formative to the word assessment to form FA, the term is directed towards serving two important roles: 1) to determine the level of mastery (either competence or performance) during a teaching/ learning task, and (2) to pinpoint that part of the taskis not mastered or yet to be mastered. On the other hand, as Stiggins and Popham (2008) believe, FA is a student focused approach to instruction in which students will be active in the process of learning, as well. In other words, students will be personally involved in their own learning. Therefore, this kind of assessment i.e. AFL will have an impact on students' perceptions. Accordingly, fruitful results will be gained if AFL uses these perceptions appropriately toward learning. However, there are some affective factors involved when teachers implement AFL. According to Stiggins and Popham (2008) among these factors are two variables believed to be influenced by teachers who try to use FA namely academic efficacy and eagerness to learn.