Yabancı dil ortamında biçimlendirici değerlendirme uygulamasının İngilizce hazırlık sınıfı öğrencilerinin konuşma becerilerine etkileri: Vaka çalışması

This study explores the impacts of formative assessment implementation on preparatory students' speaking skills. Assessment is an indispensable part of teaching and learning process with its role to provide with systematic data. According to British Council's baseline study (2015), universities in Turkey are not so successful at teaching English to students at preparatory classes and one of the reasons is related to summative assessment as it is indicated that exit tests tend to cover only a limited range of language skills. This reflects the rationale behind why students show a low performance in speaking skills. Based on this, the purpose of this study was to examine what impacts formative assessment implementation has on students' speaking skills in a preparatory class at a foundation university in Izmir, Turkey. It sought to explore how formative assessment works for students in speaking classes and how students' speaking skills are affected from it. The study was conducted in qualitative research paradigm as a multiple case study (Cresswell, 2015; Merriam, 2010). The participants, who were studying at Pre-intermediate level at a preparatory class at a foundation university, were three students from the researcher's Listening and Speaking class. The data was collected through audio records, students' self-evaluation forms, researcher's observation form and field notes, and semi-structured interviews. Data collection lasted for around 10 weeks. Data was analysed via thematic analysis method by Braun and Clarke (2012) through which meanings from the themes were analysed and synthetized. The results of this case study showed that participant students benefitted from formative assessment implementation in their Listening and Speaking lesson, which was evident from their attitudes throughout the track, their speaking exam grades, their thoughts and reflections in interviews. It was observed that students gained confidence in speaking English, they reduced their high level of anxiety to speak English and to be assessed in English, they became more willing to communicate in English, and they believed they improved their speaking skills via feedback from their peers and teacher. In the lights of these results, several implications to researchers, institutions and language teachers were offered for further studies of formative assessment.