The Impact of a Curriculum-based Formative Assessment on EGAP

Formative assessments can lead to increases in learning outcomes by helping students to recognize their shortcomings in order to overcome them. Though formative assessments are generally handled within individual classes, this study reports on a formative assessment that was created for the skills mandated in a university-wide curriculum. Students took the assessment on a voluntary basis after their summer vacation and then were provided with feedback about how well they performed on each of the skills they were meant to have mastered in their first semester. Based on their scores, individualized advice was also given to each student regarding how to improve at the skills they did not score well on. We used preand posttest TOEFL ITP® scores to determine how much improvement students at the university exhibited, and then compared the delta scores of those that took one, two, or no formative assessments and gathered student opinions via survey to observe how much impact the formative assessment tests had on general English improvement. We found that the formative assessment tests had a discernable, albeit weak, positive influence on improvement, and concluded that we need to provide even more feedback in the future.