Formative Assessment in Classroom Practice

Submitted by May Phoo Mon

Content 1. Introduction 1.1. The place of English in Myanmar

2. The objective of teaching writing and how teachers are teaching and how it is assessed 3. How can I modify the current teaching strategy of writing skills 4. What is formative assessment? 4.1. 4.2. Is there any formative assessment in class? How it is different from current assessment system?

5. How formative assessment can be used in teaching writing? 5.1. 5.2. The useful principles/ characteristics for teaching writing and why? Some teaching strategies that teacher can use for teaching writing

6. Is there any constraint that will encounter and how to overcome? 7. Conclusion 8. Reference

1. Introduction 1.1. The place of English in Myanmar In Myanmar, the place of English can be safely addressed as a foreign language, as almost everyone, who is learning English, never uses that language in their daily life and what is our official and mother tongue for everyone in Myanmar is Burmese (Myanmar). Moreover, in Myanmar, English is taught for different purposes: some language school, especially private language schools focus communication, while some schools, especially government basic education schools, teach English for academic purposes, for instance, to be able to handle long written assignments and to comprehend long and complex reading texts, which will encounter in their academic life. We can infer how the English is being taught by looking the main objectives of the current high school syllabus as an example: 1. To build up and enrich vocabulary of the learners 2. To train learners to do as much independent reading as possible 3. To expose learners to a variety of contemporary English writing 4. To help learners assimilate the grammar, lexis, syntax and idiom of the English language 5. To help learners develop their reading and writing skills in English. So, it can be safely assumed that the basic education in Myanmar focuses on the development of reading and writing skills in English, in other words, the main aim of basic education would be the linguistics competence, not communicative competence. In this paper, I am going to cover how to teach writing in high school and how can I apply the formative assessment to give rise more effective teaching and learning. Thus, the next

section of this paper will cover how teachers are teaching writing in high schools and how students are being assessed, and the outcomes of this teaching strategies and assessments.

2. How teachers are teaching writing skill and how it is assessed in high school

Needless to say, as the objective teaching English of government basic education schools is to be able to comprehend the complex texts and long writing assignments which our students may encounter in their higher education (for example, university and college), the majority of lessons is spent by teaching reading comprehension, rules and structures of sentences and vocabulary. However, what surprisingly found out is that very small part of lesson is covered by teaching extensive writing: essays and letters. In others words, in highschools, the English-language classes consist of 5 periods per weeks and each period is 45 minutes. However, teachers just spend only 45 minutes on teaching writing per week, which is one period. Moreover, what also found out is that most of writing is essays and letters, which intend students to develop how the texts are constructed for social exchanges and displaying knowledge or information (Marilyn Lewis, 2009, Pg5). Additionally, in English-language teaching classes, the way that language teachers teach writing skills, including grammar, essays and letters, is totally explicit and the contexts are very artificial and not real-life. That is to say, the students are taught the new structures, which are usually isolated sentences and lacking context, essays or letters by giving the samples by the teachers, and then, teachers explain these new languages in mother tongue and word-by-word translation (use especially when they teach essays and letters). After that, the next stage of teaching is that teachers give them grammar exercises; for instance, filling the gap with the correct forms, connecting sentences in the correct ways, unjumble

sentences, rewrite sentences, etc., which are isolated sentences and lacking context, and ask them to write the parallel essays and letters as samples at home or sometimes in class.

Furthermore, unfortunately, it is a shame to say that the majority of teacher in Myanmar focus on the product of writing, what are the form of good writing?, rather than on the how is good writing performed? (Donovan, 1980, X). The writing tasks done by students are assessed by certain criteria, such as content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical use and mechanical considerations, for instance spelling and punctuation (H. Douglas Brown, 2007) without any explanation of the mistakes that students made and suggestion for improvement. Thus, teachers teach writing skills according to the way it is evaluat ed, where the emphasis is on grammar and mechanic rather than the content (Pavlik, 1986). Therefore, as students are not being provided any comments and feedbacks from teachers, they have no idea about what they are lacking and what they need to learn more in order to improve their weakness. On the top of that, it seems to me that the current teaching strategy for writing skills is not as productive as the syllabus writers expectations. Accordingly, in next session, I will cover how current teaching strategies for writing skills could be modified if I taught according to the syllabus of high school. 3. How can I modify the current teaching strategy of writing skills? It is very true to say that most of high schools are rarely teaching how to write essays and letters. To put it in another way, they are given samples essays and letters, and then, teacher explain these in word-by-word translation, without explaining anything about the format, and asks them to write similar essays and letters at home, rather than encouraging them to go beyond the idea and format of samples essays and letters. Moreover, the teacher usually evaluates students writing according grammatical use, vocabulary use ,

spelling and punctuation. Hence, what is happening is that when such kinds of students sit for Matriculation Examination, they usually encounter the problem of time-managing. In Matriculation Examination, the candidates write a guided composition, an essay and a letter, which are unseen topics. Here, what makes students difficult to manage time is that as they have never gone beyond the ideas and format of samples, they are severely hindered by mental block (H. Douglas Brown, 2007, Pg.392), which is inability to come out any new ideas and continue a train of thoughts. Therefore, by considering the outcome of current teaching strategies, I come up with an alternative way of teaching: the combination of process and product writing. Actually, as teachers teach English through structural approach, almost all students are quite competence in language forms. So much so that, what is missing is the process writing: brainstorming, drafting, and editing, redrafting and final writing. 4. The learning objectives of teaching writing I assume that it would be worthy to admit that, currently, I am not teaching high school level and not even at government schools, but, actually, I was working for a private summer school. However, if I had a chance to teach high school English course, I would like to set following objectives for learning writing: 1. Student must be aware about the format of good writing (product) and how to perform (process). 2. Student must be able to write accurately as well as fluently. 3. Students must be able to see their own mistakes and correct them. 4. Students must be able to produce their own relevant ideas and evaluate these ideas in relation to the purpose, topic and audience.

5. Students must be able to use formal and informal (register) according to the audience.

5. What is formative assessment? There should not be any doubt that, traditionally, summative assessments, which are usually held at the end of the learning period or a semester, are the only way to get the information about students mastery, understanding, and competency in a particular subject. However, by and large, it is a fact that the summative assessments actually can only provide the information of our students learning to a limited extent. To make this clear, what happening in many country, including Myanmar, is that summative assessment, such as nationwide matriculation examinations, gives rise the spot question and teaching to the test, that is to say, teacher teach students only what is necessary for passing exams( Assessment reform Group, the role of teachers in the assessment of learning). Apart from these, there are another obvious negative impact of summative assessment on students learning styles and performance during the exam. This means that as summative assessments are usually appear at long interval and they assess the whole things that were taught during that interval (for instance, during a semester), almost everyone students find this assessment is stressful. Besides that, some students just study or practice the past exam papers or even some of them, which cram for that exam. Therefore, needless to say, such drawbacks of the summative assessment cannot give the correct figure of students achievement in learning. In contrast, formative assessment appears before, during, and after instruction (Laura Greenstein, What teachers really know about formative assessment, Pg. 2). Moreover, while

summative assessment is very teacher-centered, the formative assessments is student focused, that is to say, the formative assessment is the process of measuring how well students receive the information, how well they understand it, and how they can apply it. (Laura Greenstein, What Teacher Really Know about Formative Assessment, Pg.16). Additionally, Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross claimed in Classroom Assessment Techniques that the classroom assessments provide teachers with the evidence to make useful feedback on what, how much, and how well their students are learning. Moreover, it is very true to say that formative assessments give the reliable evidence of individual students progress as well as their weakness, then, teacher can give effective feedback and suggestion for improvement individually, as well as immediately. So much so that, there should not be any doubt to claim that the formative assessment is based on a belief: No student is left behind. Besides that, the formative assessment gives non threatening comment and feedback, rather than public announcement of grades, scores and ranks which can cause low achieving students anxious and stressful which can demotivate them in their learning. Thus, Rick Stiggins (2005) addressed formative assessment as scaffolding which assists students, even low-achieving students, to reach the goals (Rick
Stiggins, From Formative Assessment to Assessment For Learning). Therefore, without a doubt, it is true to say that the formative assessment has powerful impact on the learning and it is labeled as Assessment for Learning (AFL). Apart from that, these assessments are the helpful device for professional development of teachers as the results of these assessments provide the attention to adapt the way of instruction to give rise the effective teaching and learning in the classroom , as well as to meet the students needs. Laura Greenstein claimed:

Formative assessment allows both teachers and students to measure learning by inches, ounces, and degrees. The results can inform teachers and student decisions about what to do next on an hour-to-hour, day-to-day, or month-to-month basis. Additionally, Black and William (1998, Pg.139-148) addressed the formative assessments as all activities that teachers and students undertake to get information that can be used diagnostically to alter teaching and learning In addition to these facts, in my opinion, formative assessment is one of the ways to develop learner autonomy as it is a kind of teaching strategies which is based on the view: Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, he eats for the rest of his life. To make it more clear, as all students are clear about what they have to learn, why they have to learn, where they are and how they can make further achievements and what the criteria of achievements that they have to look for, all students have motivation, confidence and skills to assess their own learning and the level of understanding and take next steps in their learning. Moreover, it can be safely said that learners know how to make the further progress and how to make effective learning by following the feedback and the suggestion from the teacher, which are the skills that are useful for their life-long learning.

5.1.

Is there any formative assessment in class?

Without a doubt, even though teacher gives exercises and homework, she just marks and return to students. She corrects every mistake she sees, for instance grammatical and vocabulary uses, without any comment and remedial suggestion/ teaching for these mistakes. The worst is that most students rarely review the marked exercises and homework until the exam is drawing near. So, it can be safely said that there is no formative assessment in class in high schools.

5.2.

How it is different from current assessment system?

Currently, students are being assessed their writing skills through grade sand marks, which cannot show reliable figure of their weakness and progress. That is to say, there should raise

questions regarding to current grading and marking system: how students can interpret grades if their progress and weakness? How students can know how much progress they make if they get a particular grades and mark? How can grading systems reveal any gap between what students learnt and what teachers have taught? If there is gap, is there any remedial teaching to bridge the gap? I do believe that only formative assessment can answer these questions because one of the characteristics of formative assessment is that it focuses on the comment and feedback on the works of students, instead of abstract grades and marks. Moreover, from feedback and suggestion from the teachers, students will know what they need to learn more. Not only that, on looking the works of students, teacher can know which part of the lesson is not so effective and needs remedial teaching and how she can adjust the instruction in order to gap these bridge. accordingly, it makes me assume that what is missing in current assessing strategies is that the comment, feedback, suggestion for improvement from teachers and how the weakness of students can be bridged, and, if we add on these factors to current assessing strategies of students learning, I think that it would be very fruitful.

6. How formative can be in teaching writing and why? In my opinion, it makes me convinced that formative assessment is useful to teach both product and process writing. This is because formative assessment can foster learner autonomy and make students to handle their own mistakes, through self- and peer-

assessment activities. Moreover, as teacher keep giving feedback and comment about students work, formative assessment can booster students progress quickly. In my opinion, I think that following six principles/ characteristics are useful for teaching writing: 1. Formative assessment should be the central of classroom practice. In my opinion, I understand that formative assessment is on-going process, which can take place before, during and after the instruction in order to check student understands about the subject matter. By and large, since it can be addressed as activities and tasks that can measure students learning, which means gauge where students are on the way to the goal. Black and William (1998, Pg.139-148) addressed the formative assessments as all activities that teachers and students undertake to get information that can be used diagnostically to alter teaching and learning. Moreover, Laura Greenstein claimed: Formative assessment allows both teachers and students to measure learning by inches, ounces, and degrees. The results can inform teachers and student decisions about what to do next on an hour-to-hour, day-to-day, or month-to-month basis. Therefore, I think that formative assessment is very useful tool for teaching process writing. By applying the formative assessment, teacher can do any scaffolding reaction, such as reconstructing the activities and tasks, and altering the way she instructs, to students at the every stage of approaching to the good writing. Moreover, as the main focus of this paper is about the process writing, formative assessment play major assessment for every classroom activities of writing class. What is found out is that formative assessment can be used in every stage of process writing: brainstorming,

planning, drafting and final writing. At every stage, teacher can evaluate and give useful so as to build confidence in our students and see how to improve their writing. 2. Formative assessment focus on how students learn. No doubt, formative assessments should focus on how students learn, instead of what students learn. Moreover, it cannot be denied that formative assessment is a component of learning process. That is to say, formative assessment sometimes acts as diagnostics tests, which can show the problematic part of lesson which students might experience. Another thing is that teacher can use the results of these tests to redesign the activities and tasks in order to diagnose these problematic areas and facilitate students learning process. Not only that, what I understand is that formative assessment can give obvious figure of what students learning, whether their learning can meet the essential criteria to achieve the learning goals and what they need to do to achieve these goals. Therefore, it is true to say that formative assessment can be addressed as Assessment for Learning. What is more, formative assessment can be classroom activities. That means that formative assessment caters the information about student weakness and progress, teacher can plan future lesson, that is, as she get the information about what students dont know and what they need to know, she can construct the future classroom activities and tasks in order to bridge that gaps. That is very true especially in process writing class. In process writing class, the main focus of teacher is not on what is students final production, but on how students process to get that production and judging whether that process can give good outcome. I think that assessing what student learnt is the main focus of summative assessment, which usually appears at the

end of instruction and gauges students abilities by grades and scores, which ca nnot interpret their abilities, and it cannot be applied in the process writing class.

3. Teacher should share learning objectives with students. This characteristic of formative assessment is very true to for the teaching writing, especially at the initiative stage of transforming from the traditional way of teaching product writing to process and product writing, because students may be confused why certain new task they have to do, which is different from tasks that they usually do, and without this awareness, students may baffles whether the new teaching strategies/ approach will be useful to get high grade in exam. Another reason is that teacher should, of course, convey what he/she want students to learn as knowing what they must try to achieve and want to achieve can have obvious effective impact on students learning. It cannot be denied that students will be demotivated as there are no concrete goals for doing certain task. That is to say, even though they are asked to do homework, composition and grammar exercises, they have no idea why they have to do these things, and what are the benefits of doing these tasks. Therefore there should be any doubt that if students are given information about the goals of tasks that they will have to do, they will come to realize what they need to do so as to achieve that goal. In order to make students to understand the goals of the course, one thing teacher can do is explain them verbally, for instance, tell them after this course, the students can write essays and letters in English creatively, they can come up with their own ideas, rather depending on the teachers and samples ideas. Or, another way what teacher can do is that he/she can give the sheets with learning objectives. However, one important things teacher should do after sharing the goals for students learning is that checking the understanding of the

meaning of learning goals. Susan M. Brookhart (2209, Pg.27) suggested teachers not to ask direct and very explicit question to check students understanding, for instance, Do you understand? If we ask students this question so as to check their understanding, it is logical to assume that students will response Yes, we understand. For that reason, we must help them to see what they dont understand by using certain strategies. One of these strategies would be asking them to find out at least two questions about the learning goals after they read the handouts or listening to teacher. Another thing that teacher can evaluate students understanding is that teacher asks students to describe the learning goals as much as they can without referring to the handouts after reading it. 4. Teacher also should help students to clear and recognize about the criteria or

standard that teacher is looking for. In my opinion, I think that this characteristic is very appropriate when teacher approach the combination of product and process writing. That is to say, teacher can explain what good writing is, perhaps the criteria of good writing and how to process the good writing. That is, in traditional class, whenever teacher teaches writing essays and letters, she just gives the samples and explains in translation. In my opinion, I think that, rather just giving the samples and explain them in word-by- word translation, teacher should ask students to read the samples and find out the characteristics of a good writing in groups. Apart from this, what else teacher can do is that she can give two sample, one which is good, perfect and the other is work of previous students, and then, ask them to compare these two works and ask them to give comments on both. Sometimes students can also be asked to find out any further improvement for the samples. Then, teacher can evaluate the characteristics that students found out and can give the comment or fill any missing characteristics. Or, another thing what teacher can do is that teacher can explain what criteria that students need in

order to achieve good writing. That is to say, teacher can explain what she is expecting in essay writing homework, for instance, such as own creative idea, grammar, and vocabulary, before she asks students to do. The reason behind this characteristic is that as students are given the knowledge about the criteria of good writing, they become aware how can they write or approach to these good writing, which can be helpful to achieve better grade in matriculation examination. Not only that, it would be helpful for the students to evaluate their own writing as they are provided the criteria of good work, which is also teacher is expecting from students production. 5. Teacher should provide opportunity to involve peer- and self-assessment.

There are a lot of advantages of equipping students with the opportunity to involve peerand self- assessment. The most obvious one is that these opportunities can give rise to learner-autonomy. This is because these opportunities can assist for students to identify next steps in their learning and to be able to come up with new skills, knowledge and understanding. Furthermore, Marilyn Lewis (2009, Pg.52,53) points out a fact that peer assessment have effective impact on both low- achieving and high-achieving students. She claims that for asking them to check the work of their peers, they are provided with a good sample at a level slightly above their own and they can aware of further different ways of composing by using the vocabulary and grammar structures that have been taught". For higher achieving students, they will become aware of how certain writing work can improve and what kind of mistakes can be made frequently and how can be avoided, when they sit for exam. So it can be safely said that such peer-assessment can develop the ability to carry out self-assessment, and, needless to say, this can lead to learner autonomy.

This principle of formative assessment is obviously helpful in teaching process writing, especially at brainstorming, editing, and final writing. Moreover, writing is a thinking process and it must need audience who is going to read the work, so that, I think peer-assessment is a way of providing audience. In brainstorming stage, in group, teacher can ask them put forward any ideas relevant to the given topic. Then, she can ask them to decide what to include and what to reject, or ask them to give comment on ideas about whether it is relevant or not. In editing and final writing stage, teacher can ask students to read the works of their peer and then ask them to evaluate their work depending on the criteria that teacher is expecting. Here, there needs one things that teacher must do is that explanation of the criteria that students must consider when they evaluate their peers work. One thing teacher can do is providing checklist. Kroll (1991, pg. 259) presented some questions that will be useful when students are asked to do peer-assessment: 1. What is the main purpose of this paper? 2. What have you found particularly effective in the paper? 3. Do you think the writer has followed through on what paper is set out to do? 4. Find at least three places in the essay where you can think of questions that have not answered by the writer. Write those questions in the margin as areas for the writer to answer in the next draft. Moreover, here is another example of checklist (teaching writing Skills)

Peer Editing Checklist Directions: Read your friends composition, answer the following questions, and tell your friend about it. 1. Is the composition interesting? YES NO

*If interesting, underline the words or sentences that make it interesting. *If not interesting, tell your friend how he/ she can make it more interesting. 2. Are the ideas in the composition clear to you? YES NO

*If the answer is no, tell your friend why they are not clear. 3. Are the paragraphs in the right order? YES NO

*If they are not, tell your friend how he/she can arrange them. 4. Did you find any mistakes, such as grammar, spelling, etc. in the composition? YES NO

*If you did, tell your friend what the mistakes are. 5. Which words do you especially like? 6. Are there any words which you dont like? What are they? Why dont you like them? 7. Whats the best part of the composition? How can your friend make it even better?

Moreover, for self- assessment, Andrea H. Peaflorida (2002) suggests three useful questions for self-assessment: 1. What I am writing about? 2. Is the main idea of my work clear? 3. Do I have details (e.g., examples and illustrations) to support my main idea? So, it cannot be denied that these peer and self-assessment are useful to improve learner autonomy and they can equip students with the ability to see their own weakness and progress as well as how to make progress. 6. Teacher should provide feedbacks and advices which make students to see what

they need to do/learn in order to achieve the goals Needless to say, feedbacks and advice from teacher is the most important component of formative assessment. It cannot be denied that feedbacks from teacher can help students understand where they are now and what to do next, and also, they can bridge the gap between what students know and what they need to know. Moreover, in my opinion, I feel that it would be more effective if feedbacks are accompanied with suggestions for improvement. However, what Assessment Reform Group (2002) insist that the feedback should be constructive and sensitive, that is say, the feedbacks can have emotional impact on students, which can make either motivated or demotivated. Anyway, I think that feedback must give students confidence to go one step further than their current level and focus on the work of the students, not personal. When teacher gives feedback, she can pinpoint the strength of the students and how to grow it bigger, and, for weakness, she can give suggestion and guide the way to improve them. In addition to these facts, teacher can give feedback and suggestions for improvement orally or even in the writing. However, teacher should give the feedback as immediately as

possible, contrast students works with the criteria of good work, which has been explained as learning goals (Susan M. Brookhart, 2009, Pg. 43) . She also points out that teacher must use the words that students can understand and also the words must be explicit. Murray (1885, Pg.156) also present some useful feedback and comment which can bring about the stimulation and encouragement to students improvement: 1. What do you plan to work on next? 2. I like the way you wove the quote into the text. Are there other things that could be woven in the same way? 3. Where do you think you can get off the track? 4. And you said you have no voice. Tell me how you made this draft so different. Moreover, he also point out the some sample comments and feedback that teacher should avoid: 1. This is no good! 2. Wow! You can write. 3. Didnt you learn anything about writing? 4. Ive never seen such a bad paper before. 5. I dont know what I can teach someone who wrote like you. Additionally, Marilyn Lewis (2002, Pg. 72) suggest some useful sentence starters for teacher to make suggestion: 1. How about.? 2. Try to .. 3. Id suggest. 4. Look at page for

Moreover, without any doubt, every teacher thinks that, in applying formative assessment, their responsibility is just giving feedback, comment, and teaching some mistakes that majority of students make again, and, they think that their students may review the marked essays, feedback and suggestions, that they gave. Actually, if they think in that way, it would be a big mistake. To my personal experience, this is such a common thing that most of students rarely revise their works unless the exam is drawing near. It would be correct to say that only good and motivated students will revise the marked essays, teachers feedback and comment. What can do in order to handle this problem is making both teacher and students to involve in reviewing and reflecting result of formative assessment. For instance, many teacher argue that they have no enough time to do face-to-face discussion about progress of students progress as they are given limited time to finish teaching the content of syllabus. However, I think that it would be worthy for both teachers and students if teacher give some times for conferencing (H. Douglas Brown, 2007, Pg. 477). Moreover, Marilyn Lewis claimed in teaching writing: During conferencing, teacher will usually read a draft of the writing and make comment like these: Suggest an improvement (e.g. better word) Ask a question (e.g. How did you decide to put that idea last? Point to further help ( e.g. Show a page in the text book)

All in all, it is very true to say that feedback and suggestions for improvements are one of the most important component parts of formative assessment. Moreover, whenever teacher gives feedback and suggestions, these things must be constructive and sensitive,

which means that they must reflect students work and guide student progress and weakness, as well as ways to improve them. 7. Teacher should build confidence that every students can achieved

There should not be any doubt to say that students will be motivated if they feel as their teachers are interested in their learning progress and invest their time in figuring out what they need to adjust their teaching styles in order to bridge students weakness. As well, as students are clear about the objective of the learning to achieve and way to arrive those objectives, as they know whether they are on the right track to achieve them by following the feedback and suggestions from teacher, all of them, even low-achieving students, have confidence about their achievement. What is more, as my concerning is on the writing skills, what I found out is that most students have no confidence to write as they are suffering from mental block and fear about making mistakes. In order for such kind of students to overcome from these suffering, in my view, teachers must encourage them, of course. One thing what teacher can do in order to overcome mental block, teacher can ask them to write down any idea or words related to given topic as much as they can within 10 minutes, for instance. Another thing she can do is that introducing portfolio, which is the collection of all students works, including drafts, plans of essays and any ideas come out from them. First, student may think this is a collection of trash as they cannot see how useful it is; so, teacher can explain how helpful it is and encourage them to collect their works in portfolio. Then, the one thing teacher must do is to ask them to submit their portfolio once a week, for instance, and give comments, such as which ideas do you think is useful or relevant to put in your essays? How can you arrange these ideas in your essays? In addition to that fact, as the students have a good knowledge of how to process good writing and how to handle mistakes, they

have confidence to handle any unseen question of writing skill in matriculation examination. So it is very true to say that the second or foreign language learning would be fruitful, as the learners are motivated and confident to apply all the language they have learnt. Thus, without a doubt, in order to have effective teaching foreign language, teacher must foster students with motivation and confidence. 8. Formative assessment involves both teacher and students in reviewing and reflecting

on assessment information. There should be any denying saying that teacher and students should review and look back the assessment information, that is, they should revise the learning objective and consider whether current teaching styles are helpful to achieve these objectives. One thing teacher can do is that teacher should make continuous announcement of the students progress and how closer they are to the objectives. Another thing teacher can do is that teacher reminds frequently about the learning objectives and the criteria that they need to achieve these objectives. Moreover, teacher can evaluate the result of current teaching styles and if there is no obvious progress, she can adapt the style of teaching. What is more, in order to see the effectiveness of her teaching and alter teaching approach, she should ask following questions frequently: 1. What essential skills and knowledge I can try to teach? 2. How can I find out whether students care learning? 3. How can I help them learn better? There is one reason for doing this that teacher can improve their teaching skills and gain ability to see and understand whether their teaching is productive. As well, for students, as their progress is frequently announced, they will be well motivated and have confidence as they are gradually approaching to the goals. Moreover, they can measure their own

progress as teacher is always reminding the criteria that they need in order to achieve good work. 7. The useful teaching strategies for assessing and facilitating students learning In general, there are two main effective ways that teachers can use to assess and facilitate their students learning: self- and peer- assessment, and teacher- assessment. 7.1. Self- and peer- assessment

There should not be any doubt that self- and peer- assessments are useful device that all language teachers should exploit it as it enhance students motivation and learner autonomy. In teaching writing, self- and peer- assessments can be used especially in prewriting stage and drafting stage. In pre- writing stage, normally, teacher just introduce brainstorming activities, such as listing ideas and brainstorming group discussion, which are good ways to assess students background knowledge about a particular topic. In these activities, teacher get students to write down and/or list as many words or ideas related to that topic as they can think during a set time. Then, what teacher can do is that give the assessment checklists or a list of questions, which can be used in either self-assessment or peer-assessment. Following list of questions is the useful in either self- or peer-assessments: Read the list of words and ideas and answer. Find out which ideas and/or words are irrelevant to the topic. If there are, why do you think they are not relevant? Is there any useful ideas and/ words for this topic. If, why? Is there any ideas and/ words you want to add? If, what are they and why?

Moreover, in drafting stage, teachers can also apply these kinds of assessment. In this stage, it cannot be denied that peer- assessment can provide the audience for the students, which can have impact on the motivation to write more and better as they realize somebody will read their work. Similar to the brainstorming activities, teacher must tell what factors they students must focus on when they evaluate their own works and/or their peers work. The following is the list of the questions that teachers normally use: Read through the draft (of your friend) and answer following question. Which part of this draft is interesting for you? Why? Which part is not interesting for you? Why? Is there any irrelevant sentence/ idea? What are they and why do you think in that way? What else do you want to add? Is there any grammar and spelling mistakes? What are they? Can you summarize what is text is about?

All in all, I think that peer- and self- assessment can equip student with the ability to see their learning weakness and weakness. Not only that, it is very helpful for the students who are familiar with product writing to adjust with the teaching process writing, and it is the most effective way to cure the suffering of mental block. 7.2. Teacher- assessment

It is very true to say that, traditionally, teacher-assessment usually happened at the end of writing, however, in teaching process writing, teacher must intervene during the process of writing, that is, he/she must collaborate with students at every stage of writing. The obvious advantage of this way of assessing is that teacher can know where the students, how they

process to get the good product, every difficulties and weakness that students encounter on the way of process to the good product. Moreover, it cannot be denied that teacher can react and do remedial teaching to the students weakness and difficulties a nd can reconstruct the activities and tasks in order to facilitate students learning. Moreover, it is very important that teacher do need to take part collaboratively in peer- and selfassessment. One clear example is that, while students are carrying out the brainstorming activities and/or the peer- and self-assessment, teacher should move around the class and spend some times in every students and/or group to listen to what they are discussing, and how they are carrying out the tasks. By doing this, needless to say, teacher can help and give feedback as soon as possible when students have difficulties. Moreover, this kind of teacher feedback will become a model for the type of feedback that students give in peerassessment. Moreover, teacher should spend some time for conferencing, which can give effective feedback and advice for further progress for individual students. In conferencing, teacher reads through the drafts, portfolio and finial writing work. Ronald E. Lapp(1985, Pg. 88) suggested some useful question to ask students: What did you write about in your first draft? How would you describe the amount of change you made from your first to your second draft Many changes Some changes Few changes Point put the way ideas changed from your first to your final draft.

Point out the way your organization changed from your final draft. Point out five changes you made in grammar, spelling or punctuation If you were given chance to revise this graft one more time, what changes would you make?

Moreover, in traditional way of teaching writing, teachers just mark and correct grammar and spelling mistakes, rather than giving any feedback and suggestions. In teaching process writing, teacher should tell which factors she is expecting, such as ideas, grammar and vocabulary use, when she asks her students to do homework and composition tasks. For example, if teacher wants to make students able to write without disturbing the flow of thoughts, she should ask them to focus on idea and tell them no need to worry about the grammar and vocabulary uses. However, the problem here is that if teacher focus too much on the meaning and idea enrichment, what is found out is that the accuracy is plummeting. So, this means that teacher cannot ignore these mistakes; however, how these mistakes should be corrected is questions for teacher. One thing teacher can do is that mistakes are not corrected explicitly. Teacher can create special correcting code, such as SP for spelling mistakes, GR= for grammar, and underline the mistakes. Additionally, teacher should let students to find out how to correct their mistakes, rather than correcting these mistakes explicitly. All in all, it cannot be denied that teacher assessment is important component of formative assessment. Teacher should work cooperatively with students in order to give feedback and assess students progress, and react to the students weakness as soon as possible. Moreover, the teacher assessment must be frequent and on-going process.

8. Is there any constraint that will encounter and how to overcome? Indeed, there will be some difficulties if teachers use formative assessment in their classroom immediately. I think that teacher needs to give students to adapt in new teaching strategies. This is because students are familiar with the traditional ways of teaching writing skills, which is very teacher-centered, whereas formative assessment is so learner-centered. Therefore, it cannot be denied that they need some times to familiar with new teaching strategies. What is more, the teachers observation and feedback during peer- and self- assessment can make students more reliant on the teacher. So what teacher can do is that she should give feedback carefully on few major factors. Moreover, to my experience, some students are very sensitive about comments, so teacher needs to keep in mind that every comment should be constructive and sensitive. What is more, teachers also need time and special training to be familiar with formative assessment as they are also used to teach in language skills in very traditional way and when they transform into formative ways, most teachers have difficulties, especially when they think up ways to assess students progress, instead of just marking and grading. Hence, what Boston, Carol (2002) claimed: Training and professional development in the area of classroom assessment (formative assessment) are essential in order to provide individual teachers with the time and support necessary to make changes. Teachers need time to reflect upon their assessment practices and benefit from observing and consulting with other teachers about effective practice and about changes they would like to make. Moreover, it would be challenge for some teachers as they have to come up with different strategies to adjust teaching in order to bridge students weakness and assess students progress. Moreover, teacher also needs to inform parents about new assessing strategies, as some

parents used to know their children in grades. Another big challenge is that teachers have to assess students learning frequently. As Black and William (1998) recommended: Frequent short tests are better than infrequent long one New learning should be tested within about a week of first exposure.

However, teachers in Myanmar are given very limited time to teach the whole content of syllabus, so that, they argue that they can give time for frequents short test and conferencing. However, in order to cope with aforementioned difficulties, I think teacher should give at least 10 or 15 minutes to do short test once a week so as to assess students progress as well as weakness. Moreover, it seems to me that they should spend at least one period per week for remedial teaching and for conferencing with their students.

9. Conclusion To take everything that I mentioned above sections, it can safely conclude that current way of teaching writing skills in Myanmar high schools is very traditional way as it is focus on the product, so I think that high schools teachers should give attention teaching both product and process of writing. Moreover, another thing is that formative assessment cannot be necessarily addressed as formal pen and paper tests. Actually, formative assessments can be any activities that appear in classroom. Moreover, it cannot be denied that formative assessment is effective approach of teaching writing as it can equip students with learner autonomy and creativity, which are essential skills to handle unseen topic in matriculation examination. So, I think that the responsible persons should start the programs to widespread the application of formative assessment nationwide; for instance, they can embark the training programs for teacher to enrich their teaching skills and knowledge

about formative assessment. I want to conclude this paper by suggesting to the syllabus writers and responsible persons to set formative assessment as a part of syllabus and introduce teacher development in the field of formative assessment programs and they should also urge teachers to use formative assessment in order to bring about effective teaching and fruitful learning in schools.

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