Formative assessment offers much potential to make both teaching and learning more nuanced and effective for students, particularly students who are attempting to master a new language. Integrating formative assessments into instruction for English Language Learners offers specific opportunities, empowering teachers to better attend to the students’ needs in learning and content, and more effectively helping these students develop the skills they need to master grammatical concepts and communicate with confidence. As their core, the most effective types of formative assessments are the ones that inherently promote student learning, making certain they put students at the center of the educational process (Alvarez et al., 2014). Formative assessments require that the teacher both consider the students needs, achievements, general and specific comprehension while bearing in mind the areas of English they still need to master in order to reach a higher level of English mastery. This essay will examine two specific formative assessment activities for English Language Learners (ELL). Ideally these methods will help in the overall process of guiding and improving the learning process by fostering self-regulated learning strategies among students, while unifying all the instruction they have been subjected to (Clark, 2012).

Pair-work Interview

Put the students into groups of two and ask them to come up with five questions that demonstrate the concepts of the grammar lesson presented. For example, if the day’s lesson covered the grammatical concept of “used to” each student has to come up with questions such as “Where did you used to live? / What are some habits you used to have? / What are some pets you used to own? / What are some hobbies you used to do? / What are some pets you used to have? /What are some things you used to eat?” The questions need to directly reflect the lesson presented and hopefully...
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Similarly, if the grammatical concept presented in class was something along the lines of the present perfect tense for the usage of the past up until now, then students need to write down questions which reflect their understanding of this usage. For example, students might write out things such as, “What have you eaten so far today? / Where have you traveled so far today? What have you seen today? Who have you spoken to today? How many times have you gone to the bathroom today?” The ultimate goal with this first step is to determine to what extent the students have understood the grammatical concepts presented and how well they can both write and speak the concepts involved and in the form of questions.
Once each member of the pair has their questions written out, they need to take turns interviewing one another, and writing down one-others’ answers. This part of the exercise can get students used to saying the grammatical concepts out loud, and may even allow them to illuminate certain questions or issues with the grammar. During this phase of the exercise, it is important that the teacher listen closely to each pair as they engage with one another. Some teachers might want to unobtrusively walk around the room when this is happening, in order to hear and get a sense of how well or poorly most students understand the concept. Once all the pairs have asked each other their questions and written down the answers, each member of the pair will present to the class about their partner. So for example, one member of the pair might stand up and say, “This is Sasha. She used to live in Russia, but now she lives here in America. She used to have a cat but now she has two fish. She used to eat dumplings for dinner but now she eats chicken and rice. She used to walk to school, but now she takes the bus.” During this presentation stage…