Does Summative Assessment Used Formatively Enhance Learning in English for Communication Purposes?

Abstract

This research is based on an experiment which tries to compare two ways of assessing student learning. The first one, the one which is currently used at Université Félix Houphouët Boigny consists in assessing all the students at the end of every course and this assessment entitles students to have a mark. This mark, being good or bad, is used to decide who fails or passes.  Thus, assessment mode is comparable to a court decision which offers no appeal. This tradition raises the following question: between the mark and learning which one is the target in the teaching- learning process? If we think that learning is the target, then, we should reconsider our assessing tradition. The nature and the results of our proposed assessment approach are to be discovered in the following lines.

Keywords: Summative; formative; assessment; learning; English; communication