The essence of formative assessment and its role in the foreign language teaching

The main principles of constructivism (taking into account and developing the cognitive interests of students, encouraging mutual learning and activating peers as sources of learning), which underlie modern pedagogy and linguodidactics, are considered. A comparison of a traditional lesson and a lesson built on the principles of constructivism is carried out, it is shown how the essence of assessment and attitude towards it change at the present stage of development of education and in theory. Particular attention is paid to the problem of formative assessment, in particular, its specificity at different stages of training and the roles that are assigned in it to participants in the educational process – teacher, student and classmates are discussed. The definition of formative assessment is clarified and its various aspects are considered: the involvement of students in the process of goal-setting, self- and mutual control; the quality of the questions used by the teacher in the classroom and the quality of the feedback; subsequent use of the results of the final assessment for educational purposes. The functions of formative assessment are revealed. The levels of formative assessment (low, medium and high) are analyzed, the choice of which depends on the learning context. The relevance of formative assessment to educational results with an emphasis on the development of subject and meta-subject skills in accordance with the Federal State Educational Standard of General Secondary Education is demonstrated.