The Effectiveness of Formative Assessment in Improving Students’ Writing Skill

Assessment is one of the most important parts in teaching and learning process. There are many types of assessment and formative assessment is one of them. The use of formative assessment is beneficial in improving students’ performance, especially in writing skill. This article aims to review the effectiveness of formative assessment in improving students’ writing skill as well as to analyze teachers and students’ perceptions toward the use of formative assessment in writing skill. In collecting the data, this article used library research as a method. The data were collected from the previous study in the journals, articles, and thesis. The result of the research showed that the implementation of formative assessment is effective and beneficial in improving students’ writing skill. Moreover, both teachers and students have a positive attitude toward the use of formative assessment as a media for writing improvement.


INTRODUCTION
Assessment is one of the most important components of teaching and learning (Yan & Brown, 2021). Assessment is a long process of gaining students' information and involves the proof regarding to the students' development (Baleni, 2021;Dwi Saputra et al., 2018). It means that the assessment process is a continuously process of learning to check the students' performance. Through assessment process the teacher could find better ways to support' students and better strategies to teach in a classroom (Mayes et al., 2020;Ounis, 2017). Assessment refers to the process of gathering evidence of student's achievement during the learning process (Barbour et al., 2021). Assessment is a tool for improving learners' outcomes, the assessment should provide the information about students' performance both formal and informal (Raveloarinirina & Tou, 2017). The main purpose of assessment is to consider the students' learning styles, strengths, weaknesses and the students' needs (Zia, 2019). The assessment carried out in school should be meaningful and help the students to achieve the learning' purpose (Granberg et al., 2021). Baranovskaya & Shaforostova (2017) Assessment makes it possible to see students' mastery in both the knowledge and skills they must learn. In doing the assessment, teachers are usually applying some approaches to check the students' performance (Baranovskaya & Shaforostova, 2017;Chng & Lund, 2018) There are three approaches in assessment. The three approaches are assessment of learning (summative assessment), assessment for learning (formative assessment), and assessment as learning (Dilova, 2021;Xiang et al., 2021). First, assessment of learning is an assessment process that usually done at the end of course or learning process and it involves the form of a test or exam. An assessment of learning, the results are usually expressing the students' achievement, in a form of score and as a report to parents. This approach also called summative assessment. Second, Assessment for Learning is an assessment process that happened along the process of learning, the function of this assessment is to give feedback for each step of the learning. This assessment is a kind of formative assessment. Meanwhile, assessment as learning is students self-review and peer-review to make the judgment or evaluation of certain work or performance. Further, in the process of determining which type of assessment to use in assessing learning requires the teachers to understand the centeredness of learning (McVey, 2016).
Furthermore, explains that there are several types of assessment and formative assessment is one of them (Zia, 2019). Formative assessment or assessment for Learning is an assessment process that happens along the process of learning activity (Chng & Lund, 2018;Dilova, 2021). In addition, assessment for learning the teachers could seek and interpret the students learning' achievement and decide what they should do (Nasr et al., 2018). The function of this assessment is to give feedback for each step of the learning for the students. Formative assessment gives the information during the learning process before the summative assessment (Dilova, 2021;Zia, 2019). Formative assessment is commonly recommended as a tool for improving writing instruction (Granberg et al., 2021;Voinea, 2018). Formative assessment enables students to be more appropriate in conveying their thoughts and ideas through text (Buyukkarci, 2021;Veugen et al., 2021). So, it means that formative assessment is essential especially in improving the students writing skill. Writing skill is an essential skill for the student in learning English (Buyukkarci, 2021). Through writing, students are able to convey their thoughts and communicate their ideas. Writing is important skill because this skill is widely used in higher education and in the workplace (Abrams & Byrd, 2016;Sakkir et al., 2021). She states that we will able to communicate well with peers, professors, business people, or anyone if we know how to express ourselves in writing. writing is a central element of language, any reading and language arts program must consider the multidimensional nature of writing in instructional practices, assessment procedures, and language development.". Therefore, mastering writing skills is important in learning English and formative assessment is one of several ways in improving students' writing skill. Some previous researcher also had been examined the teachers' perception and the implementation of formative assessment in teaching writing skill. The result of the study showed that the use of formative assessment has a positive impact in improving students' writing skill. Teachers' belief and perception are important because they have huge influence on teaching and learning process (Halali et al., 2017). By utilizing those previous research studies, this study is aimed to review the effectiveness of formative assessment in improving students writing skill as well as the perception of the use of formative assessment in improving students' writing skill. Moreover, this article is hoped to be able to enrich knowledge about the effectiveness of formative assessment in improving students' skill and this research focus on improving students' writing skill. Perception refers to the process in which individuals organize and interpret their assumption to their environment. The perception is influenced by the characteristics of individual. There are five factors that influence the perception based (Robbins & Judge, 2013). The factors are attitudes, motives, interests, experience, and expectation. First, attitude defines as a manner or feeling whether it positive or negative to a person or circumstance. Second, a motive is the reason why someone act or do something. Third, an interest is a feeling that causes a high attention or curiosity to someone or something. Fourth, experience is something that that you do or happens to you in the past. Fifth, expectation is a hope and belief about what someone should behave and something should happen. Moreover, there are several stages of perception process namely selection, organization and interpretation (Robbins & Judge, 2013). Perception is a process of producing information of its own experience through interpreting something (OzgeAyva, 2012). Also, perception is related to the cognitive and perceptual system evolving together in the human body. Moreover, another expert explains that perception is closely related with attitude and there are three components in perception namely attitude, behavior and belief. So, it can be concluded that perception is an ability to see, hear, and interpret something through the senses.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This article used library research as a method in collecting the data. Library research is a research that carried out by collecting information and data from the various materials in the library such as books, similar results of previous research, articles, notes, and various journals related to the problem to be solved (Liu et al., 2005). To find the answer(s) to the problem faced, data must be collected, processed, and concluded using certain methods / techniques systematically. In this article, in order to get information about the effectiveness of formative assessment in improving students' writing skill and the perception of the implementation of formative assessment in writing skill, there are one thesis and three articles are reviewed. The first resource is a thesis written by Zahaf Imen in 2020. This thesis investigates the impact of formative assessment on EFL students' writing skill. The second resource is an article written (Prastikawati et al., 2020). The aimed of this research is to investigate the students' perception of online backchannel implementation as a formative assessment in improving the students' writing skills in an English classroom. The third resource is an article by Zia, Sarfraz, and Mufti in 2019, this article aimed to analyze students' perceptions of the formative assessment and feedback as effective contributors in the development of English writing composition skills of the Secondary Level ESL Students in Lahore, Pakistan. This article aimed to investigate the use of Formative Assessment System for Writing Improvement.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
When from several resources (articles and thesis) that focused on the use of formative assessment in improving students' writing skill as well as the teachers' perception towards the use of formative assessment in writing skill, to answer the first question on "what is the effect of formative assessment in improving students' writing skill?" it was found that: First, the study is about the effectiveness of formative assessment in improving students' writing skill (Zia, 2019). The used of formative assessment is very beneficial and has a good impact in improving the students' writing skill. From the research, there were 5 aspects that improved namely, tenses, vocabulary, sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation. In formative assessment the teacher gave the feedback on the students' ability in writing, this feedback is given by the teacher to make the students knew about the mistake and error along the process of writing. The findings indicated that essay writing activity was done most frequently by class 8 students. Formative assessment allowed the teachers to give feedback to the students in order to improve their works (Voinea, 2018). However, written formative assessment followed by story writing, letter writing both informal and informal, writing poems and doing comprehension activity. The main reason is that it is provided formative feedback which is the most crucial part of the assessment process. Formative feedback was given by the teacher on their writing deficiencies related to improvement in grammar, spelling, thinking skills, creative skill and vocabulary and also generating of new ideas.
Second, conducted a research about formative assessment system for writing improvement (Frey, N., & Fisher, 2004). From the research it was found that the used of formative assessment is helpful in improving the student's writing skill. Through formative assessment the teacher could give feedback to the students during the process of writing. Because the main purpose of formative assessment is to give the students feedback during the process of learning. Here, the teacher focused on correcting the errors on the students' work rather than the mistake. In general, the errors were classified into 4 namely factual error, procedural error, transformation error, and misconception error. Firstly, factual error focuses on incorrect information, for example when students write incorrect information about something. Secondly, procedural error involves problems with applying routines, rules, or procedures, such as For example; a student incorrectly used levelled headings throughout her essay, which negatively affected the organization of her arguments. Thirdly, transformation error occurs when students are asked to apply what they have been taught to a novel situation. For example, we often have students who fail to cite sources that are less commonly used, especially film and video sources. Lastly, Misconception is inaccurate beliefs that are clung to despite teaching. For example, when a student wrote that "people were better writers back in Shakespeare's time," we knew that he had conflated Elizabethan language structures with scholarship.
Third, conducted a research about the use of online backchannel as a formative assessment in improving writing skills (Prastikawati et al., 2020). The research showed that the new assessment process like formative assessment is effective in increasing students' writing ability. Moreover, through the use of formative assessment, the motivation and confidence of the students in writing were raised or improved. Formative assessment helped the students gain new vocabulary and grammar error awareness to generate and develop ideas of writing topics. Additionally, students took a benefit from the communicative interactions in their process of writing through the feedback which was given by the teacher.
Last, conducted a research about the impact of formative assessment on EFL students' writing skill (Buyukkarci, 2021). The research showed that, formative assessment is not widely implemented in written classes at Mostaganem University. However, based on the experiment in the research, the continuous feedback affects positively on students 'writing performance. Moreover, in implementing the formative assessment in classroom, the teacher usually used portfolio. The use of portfolios are considered as a method of assessing students' writing, which requires students to keep a portfolio pieces of writing that are written even inside or outside classroom. The portfolios allow students to revise over the entire course rather than just during the process for the individual paper. So, it is necessary to implement formative assessment in the writing classroom by using portfolio as a media to enhance the students 'writing skill and achieve effective teaching and learning goals. The used of portfolio considered as effective tools of formative assessment, especially in teaching writing to the students. Moreover, the result of their research showed that the teachers were not consistently implement formative assessment in their classroom (Dessie & HEERALAL, 2016). There were also the different between what they filled in the questionnaire and what they did in the classroom. In addition, the teachers were found not appropriate to take action in their classroom due to their low understanding of formative assessment (Widiastuti & Saukah, 2017). Because of that reason the teachers need to develop their knowledge by joining training or workshop (Buyukkarci, 2021;Prastikawati et al., 2020;Zia, 2019).
Furthermore, teachers and students have different perception or attitude toward the used of formative assessment in teaching and learning or in writing class. To answer the second research question on "How does teacher and student perception toward the use of formative assessment in writing skill?", there are several different perceptions both from the teacher and the students. Overall, both teachers and students revealed positive perceptions and attitudes when formative assessment was implemented in the English classroom, especially for their writing skills improvement. The implementation of formative assessment raised students' motivation and confidence in their writing practice. In addition, it helped the students gain new vocabulary and grammar error awareness to generate and develop ideas of writing topics as well as it was beneficial for the improvement of communicative interactions in their process of writing. The teachers reflected positive perceptual of formative assessment (Brink & Bartz, 2017). Through the implementation of formative assessment, they knew the tracks of the students, knew the students' strength and weakness, and could promote proper feedback to the students. In addition, explained the effect of formative assessment in EFL classroom and the result of their study showed that the teachers have a very great understanding of formative assessment (Akter et al., 2020). Then, they also believed that the implementation of formative assessment helped them to become more professional in teaching.
The teachers and students considered that the used of formative assessment in writing classroom is beneficial for increasing writing performance. The teacher also argued that assessing students formatively can make them achieved the learning goals effectively. Moreover, through formative assessment the teacher knew about the students' performance both the strength and the weakness of the students and it is as guidance for the teacher to prepare the effective teaching method for the students. However, some teachers did not often implement formative assessment in their class. The teachers only assess the students at the end of the learning process such as assessing their final project or exam. It means that formative assessment is not widely implemented in the written expression classes. So, the teachers did not feel that the use of formative assessment is beneficial for writing skill improvement (Buyukkarci, 2021;Prastikawati et al., 2020;Zia, 2019).

CONCLUSION
Formative assessment is one of the types of assessment which is very beneficial in teaching and learning process. The implementation of formative assessment in teaching and learning process especially in writing class is helpful in improving the writing performance of the students. It is due to the main purpose if formative assessment is to give the students feedback during the process of learning and as a guideline for the teacher to the do the next action in order to improve students' achievement. From the explanation on the result, it can be concluded that the implementation of formative assessment is an effective method in improving students writing skill. There are several aspects that improved through the use of formative assessment such as vocabulary, tenses, sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation. Moreover, almost all the teachers and students have a positive attitude toward formative assessment in their class.