Formative assessment in a digital environment : digital tools and feedback as aid for language development in EFL classrooms

Abstract: This paper concerns the use of digital tools in connection to formative assessment within EFL classrooms. The Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) has in the last decades shown an increasing interest in the potential that these tools show. One area in which digital environments with their automation, algorithms, and systems have seen wide applications, is to support and help establish formative assessment practices. This is the research area at hand that the paper seeks to investigate. By presenting previous research, we offer an overview of how and why specifically digital tools are useful for EFL teachers who wish to find applications for their own education. The advantages and limitations of its applications and design are similarly discussed where we investigate which tools may benefit which environment as well as which tasks. In order to offer a more thorough breakdown of the research area, a variety of digital tools, as well as their systematic foundations, are presented and explained as to their function and connection to formative assessment practices and language development potential. While the tools discussed show great potential in their usefulness within EFL classrooms, specifically with automation and feedback systems, they do require pedagogical planning within the task and a didactic choice towards which tools to apply in what context. Additionally, the human element, the teacher, remains an essential part of the feedback process regardless of the automation abilities of the digital tools as they are usually best applied situationally, rather than universally, which ultimatelly rests on the teachers' ability. Therefore, digital tools function as an effective complement to an already pedagogically planned structure.