THE IMPACT OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT ON ESL STUDENTS' WRITING PERFORMANCE

This article examines the efficacy of formative assessment strategies in enhancing the writing performance of English as a second language students. Unlike summative evaluations, formative assessment focuses on the process of learning, providing students with continuous feedback that bridges the gap between their current proficiency and desired learning goals. Through a review of pedagogical frameworks such as Scaffolding and the zone of proximal development, the paper argues that integrating peer review, self-assessment, and teacher feedback significantly improves syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and overall writing coherence.