On The Application Of Compound Portfoliobased Assessment In Integrated Skills Of English Course For English Major Sophomores

With the development of education theories, educational measurement and language learning theories, the constructive prototype of evaluation is being accepted by more and more educational practitioners, and increasingly formative evaluation systems and assessment methods have been proposed by different researchers.However, taking the formative evaluation’s structure, criteria and process into consideration, it is far from satisfaction to meet the requirements set by the teachers.Hence, it is quite urgent for the birth of the new assessment system that both comprehensive and applicable to the present situation.Throughout the past two decades, a number of professions have utilized portfolios to collect, document, and present evidence of professional accomplishment and personal growth. Individuals in various specialties such as architecture, design,finance, mass media, and journalism have used the portfolio to collect personal work or materials that demonstrate ongoing learning and professional growth(PatrickWilliams & Bennett, 2010). As an important component of language programs, this kind of formative evaluation plays an important role in teaching field for several years abroad. Researches of the theory and practice of formative evaluation of language teaching have been worked out both at home and abroad. However,compared with large quantity of empirical studies conducted abroad, the formative evaluation of language projects was rarely reported in China.This study examined students’ perception and found out the changes of their learning strategies and learning styles with the compound portfolio-based assessment in Technology and Humanity College of Guizhou Minzu University. The purpose was to investigate how compound portfolios mandated as an assessment tool have influenced English major students’ learning strategies, learning styles, classroom experiences and changed their skills and attitudes toward English learning, affected their learning autonomy. To this end, the study addressed the following research questions:1. Does compound portfolio-based assessment affect the students’ learning strategies and learning styles in English? If yes, to what extent?2. What are students’ perceptions on compound portfolio-based Integrated Skills of English course assessment?This study was conducted during eighteen weeks of one semester. Two research methods were involved in this study, including quantitative data analysis and qualitative data analysis. On one hand, quantitative data was collected from empirical experiment with 51 university students. On the other hand, qualitative data was collected from interviews with a purposeful sample of five students.Through conducting qualitative and quantitative research, the researcher found out that almost all the participants concluded that the preparation of the portfolio was the most beneficial experiences and could connect learning, assessment and instruction together. Hence, the participants believed that compound portfolio assessment could not only represent their learning results but also could express themselves better than the traditional assessing tools.Through the study, the researcher found out that the students became more aware of using the learning strategies systematically and effectively in the Integrated Skills of English course, and their learning style transferred from a teacher-directed one to a self-directed one. They became more interested in learning English by themselves and at the same time, they were able to reflect on their own learning results and checked their progress. The compound portfolio-based assessment not only changed their frequency and habits of using learning strategies and styles, but also enhanced their learning motivation, self-esteem, and cooperation by improved their learning autonomy.The significance of this study can be concluded as following: first, shift the purpose, educational evaluation should emphasize on assessing learning progress,since results of this study implied that evaluate students’ learning progress gave them confidence and stimulate their learning motivation. Second, the compound portfoliobased assessment in this study testified that it was better for students to participant into the whole process of assessment. Third, based on the results analysis, the Chinese English curriculum should apply the flexible formative assessments to evaluate students.