A Research On The Application Of Portfolio Assessment In Teaching English Writing In Senior High Schools

The English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School（2017 edition revised in 2020）suggests that the general high school English curriculum should focus on and promote the formation and development of students’ English core competences,adopt multiple assessment methods combining formative and summative assessment and pay attention to the role of assessment in promoting students’ learning.Nevertheless,in the teaching of English writing in senior high schools,English teachers generally use traditional assessment method,which emphasizes the writing results and ignores the writing process,thus leading to a lack of effective guidance of students’ writing strategies and a lack of attention to self-assessment and reflection in the writing process.With the characteristics of diversified assessment subjects,diversified assessment forms and comprehensive assessment contents,the portfolio assessment makes up for the shortages of traditional assessment method.Hence,it seems necessary to reform the assessment method of writing teaching.Therefore,Multiple Intelligences Theory,the Constructivism,and the Humanism are used as the theoretical foundations,and questionnaires,interviews,and writing tests are adopted to conduct research on 98 students in Grade one of a high school in Zunyi.The first questionnaire refers to Petric and Czarl’s questionnaire on writing strategies,and is revised on the basis of it,aiming at investigating senior high school students’ use of English writing strategies.Questionnaire 2 is modified from Chen’s questionnaire on self-reflection in English writing,and is designed to investigate students’ self-reflection in English writing.The study attempts to answer the following three questions: 1.What impact does the implementation of the Portfolio Assessment have on students’ use of English writing strategies? 2.What impact does the implementation of the Portfolio Assessment have on students’ self-reflection ability in English writing? 3.What impact does the implementation of the Portfolio Assessment have on students’ English writing proficiency?After a three-month study on the implementation of the portfolio assessment,the results show that: 1.The analysis of the data results from the questionnaire 1 before and after the experiment and students’ interviews reveals that the portfolio assessment can affect and improve students’ use of English writing strategies,and more and more students adopt different writing strategies to assist their writing,with social affective strategy,meta-cognitive strategy,and cognitive strategy improving most significantly.2.The analysis of the data results from the questionnaire 2,students’ interviews and students’ self-reflection forms indicates that the implementation of the portfolio assessment can effectively improve students’ self-reflection ability in English writing.The mean value of students’ self-reflection ability in the experimental class is higher than that in the control class after the experiment.3.The analysis of the data results from the writing test shows that the implementation of the portfolio assessment can effectively improve students’ English writing proficiency.There is no significant difference between the writing scores of the experimental class and the control class before the experiment,and after the experiment,the writing scores of the experimental and control classes have both improved,but the writing scores of the experimental class are significantly higher than those of the control class,and the passing rate and excellent rate of the experimental class are higher than those of the control class.At the same time,this study also finds some demerits of the portfolio assessment.First,for the students whose English foundation is weak,self-assessment and peer assessment are too difficult and time-consuming,which inevitably increases students’ learning burden.Second,teachers need to evaluate students’ compositions as well as students’ self-assessment and peer assessment,which also increases teachers’ workload.Third,contradiction between standardization and individualization is still an important issue to be solved in the portfolio assessment.Based on the results,this study puts forward some suggestions from the following aspects.First,schools should establish a more diversified and specific assessment system,and at the same time they should also devote themselves to cultivating and improving teachers’ assessment literacy to further promote the implementation of portfolio assessment.Second,teachers should put students at the center of assessment and evaluate their compositions in a multifaceted way,and subsequently make individualized suggestions based on their differences.Finally,students should pay more attention to the writing process,in which they acquire writing strategies and develop good writing habits,and take the initiative to reflect and revise their compositions in time to further complete the meaningful construction of knowledge.