An Action Research On The Application Of Student’s Writing Portfolio To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

As an important part of English teaching,English writing plays an important role in the development of students’ overall English ability.The English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2022 Edition)(hereinafter referred to as the Standard)points out that students in junior high schools should be able to describe and introduce people,things or events around them,express emotions,attitudes,opinions and intentions,etc.in their written expressions using different sentence structures and tenses.According to the current situation of junior high school English writing teaching and the author’s internship experience in a county middle school,it can be found that junior high school students’ English writing ability is poor,and some students cannot even meet the basic requirements of the Standard for writing.One of the important reasons for this situation is that traditional assessment only focuses on students’ writing results,but ignores their writing process,and fails to cultivate students’ writing ability in all aspects.As one of the important tools of formative assessment,portfolio assessment has many advantages.On the one hand,writing development portfolios can help teachers identify problems in students’ writing process and provide them with the help they need in time to improve their written expression skills.On the other hand,students can use the portfolios to better monitor and reflect on their own writing process and work,and then try to solve the problems they encounter in their English writing to gradually improve their written expression strategies.Therefore,it is very important to try the writing development portfolio assessment method in junior high school English teaching.This study sought to address the practical issue of writing assessment in teaching and learning by conducting a three-month action research in a second grade class in a county junior high school,using student’s writing development portfolio to teach English writing.This action research adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to address the writing teaching problems,develop appropriate plans and implement them.This study addresses two main research questions: How to apply student’s writing development portfolio to English writing instruction in junior high school? What are the effects of using student’s writing development portfolio on students’ written abilities(including written expression skills and written expression strategies)? The specific implementation process of the action research was divided into two stages,each of which penetrated the sense of cooperation and revision in English writing teaching and followed three steps: planning,implementation and reflection,and timely adjustment of the action plan according to feedback and reflection during the action research process.At the end of the action research,the author analyse the qualitative and quantitative aspects and came to the following conclusions: The application model of writing development portfolio in English writing teaching is as follows: The writing portfolio is used to teach writing by first writing a first draft based on the topic,then writing a second draft based on self-and peer-evaluation of the evaluation form,and finally writing a final draft after teacher evaluation and feedback.Students design their own portfolio cover by their own preferences and they are required to record the content of their work and the areas of improvement and achievement or satisfaction in the cover for each deposit of their work.The evaluation and reflection of the portfolio is used to record the before and after changes in students’ English written abilities.By applying the formative assessment of students’ writing development portfolio to junior high school English writing teaching,students’ overall English written skills(describing and interacting)and written strategy(organizing,checking and revising)improved.Among them,the improvement was more obvious in the ability of description and checking and revising.As a form of assessment,portfolio assessment prompted students to collect their writing results over a sustained period of time for a specific purpose,and to evaluate and reflect on the criteria,thereby narrowing the gap between themselves and the writing criteria and ultimately helping students to improve their writing performance.The following pedagogical insights were obtained from the study.First,the formative assessment method of the student develop portfolio enables students to self-reflect,self-correct,and self-improve in the assessment process.Second,by recording students’ learning process through the portfolios,teachers can identify students’ problems in English writing and grasp students’ learning dynamics in a timely manner,which can be useful for teachers’ teaching.Although this action research has achieved the expected goal,there are limitations such as small research sample and short research period,so whether the use of student writing portfolio assessment has a long-term impact on junior high school students’ English writing needs to be further studied.