The Application On English Writing Portfolios In Junior Middle Schoold In Northwest Underdeveloped Areas

It is evident that English teaching assessment is very important in English writing teaching.Since the early half of the 19th century, great achievement on teaching assessment in educationalfield has been accomplished abroad. However, the studies of teaching assessment in China startedlate. From 1980s on, the theories of Western assessment education have been gradually introducedto China, and assessment of teaching in our country is gradually entering a new era, in which oneof hot topics is portfolio assessment. The new assessment system is entering English writingclassroom in China, which can promote learners'overall development and their sustaineddevelopment.However, there are only two articles on junior middle schools,and researches andexperiments on English writing portfolio have been rarely carried out in underdeveloped areas,which was derived from http//:www. cnki. net from 1979 to 2009. It is necessary to conductresearches and studies on English writing portfolios in junior middle schools in northwestunderdeveloped areas. Most studies on English writing portfolios were conducted by onlyquantitative or qualitative ways. For this, with quantitative and qualitative ways, the writerconducted an experiment on English writing portfolios in San Cang junior middle school in anunderdeveloped areas, in Wudu District of Gansu Province,from Sept. 2009 to January, 2010.There were two classes in ninth grade of San Cang junior middle school, in which, class 1 wasrandomly chosen as the experimental class, meanwhile, class 2 randomly as the control class.Before the experiment, the two classes were similar in the level of English writing,which wasconfirmed by the results of pre-test questionnaires and tests. In the experiment, portfolioassessment was used in English writing of the experimental class, while summative assessmentwas employed in the control class's English writing,such as, test, exam, and so on. With exceptionof this, there were the same other situations in the two classes'English writing, such as, the sameclass hours,the same teaching methods,the same teaching materials, and so on.This thesis attempted to answer the following questions:1) Can portfolio assessment better help to inspire English writing interests of middle schoolstudents in northwest underdeveloped areas? 2) Can portfolio assessment better help to improve the students'reflective abilities of Englishwriting?3) Can portfolio assessment better help to cultivate the students'cooperative abilities ofEnglish writing?4) Can portfolio assessment better facilitate the improvement of the students'English writingabilities?The results of the experiment showed that in northwest underdeveloped areas, the positiveeffects of English writing portfolio evaluation are bigger on middle school students'Englishwriting interests, abilities of self-reflection in English writing, cooperative abilities in Englishwriting and English writing abilities, than summative assessment.However, the results derived from the study could not be used to interpret all the phenomenaon English writing in the schools in other underdeveloped areas. And the time of the study islimited. Based on the implication and limitations of the research, the writer will better plan tocontinue the research for assessing methods of English writing,such as, how to better combineformative and summative assessment in English writing in underdeveloped areas, and so on.