Using Portfolio Assessment In College EFL Writing Class

This thesis reports an applied study mainly exploring the potential of writing portfolio assessment with English as foreign language (EFL) students, focusing on examining its effects on student learning and the learning outcomes when it becomes a routine part of the classroom, in particular, from the student perspective; and whether portfolio assessment is feasible with college EFL students. The following detailed questions related need to be answered: a) Doing portfolio assessment, would students take more responsibility for their own learning and develop ownership of their own learning? b) Doing portfolio assessment, would students reflect on their learning more and develop their self-assessment skill? c) By doing portfolio assessment, would students be more motivated? d) Would portfolio assessment promote communication between teachers and students or students and students?Its implementation in the very context was investigated, too. Two intact EFL classes at Guizhou College of Finance & Economics (GCFE) were involved in the study, with one randomly identified as the experimental group (the portfolio class), and the other as the control group (non-portfolio class). The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research, but essentially took an ethnographic approach. An experimental design was devised and carried out to compare the learning outcomes of the two groups. To examine the implementation and effect of portfolio assessment, a multitude of procedures, including observations, interviews and surveys of participants and tests, were utilized to collect extensive data on the context of the portfolio classroom. Some assessment-related materials developed by participants in this study were also collected and examined. Quantitative data analysis was calculated using Software Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and SPSS 11.5. Qualitative data were analyzed through the procedure of protocol analysis. Qualitative dada collected illustrated that portfolio assessment did have positive effects on student learning, promoting student reflection, self-evaluation and motivation, facilitating teacher-student communication and encouraging students to take more responsibility for their learning. This study also suggested that implementing portfolio assessment was demanding and needed support.The study is organized into five parts. The first part gives an overview of the study. Next, a review of the professional literature that provided the theoretical background for the study is presented, which is followed by the third part, detailing methods used by the researcher in conducting the study, and presenting the data correlation. Then part four describes the results of the data analysis, and part five describes the findings and answers research questions. The last part portrays conclusions and limitations of the study, giving recommendations of the research site for future research.