Implementation Of E-portfolio Formative Assessment In College English Teaching And Learning

In 2004, the Education Ministry of China issued College English Curriculum Requirements which calls for cultivating college students'comprehensive language competence, and renovating the traditional assessment modes as well as advocating integration of formative assessment and summative assessment, so as to correspond to the reform of college English teaching and learning. E-portfolio assessment, based on meta-cognition, constructivism and computer network technology, can rightly meet this requirement, since it is learner-centered, puts emphasis on assessing the learning process, promotes teachers'and students'reflection and cultivates learners'autonomous and collaborative learning ability, etc. Because of its advantages, e-portfolio assessment caused widespread concern among China's education sectors, and many institutions have set up the e-portfolio assessment system and applied it in practice. Chongqing University is one of them, based on the E-portfolio Assessment System of Chongqing University, the paper researches into the effect of applying e-portfolio assessment in college English teaching and learning and the defects existing in the progress of using it as well as the possible countermeasures to the defects.To ensure the reliability and validity of the result, this study breaks through the traditional speculative research method and adopts both the quantitative and qualitative research methods. The subjects of this study are 299 students who used the e-portfolio assessment system in the process of English learning. The study is carried out with the instruments of interviews, questionnaire, as well as the data and observation in the system, which focuses on such aspects as: the applied effect of self-, peer and teacher assessment in the e-portfolio assessment system of Chongqing University; the applied effect of e-portfolio assessment in promoting self-reflection and communication with others; the effect of e-portfolio assessment in improving learning initiative, autonomous and collaborative learning ability.The quantitative and qualitative analysis indicates that, firstly, most of the subjects take positive attitude to e-portfolio assessment; they like self- and peer assessment and could seriously assess their own and the peers'work but the score marked by themselves is distinctly higher than the score marked by their peers and the teacher, and the teachers'feedbacks at the most time are to the point and the subjects treat them seriously; secondly, e-portfolio assessment has effect in promoting self-reflection and communication, but it is not outstanding, which can been seen from the constructed situation of students'personal space and the class forum since most of the personal spaces are blank, and more than one-third of the subjects never goago the forum as well as more than half of the students never post a message on it; thirdly, e-portfolio assessment surely has good effect in promoting learning initiative and in improving autonomous and collaborative learning ability, but a relatively high percentage of the subjects hold that its effect in these aspects is not outstanding.