Research On Application Of Portfolio Assessment In Middle School's English Listening Teaching

With the progress of curriculum innovation in China, educational evaluation, as an important part of curriculum innovation, has aroused more and more concerns. Since the traditional way of educational evaluation stamped with summative assessment can not meet the need of quality education development, the developmental assessment has been brought forward. The ultimate goal of the developmental assessment is to motivate the student to develop. So portfolio assessment is recommended for it is the systematic, longitudinal collection of students'learning data which records learning progress in response to specific, known instructional objectives and evaluated in relation to the same criteria. Its two mainly important functions are self-regulation and self-reflection.English listening is often regarded as a receptive skill and the best way to improve listening skill is practicing and practicing. But constructivist learning theory tells us that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. In the classroom, students are encouraged to use active techniques to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing. The theory of multiple intelligences also informs people that every one has his or her own individual intelligence profile. It is more possible for people to succeed when they use the developed intelligence to learn. So English listening, as a special language skill, is a process of active construction. Self-regulation and self-reflection of this process may make a positive impact on improving English listening skill. But it is new for English teachers and students to apply portfolio assessment to English listening teaching and learning.An experiment about portfolio assessment lasting for a term is taken in 132 students of Grade 2 of Wenshan Junor School in Ji'an county, Jiangxi province. Moreover, questionnaire and classroom observation are added to the research. data of the experiment and questionnaires are analyzed from three aspects: students'English learning strategies and English listening proficiencies has not varied remarkably in the control group. By the comparison, the experimental group uses monitoring strategy, cognitive strategy, resource strategy more often than those before the experiment but remains the same situation with the communicative strategy as pretest, and improve the English listening proficiency. In terms of the teacher role, it takes positive change with the portfolio assessment performed.