Portfolio Assessment In Writing Teaching In Senior English Classes

As the new English Curriculum Standard (ECS) (2002) has pointed out, writing is a very important one of all the four skills that senior school students should develop in English learning. Nowadays, English writing has gained increasing attention in senior schools. However, it is estimated that the writing ability of Chinese students is much weaker than other abilities. One of the possible reasons is that traditional assessment becomes absolute in testing students' English writing ability. ECS (2002) also pointed out that the assessment for the English course should carry out efficient supervision on the process and final results of teaching according to the purpose and requirements, combining both formative assessment and summative assessment together. Also attention should be paid not only to results but also to process. Nowadays, process approach has been proved to be effective in improving EFL students' writing abilities. According to this approach, writing itself is a process. Therefore, if we use only traditional assessment in English writing teaching, the students' writing abilities cannot be evaluated accurately. It has become increasingly evident that traditional assessment can not tell the teachers all they need to know about students' progress in learning. As one of the useful tools of formative assessment, portfolio assessment has the advantages of it. And it can provide both teachers and students with useful information for their future development and help students become more active learners.This study aimed to find out whether portfolio assessment could better facilitate the improvement of senior school students' writing ability than traditional assessment. Three questions were put forward: 1) Can portfolio assessment better help to change the students' attitudes and beliefs towards writing? 2) Can portfolio assessment better help to improve the students' ability of self-reflection? 3) Can portfolio assessment more facilitate the improvement of secondary school students' writing ability than summative assessment?The research was investigated through experimental group and control group. All the 125 subjects were the students of Senior 3 of No.2 Middle School in Sanhe City. There was no obvious divergence in the English level between the two classes. The students in both groups had the same English teacher, class hours, instructional methods, and the same instructional materials but different assessment methods. In the experimental group, portfolio assessment was introduced to the students. The author trained the students in making their own portfolios. Both groups were required to take a pretest at the beginning of the experiment to decide on their writing proficiency, and one posttest was given at the end of the experiment to reveal the change as exactly as possible. At the same time, two questionnaires on the students' attitudes towards writing were designed and distributed before and after the experiment. The two classes were compared according to the scores of the tests and data of the questionnaires. According to the results of the experiment, the author drew the conclusion that portfolio assessment is more helpful in fostering students' writing interests and improving their ability of self-reflection and can better facilitate the improvement of secondary school students' writing ability than summative assessment.