An Application Study On Teaching Skills Portfolio In English Methodology Course

Technology and Education Strategy promotes education into a brand--new developingperiod. In the modern society, the requirements for high--quality personal training put forwardhigher demands for teachers’teaching skills.At present, the main method of the teaching skills training is micro-teaching. Educatorsfound that there were many problems in the application of it while they put it into practice.Especially, the teachers’comments as the main evaluation standards could cause the dullsubject and shallow evaluation. The lack of peer-communication and interaction leads tostudents’less participation in the process, and the unclear goals of students’evaluation in thepoor self-reflection circumstances. At the same time, the no-guaranteed time leads to theteachers and classmates’evaluation to be a matter of form, with unable to evaluate theirlearning attitudes and processes. Thus, the micro-teaching skills evaluation methods lag in thedevelopment of micro-teaching environment and teaching skills training model. To explore areasonable and effective evaluation method is a burning question.Portfolio assessment is a scientific evaluation method, based on many theories, such asconstructivism, collaborative learning, humanism and multiple intelligences which emphasizeon students’participation, reflection and advocating multi-evaluation. It can be used inEnglish Methodology Course. Portfolio assessment, which can allow students to show theirteaching skill works not only to fulfill the process-evaluation but perform multi-evaluationthat can be included teacher-evaluation, self-evaluation, peer-evaluation andspecialist-evaluation, to promote the evaluation effectively, improve their reflection abilitiesand acquire their teaching skills. In order to prove the feasibility and validity of Portfolio Assessment in practice, theauthor has selected 100 students who are 2009 English Education Major in Yun ChengPreschool Teachers College as the subjects. The students of the two classes don’t haveteaching skills training before the experiment. There is no significant difference between thetwo classes. The experimental class has 50 students, with adopting Portfolio assessmentwhich is performed multi-evaluation, as a sort of formative assessment. The control class has50 students, with using the traditional Micro-teaching evaluation method which is based onteacher-evaluation and peer-evaluation in their groups, as a form of formulate summativeassessment. The experiment lasts 16 weeks, a semester.After the experiment, the students of the two classes are asked to have teaching skillstest, and then have the independent samples T-test by using SPSS 17.0. The results show thatthere are significant differences in the three following ways: teaching design, teachingimplementation and teaching evaluation. Students of the experimental class are better thanstudents of the control class in the teaching skills.At the end of the experiment, besides analyzing the teaching skills test scores, thequestionnaire and interview are distributed to the experimental class. The results are listed asfollows: 1) Teaching skills portfolio, has a certain positive effect on solving the problems inthe current micro-teaching evaluation and promoting students’teaching skills’acquisition. 2)Teaching skills portfolio combines different kinds of evaluation such as teachers’assessment,students’self-assessment, peer-assessment, and specialist assessment. Therefore, students willclearly know their problems in their teaching processes and correct them properly andeffectively. 3) Students construct the teaching skills evaluation charts. Based on the charts,they do assessment with clear goals of evaluation. 4) Teaching skills portfolio is helpful tostrengthen the cooperation of the subjects, improve their reflecting abilities. Students candiscover problems, analyze them and solve them. 5) Without restriction of time, students canwatch the teaching videos over and over again. According to the videos, they evaluate theactivities, by making full use of the time both in and out of class. 6) Students can confirmtheir progresses through the demonstration, which is helpful to heighten their confidence andarouse their interests to enhance their teaching skills. 7) Students focus on the evaluationprocess so that their learning methods are changed, and evaluation promotes practice. 8)Creating and performing Teaching Skills Portfolio enable students to collect the evaluationmaterials, record their self-reflection processes, compare the videos and reflects theirprogresses in teaching skills with the effective results.In order to make full use of portfolio assessment to serve English methodology course better, the limitations of this study are summarized, and the suggestions for future studies areprovided in the hope of paving the way for more researches.