Portfolio-Based Writing Assessment Applied In Higher Vocational College

It is pointed out in the Higher Vocational College English Teaching Syllabus that writing ability plays an important part in the higher vocational college English, and it has drawn more and more attention in English teaching field. However there are still many problems in the higher vocational college students’writing and the writing ability is still a disadvantage in the high vocational college English teaching. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the writing assessment system is too obsolete to stimulate students’motivation. And traditional writing assessment system pays attention to the result only, and ignores the process. Thus we should introduce a more reasonable assessment system to help the higher vocational college students improve their English writing.Originally speaking, writing is a process, and in order to match the nature of writing, the assessment system should adopt formative ways."Studies of the theory and practice of formative assessment of language programs have been carried out both at home and abroad. But compared with a large number of empirical studies conducted abroad, formative assessment of language programs is rarely reported in China."(Wang Rui,2010). As one of the useful tools of formative assessment, portfolio assessment has the advantages of it. This assessment mode enables the learners to keep all their data under the teachers’guidance, and it can provide both learners and teachers with accurate and useful information and the learners’ self-assessment and reflection in certain field. According to the carrying out of portfolio assessment in higher vocational college this thesis aims to answer three questions:(1) Can portfolio assessment stimulate students’ interest in English writing?(2) Can portfolio assessment improve students’ abilities of self-assessment and reflection?(3) Can the portfolio-based writing assessment really improve the higher vocational college students" ability of writing?This study investigates the data collected from180students of two classes in Hebei Mechanics and Electrics Institute. One class is chosen as the experimental group and the other is chosen as the control group. There is no obvious divergence in English level between the two classes, and the two classes share the same English teacher. This study adopted many approaches, such as observation, questionnaire, formal and informal interview and test. According to the analysis on the collected data, which was processed with SPSS software and Microsoft Excel, it is shown that portfolio-based writing assessment can really stimulate students’interest in English writing, and improve students’abilities of self-assessment and reflection, and the portfolio-based writing assessment really improved the higher vocational college students’ability of writing. Meanwhile the disadvantages of portfolio-based writing assessment are also obvious:(1) compared with traditional assessment, it may take a long time and great effort to make the portfolio.(2) The validity and reliability of the portfolio-based writing assessment in practice.