A Research On The Use Of Student Portfolio Assessment In College English Learning

Portfolio assessment is an alternative assessment in education assessment, and it could be concurrent with the traditional summative assessment based on exams. Students’learning progress and achievements are the main objects for portfolio assessment. Since it was introduced in the late 1990s, portfolio assessment has attracted serious concern, especially in the last decade. However, researches explored more on theoretical than empirical aspects of portfolio assessment, and the empirical studies focus mostly on elementary schools. With the promulgation of College English Curriculum Requirement (2004), College English has also become an important field of portfolio assessment. Therefore, this research aims to find out and improve students’ perceptions of portfolio use and assessment, and consequently to fulfill the feasibility of student portfolio assessment use in College English Curriculum.The research is conducted with 117 freshmen of non-English major in Beijing Forestry University. It attempts to make a research of students’ portfolios using by three research methods:student portfolio, questionnaire and interview, through which both qualitative and quantitative data are collected. The results indicate that students show different performance and perspectives in use of portfolio assessment. In the process of using portfolio, more than 50% of the students could make learning plans, collect materials and have self-reflection on the problems in their learning process and then make progress. Meanwhile, more than 70% of the students believed that portfolio assessment could monitor and facilitate their learning, and meanwhile, it benefits for students to reflect the performance of students in learning process, gain sense of achievement and thus cultivate good learning habits. However,8% of the students hold different perspectives on portfolio assessment. They think that the effect of student portfolio assessment was not apparent, and it was time-consuming. Apart from that, there are also different voices on portfolio assessment and traditional assessment. In general,59% of the students think portfolio assessment is different from summative assessment and it is beneficial for comprehensive reflections on students’actual performance, then it also contributes to the communication between students and the teacher, while some students regard traditional assessment is easier to conduct and more objective on their learning results.Through the analysis and discussion in this research, it is recognized that students in College English learning could accept student portfolio and its benefits for their learning, and they support the implementation of student portfolio combined with summative exams in College English. Then students, as the user of portfolio, also put forward some suggestions for the further portfolio assessment. In the end of this research, the author makes reflection on the insufficiencies in this study, and points out that the most critical purpose for student portfolio assessment in College English is not totally an act or results of assessment, while its focus is the process from which students make progress in learning and the teacher makes adjustments in teaching.