A Study Of The Effect Of Setting Up Writing Portfolios On English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

The new English Curriculum Criterion points out that the ultimate objective of the English course iscultivating the student’s comprehensive language competence, and therefore it becomes more and moreimportant to cultivate the student’s autonomous learning ability in senior schools. However, it turns outthat most of the students usually passively accept whatever teachers say and do for them, which leads tostudents’ low level of autonomy learning and low English scores. In regard to this situation, more andmore researchers and teachers have realized that only by helping students acquire the necessaryself-regulatory skills, can they achieve a major purpose of education: to encourage students’ desire tobecome life-long learners. So many educators have tried out different teaching approaches to improvestudents’ autonomous learning, such as, by the employment of Meta cognitive strategy training or bysetting up learner portfolio, etc. Writing portfolio appears to show its significance in improving learner’sautonomous learning ability in modern teaching practice inside and outside the classroom. Since the yearof2002, the new English Curriculum Standard suggests English writing can be examined and assessed inmany ways beyond the traditional texts, and the possibility that the application of English writingportfolio may be used as an effective tool in English writing class. Writing portfolio improves efficiency inclass, digestion of knowledge after class, and the development of self-character. It also aims to meet theneeds for life-long learning and individual need of learners.The author first reviewed the literature on autonomy learning and portfolio in which theinter-relationship was explored and the theoretical background for the following discussion was formed.Based on the literature review and the research findings, this study examines the relationship betweensetting up English writing portfolio and autonomy learning through experiments in really class and topropose methods to improve autonomy on the base of writing portfolio. The MST was adapted from theteaching Model (Jones et al.1987, cited in O’Malley&Chamot2001:187) which indentifies threerecursive phrases for instruction: preparation, presentation, and application. Mainly discussed thefollowing two questions:(1) Does the training of portfolio use in writing promote learners’ autonomouslearning? If yes, in what aspects do they improve their learning autonomy?(2) Does the training ofportfolio use in writing enhance learners’ writing ability? If yes, in what ways do they improve theirwriting?The study was designed as a quasi-experiment, taking two natural classes of the first graders in thefirst middle school of Jinchang as the subjects, experimental class and control class.50students in the experimental class were required to set up writing portfolio when involved in writing activity, while50students in the control class were simply asked to finish writing. The experiment lasted16weeks. Writingtest and a questionnaire survey were conducted among in the EC and CC in order to investigate theirperformance in learning autonomy and allowed comparison with the initial one and reflected the changesof students’ action. Throughout the whole training process, data about the learner’s performances relatedto writing and learning in English language were collected and were subjected to the SPSS13.0.The research results showed that the students who setting up reading portfolio in writing had ahigher level of learning autonomy and performed better in the writing test than those who had not. Inspite of the limitation in the range of subjects and time span, this study proves that writing portfolio doeshave positive effects both on the individuals’ writing and learning autonomy and the languageachievements in English.