The Application Of Portfolio Assessment To English Teaching In Primary School

As an important part of English curriculum, primary school teaching assessment should aim to arouse pupil’s learning interests and develop their confidence, adopting an assessment form which conforms to pupils’ cognitive level with the features of diversity and selectivity. The assessment in primary school should give priority to formative assessment and focus on pupils’ performances(English Curriculum Standards,2011).At present, the study of PA is still at the primary stage in China and most researches are focused on the university level, there are a few researches about the application of PA to primary English teaching.Based on the previous research concerned as well as the pupils age characteristics, this paper is intended to explore an effective way to stimulate the pupils’ interests and promote the pupils’ self-learning ability through constructing portfolio in the process of English teaching.The main research questions in this paper are as follows:1. Can PA stimulate the pupils’ interests in English learning?2. Can PA help the pupils improve their self-learning ability?3. Which way is the pupils’ favorite assessment method in PA?There are80valid participants from two classes of Grade Four in Tianjin Normal Primary School, Hongqiao District. A survey was conducted on the pupils and their parents with four questionnaires and two English proficiency tests, and the collected data was analyzed with SPSS19.0. The major findings are as follows:1. PA is an effective way to stimulate the pupils’ interests in English learning. The pupils love to join the class activities and answer questions actively. They like to cooperate and exchange with group members, and to finish their learning tasks together.2. The PA can help the pupils improve their self-leaning ability. It can guide pupils to join group assessment, and reflect on their learning process.3. The pictures or photo stickers in PA can be the favorite method to stimulate pupils to learn English. The most important is that it can stimulate pupils’ learning motivation, promote pupils’ self-confidence and help pupils get the sense of achievement in learning, which can not be reached by any other traditional assessment formats.