Effect Of Portfolio Assessment On Senior High School Students' English Writing

As we know, English writing is an essential skill when learning English. Meanwhile it is difficult for students to acquire this skill. Evidence shows that there is a need to find out a more effective and comprehensive writing teaching method to improve students' writing ability. Therefore, how to improve students' writing ability with an effective and comprehensive teaching method has become a hot topic. Obviously, most of the senior high school English teachers adopt the method of product writing approach. Compared with the method of product writing approach, portfolio assessment focuses on not only the results but also the process of writing. As a assessment tool, it is beneficial to students' writing ability. The study mainly helps the English teachers to find a more appropriate and comprehensive evaluation method for Senior high school students' writing. Since portfolio assessment emphasizes the process of writing rather than the score, it provides more opportunities for students and teachers to engage in the writing activities and communication.The present study is to find out whether portfolio assessment can influence students' writing ability and attitude by implementing portfolio assessment in senior high school writing class. The study was carried out in Jiangxi Nankang No.2 Senior High School. The participants in this study were 130 Senior One students from two classes who are at the same English level. Class one and Class two has 65 students each. There are 92 boys and 38 girls, aging from 16 to 18 years old. The students were in their second semester in Senior One. Formally, the research questions addressed in this study are:1. Can portfolio assessment improve the experiment students' writing ability?2. In what ways does portfolio assessment influence students' attitude and confidence?To solve these two questions, the present study adopted a quantitative research approach. Pre-test, post-test, pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire were used to collect the data in the experiment. The data of the tests and questionnaires were analyzed by the SPSS 13.0.The data of the tests and questionnaires can be used to answer these two questions. On the basis of the pre-test, there was not a significant difference between the experimental class and the control class in the pre-test. Meanwhile, the students who are from the experimental class and the control class have the same attitude and writing ability in the pre-questionnaire. After the experiment, a conclusion from the post-test can be drawn that there was a significant difference between the two classes in the post-test, which indicates that portfolio assessment can improve the experimental students' writing ability. And it is clear that the experimental students have a positive attitude toward their own English writing from the post-questionnaire.Based on the findings, portfolio assessment could influence the experimental students' writing ability and attitude by implementing the portfolio assessment in English writing class. There are some pedagogical implications for the further study of English writing pedagogy. There are a few limitations and some problems need to be further explored in the present study. Last but not the least, the portfolio assessment should be carried out strictly so that more and more students can benefit from it.