A Study On The Application Of Portfolio Assessment To English Instruction In Higher Grades Of Primary School

The New English Curriculum Standards for Elementary School(2010)points out “the primary purpose of evaluation is to establish evaluation system that enables teachers to stimulate the development of pupils' interest and autonomous learning ability.The interest,attitude and communicative ability reflected in teaching activities that students usually involve in is the main basis of evaluation”.However,at present most English teachers adopt summative assessment that is on the basis of middle and final examination during daily English teaching.The advantage of portfolio assessment lies in it not only assess learning condition and outcome of pupils,but more importantly,evaluates students' growth and development,so that they can gain confidence and sense of accomplishment.This study takes the PA as research subject,on the guidance of Humanism and Multiple intelligences,mainly intends to discuss its impact on pupils' reflective ability,English learning interest and English proficiency.It mainly explores more efficient evaluation methodology through empirical research on portfolio assessment.This paper aims to find out the following questions:(1)How do primary students and English teachers view the current evaluation system and PA?(2)What impact does PA have on English level of pupils in higher grades?(3)Can the application of PA arouse elementary students' learning English interest and reflective ability?The author selects students from two classes in grade 5 of Guojiajie Primary School as experiment class(EC)and control class(CC),both of which are conducted contrast experiment.In the process of experiment,CC adopts traditional evaluation method,while EC applies the PA by means of questionnaires,interview and tests.After organizing and analyzing the results,it proves that PA is able to enhance students' English learning interest and reflective ability.Compared with traditional evaluation method,PA can also improve students' English proficiency more efficiently.Finally the author reflects on the limitations of the research and proposes suggestions for improvement.It is believed that teacher should pay attention to the high efficiency of evaluation.