The Application Of Portfolio Assessment To Process-oriented English Writing Instruction In Senior High School

English writing plays a vital role in reflecting language learners' comprehensive abilities.However,it is estimated that students' writing ability is relatively poor in Chinese senior high school;some students even cannot reach the basic requirements in New English Curriculum Standard(2003)for senior high school.Additionally,students are faced with problems in their writing interest,confidence and self-reflection.The reason mainly lies in that the current process-oriented writing instruction lacks of effective evaluation methods to fully assess students' writing process and progress.Portfolio assessment,a new form of formative assessment,purposefully collects learners' materials assembled over a period of time to provide a continuous record of students' language development in a certain area,which accords with the assessment principle of focusing on learners' learning process in NECS(2003).Based on the theory of Constructivism and Multiple Intelligence,this thesis applies portfolio assessment to process-oriented English writing instruction with the purpose of improving students' writing ability in senior high school.Three research questions are proposed: 1)Can students' writing interest and confidence be cultivated by applying portfolio assessment to process-oriented English writing instruction? 2)Can students' self-reflection in English writing be developed by applying portfolio assessment to process-oriented English writing instruction? 3)Can students' writing ability be better improved by applying portfolio assessment to process-oriented English writing instruction?This thesis chooses 108 students in two parallel classes of the second graders in Tianshui No.1 Middle School as research subjects.And the experiment lasts 20 weeks in all.During the experiment,traditional summative assessment is kept in control class(CC),while portfolio assessment is applied to the students in experiment class(EC).To be specific,the teacher firstly guides the students in EC to understand the purposes of portfolio assessment and establish their own writing portfolios.And then,a case is introduced to demonstrate how to involve students in assessing and collecting work in process-oriented writing instruction.Lastly,the conducting portfolio conference alsopromotes students to summarize their writing process and progress.Thus,portfolio assessment can be totally combined with process-oriented writing instruction.And the research data mainly come from two tests and two questionnaires.By analyzing the data with the help of SPSS 19.0,the results illustrate that students' writing interest,confidence,self-reflection,as well as their writing ability can be developed by applying portfolio assessment to process-oriented English writing instruction.This study also has the functions of involving students in assessment,dissolving the boundary between assessment and learning process,developing the cooperation of teacher-student and student-student,and promoting teachers give corresponding instructions based on students' preference.