Portfolio Assessment Used In English Writing Course In Rural High School

With the development of English teaching reform and the New Senior High School English Curriculum Standards,writing is becoming one of the important tasks both in English teaching and learning.However,for a long time,English writing instruction in rural high schools has always been a short board.English teachers generally adopt traditional English writing teaching and outdated evaluation methods.They pay too much attention to students' writing products but ignore their writing process.Most students lack enough interest in English writing and have common difficulties and widespread anxiety.English writing teaching takes more time and effort with little success.How to effectively carry out English writing teaching in rural high schools has been a problem that English teachers and researchers should pay close attention to.Therefore,the reform of the teaching and assessing methods in rural school is of great significance.The new curriculum standard advocates the combination of formative assessment and summative evaluation.Portfolio assessment is one of the powerful tools for formative assessment.It can provide both teachers and students with useful information for their future development.First of all,through a large number of literature review,this thesis expounds definition,content,characteristics,implementation strategy and the theoretical support of writing portfolio.Second,this study aimed to find out whether portfolio assessment can improve students' writing proficiency in rural areas.The research was investigated through experimental group and control group.All the 79 subjects were the students of Senior 2 in a rural high school in Lanzhou City,Gansu Province.This study lasted five months.Before the experiment,there was no obvious divergence in the English writing between the two classes.In the process of experiment,portfolio assessment was applied in the experimental class while the traditional assessment was used in the control class.The students in two classes had the same English teacher,class hours,instructional methods,and the same instructional materials.At the end of the experiment,the author made a comparison and analyzed the data before and after the experiment.Finally,the author drew the conclusion that portfolio assessment can improve students' interests,their ability of self-reflection and their English writing abilityAt the same time,the author summarized some problems in the implementation of portfolio assessment.Based on the major findings,the author put forward several implications for English writing teaching and some suggestions for further research.