Application Of Portfolio Assessment In English Writing Instruction In Junior High School

As one of the compulsory subjects in the compulsory education stage,English plays an essential role.Listening,speaking,reading and writing are the four basic elements of language skills.Among them,writing is the most difficult part for most students.In the traditional evaluation of English writing,teachers generally adopt the summative assessment method,which attaches importance to the results of writing and ignores the process of writing.Therefore,in the long run,summative assessment is not conducive to the development of students’ writing abilities.In addition,the English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2011)points out that the rationality and diversity of evaluation methods should receive sufficient concern.Both formative assessment and summative assessment should be used in evaluations.As a typical means of formative assessment,portfolio assessment encourages students to participate in the assessment actively and pays close attention to the changes and progress of students in the learning process.Therefore,this research attempts to apply portfolio assessment to junior high school English writing instruction to further explore its effectiveness and practical value.Under the guidance of the constructivism theory and formative assessment theory,the author of this research selected sixty students from two Grade Seven classes(an experimental class and a control class)of a junior high school in Suzhou,Jiangsu Province for a three-month experiment.The research focuses on the following three questions:(1)What is the impact of portfolio assessment on junior high school students’ attitude towards English writing?(2)What is the impact of portfolio assessment on junior high school students’ self-reflection consciousness in English writing?(3)What is the impact of portfolio assessment on junior high school students’ English writing proficiency?The experiment started at the end of September 2019 and ended at the end of December 2019.Different evaluation methods were adopted in English writing instruction in the experimental class and the control class respectively.In the experimental class,portfolio assessment was used,while in the control class,summative assessment was applied.Apart from the different evaluation methods,all other teaching methods remain the same with both classes.Before the experiment,the author conducted a questionnaire survey and a writing test on the students of these two classes.After the experiment,the author conducted another questionnaire survey and writing test on these students and interviewed four students of the experimental class.From data analysis and the interview with the students,the author drew the following conclusions: portfolio assessment can significantly improve students’ attitude towards English Writing.Through cooperation,communication and discussion with their peers and teachers,students can discover the shortcomings in their writings timely and then make self-reflections and revise their own compositions.In this process,students’ self-reflection consciousness in writing can be enhanced and their English writing proficiency can be improved accordingly.From the above research results,we can draw these pedagogical implications: in daily writing instruction,English teachers should give full play to students’ initiative in the learning of writing,encourage students to participate in the process of writing evaluation,and make them construct writing knowledge actively.Moreover,in the process of writing evaluation,teachers should combine formative assessment with summative assessment and pay attention to students’ writing process and writing results as well.