Writing Portfolio In English Teaching At Vocational College

Writing is one of the four basic skills that three-year college students need to develop in their English learning. At present, however, writing still remains weak in the English teaching of three-year college students in China, and of the above-mentioned four skills, students are least competent in writing. One of the reasons can be attributed to the traditional summative assessment, which goes against the "student-centered" teaching philosophy. It fails to give full play to students’subjectivity and creativity, and to assess students’writing in a complete and comprehensive way. Formative assessment, however, is quite different from summative assessment in that it focuses on students’writing process, efforts, emotions as well as attitudes. It concerns not only with students’ understanding and mastery of knowledge and skills, but also their emotions and attitudes; it stresses both students’learning process and achievement and their learning product, and offers timely feedback.The purpose of the study is to investigate the influence and ensued changes brought about by portfolios in English writing teaching of the three-year college students, and what the changes are. Emerged and developed in the1980s, portfolio is a new form of formative assessment, and it is a powerful learning tool as well. Portfolios can reflect both students’strengths and weaknesses in their learning process, detect students’efforts and achievements in obtaining their goals, and record students’development and changes in emotions and attitudes in the learning process, thus provide both the teacher and the students with useful information to help better students’learning and development. The study attempts to answer four questions:a. whether writing portfolio changes students’ attitude towards English writing; b. whether writing portfolio increases students’interest in English writing; c. whether writing portfolio improves students’writing skills in English writing; d. whether writing portfolio promotes students’reflective awareness in English writing.In this study,64non-English majors from Changjiang Vocational College, enrolled in September2011, are chosen as the subjects of the research. The experiment of using portfolios in English writing teaching lasts two months. The conclusions are reached by discussing and analyzing the data of the two questionnaires, and referring to the interview, which are:First, under the application of writing portfolio, students’attitudes towards writing have been improved and turned to be more positive, and students begin to feel more confident in English learning and writing. Second, students’writing skills in writing have been greatly advanced after the application of portfolio, and they start to put what they have learned in class into their writing practice. Third, the students’reflection awareness in English writing has also been promoted, as more and more students start to believe that reflection in writing is important and that the teacher’s comments and suggestions on their writings are also of importance. However, the experiment does not seem to be very effective in arousing students’interest in writing, as the changes are not significant. For this, the author offers explanation from the four aspects, namely students’ interest, students’English competence, students’attitude and the duration of the research.