The Application Of Portfolio Assessment To English Writing In Junior High Schools

Portfolio assessment, as an important form of formative assessment, is receiving an increasing amount of attention in China since the publishment of the New English Curriculum Standard (2001,2011). Advocates of portfolio assessment in China have claimed that this evaluation method can supplement the shortcomings of traditional assessment system and lead to the improvement in teaching, learning and instruction. Meanwhile, a large number of empirical studies carried out abroad have reported that portfolio assessment has the advantages of recoding the users’ development process and promoting the learners’ language abilities, reflective thinking, self-autonomy and etc.The study has continued that focus by investigating whether portfolio assessment is effective in enhancing Chinese students’ English writing in junior high schools. It also aims to explore how portfolio assessment influences the writers’ metacognitive strategies in the process of writing.The study lasted for15weeks and80junior high school students in Shenzhen Guangming New District Experimental School participated in this empirical research. A multiple research approach was applied in this study to provide different perspectives on the learners’ progress in developing portfolio assessment and students’ metacognitive strategies in English writing. All the participants were divided into the experimental group (EG) and the controlled group (CG) and two examinations were carried out to test their writing ability before and after the experiment. The EG applied portfolio assessment while students in the CG adopted traditional summative assessment in writing courses. Besides, case studies provided some detailed information of three selected students in the EG followed by six writing samples of them. Moreover, two questionnaires were used to monitor the participants’ metacognitive strategies in writing. The quantitative data from the two tests and the two questionnaires were performed by SPSS19.0and other qualitative data were carefully analyzed through the procedure of protocol analysis.The results of the experimental studies between the EG and the CG show that portfolio assessment is especially effective in improving intermediate-level students’ writing ability. However, as for students in high-level and low-level groups, this assessment has a relatively minor impact. Based on the findings of the case studies, portfolio assessment does play a significant role in monitoring and promoting the students’ writing, which further supports the conclusion of the experiment. And the data of the two questionnaires display that portfolio assessment is helpful to develop the learners’ planning, monitoring and evaluating strategies in the process of writing so that their metacognitive strategies can be promoted accordingly. These results contribute a lot to a better understanding of the dynamic development of English learners’ writing ability. Finally, the limitations of the study and practical suggestions for pedagogy and future research in the same field are also identified.