The Application Of Potrfolio Assessment In English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

As an important part of senior high school English teaching, writing teachingplays a vital role in cultivating students’ comprehensive language ability. Accordingto the present English writing teaching situation in senior high school, and theauthor’s internship experience in Qingzhou Experimental High School in Shandong,we can see that students’ writing ability is far from satisfactory in senior high school,some students even do not reach the basic requirements of the new EnglishCurriculum Standard for Writing. One of the possible reasons is that the traditionalassessment only focuses on the students’ writing outcome and ignores their writingprocess, so it cannot fully evaluate their English writing ability. As an importantmeans of formative assessment, portfolio assessment has its advantages. On one hand,the writing portfolio can help the teacher find out students’ problems in the writingprocess. On the other hand, the students themselves can reflect their writing process,and then they will try to solve the problems that they meet in the writing process. Thiskind of assessment system will help students monitor and control their learning aimsand learning strategies, strengthen their self-confidence to learn English.The author applies the portfolio assessment into English writing teaching insenior high school. The whole thesis attends to find out the answers to the followingquestions: l) Is portfolio assessment able to stimulate students’ interest in writing,change their attitudes towards writing and enhance their writing confidence better?2)Is portfolio assessment able to improve students’ self-reflection ability?3) Is portfolioassessment able to improve students’ writing efficiency than summative assessment?The teaching experiment was conducted in two parallel classes of the QingzhouExperimental High School in Shandong. And it lasts three months. Portfolioassessment was applied to evaluate the students’ English writing in the experimentalclass, while the control class still used the traditional summative assessment. Bothclasses were required to take a questionnaire and a test before and after theexperiment. During the experiment, the author interviewed the English teacher and some students in the experimental class and observed students’ performance inEnglish writing courses in both two classes. According to the experiment results, theauthor draws the conclusion that portfolio assessment can do better in inspiringstudents’ writing interests, changing their attitude towards writing, enhancing theirwriting confidence and better improving their ability of self-reflection in writingprocess and improving the students’ writing ability more efficiently than summativeassessment. At last, the author summarizes the negative effects of the research andoffers some suggestions for further related study.