The Application Of Portfolio Assessment In English Writing Instruction In Senior High School

As an international language, English has been highlighting its functions of one kind of media and a way of communication. With its improving internationalization, English has narrowed and weakened the existing gaps among countries, nations and different cultures with the help of its strong communicative power. By means of characters, using English to fulfill the mutual interaction dramatically strengthens its role of being a tool language and the communicative function of language characters is mainly based on English writing ability and level. Consequently, to enhance and cultivate English writing ability is what we should manage to do firstly. In addition, as with English subject, there’s no denying that improving the English writing ability serves as an important aim in the basic education stage. However, the traditional English instruction attaches great importance to examination-oriented and grade-focused education, preferring knowledge and memory to ability and application respectively, which all the way confines teachers’ instructive ideas and means. Evidently, at this time, the knowledge-based English subject teaching is a fundamental carrier of English class instruction, from which the students cannot really enhance their comprehensive language application ability and thus leading to more serious problems in developing and improving students’ writing ability.At present, the English instruction in high school pays a little attention to effective processes in writing instruction in class for attaching great importance to listening and speaking training but comparatively ignoring the practical and adequate writing guide in a way, and it’s commonly believed that conducting the writing instruction is a complex and time-consuming process, requiring students’ fundamental language principles and skills. Consequently, there is a shortage of students’ interest in writing, resulting in relatively general or poor writing proficiency. As a result, students are short of enough interest in writing, resulting in relatively general or poor writing proficiency. Actually, what the author is eager to mention here is that the majority of high school English teachers value the writing results or grades by means of correcting the so-called grammatical errors in each of students’ writing paper.In reality, the English Curriculum in Senior High School aims to build up a diversified assessment system, emphasizing the combination of formative and summative evaluation, the former of which ranks first in real English instruction. Moreover, it is manifestly obvious that the portfolio assessment, as a manifestation of formative evaluation, focuses both the process and the result, which is what the author is longing to illustrate in this thesis. Based on the present English writing instruction in high school, this thesis applies the portfolio assessment to Senior High School English instruction, altering the focus on the writing results to the processes, students’ building up the writing portfolios, involving themselves in this process, turning writing activities into the students’ performance stage and highlighting their dominant position. Here, the author has been trying to combine portfolio assessment and senior high school English instruction in order to enhance students’ interest in writing, confidence and self-reflection of English writing, and to prove that the portfolio assessment can play more active role in fostering students’ writing ability or proficiency, compared with the traditional evaluation methods.