An Experimental Study On Portfolio-based Writing Assessment For Non-English Majors In Vocational Colleges

Writing is the outcome of learners’ integrative language abilities and how to improve writing instruction quality and effectiveness has been a hot topic in the field of English education.As is stated in the Vocational College English Teaching Syllabus,writing ability plays an important role for Vocational College students to learn English.However currently speaking,for Non-English majors in Vocational Schools,writing is still an obvious disadvantage in English learning,due to their poor English fundamental knowledge,low English application proficiency and few writing strategies.Traditional writing assessment aims to evaluate the result only,and thus not only fails to come up with a satisfactory outcome of the English teaching and learning but also frustrates their learning enthusiasm and confidence and definitely bring negative effects to their future studies.An overall,continuous,scientific and objective assessment is significant to obtain the real objectives of teaching for Non-English majors in Vocational Colleges.After much review of the literature on English writing instruction,portfolio-a well-received process writing-came into the author’s view.Portfolio-based writing assessment puts emphasis on the students’ efforts and their achievements during the process instead of the only result,which can greatly stimulate their writing interest and motivation and thus foster their autonomy and creativity in learning English.With the application of portfolio-based writing assessment for non-English majors in Vocational Colleges,this thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)Can portfolio help non-English majors in VocationalColleges to change their attitude and beliefs toward writing?(2)Can portfolio help non-English majors in VocationalColleges to improve their writing strategies and ability of writing?(3)Can portfolio help non-English majors in Vocational Colleges to foster their autonomy,and awareness of reflection as well as collaboration in their learning of English?This study was adopted with basic instruments of teaching experiment and questionnaires.The participants were 70 freshmen of two classes,majoring in Accounting from Hebei Engineering and Technical College,who were of similar English level and shared the same English teacher.Class 41 was deemed as the experimental group and Class 42 the controlgroup.Portfolio assessment was investigated into the teaching of the experimental class while traditional summative assessment into the control class.After analyzing the collected data from the two classes(with the use of SPSS and Microsoft Excel),conclusions can be drawn as follows:For non-English majors in VocationalColleges,portfolios(1)are helpful to stimulate their interest with greater confidence and fulfillment during the process of writing;(2)are useful to improve their writing strategies and ability of writing with the help of self-assessment,peers’ and teacher’s feedback.(3)are helpful to foster their autonomy,and awareness of reflection as well as collaboration in their learning of English.Finally on the basis of major findings of the study,the thesis proposes a few implications for portfolio-based writing assessment for non-English majors in VocationalColleges,and about the limitations found in the study,it provides corresponding suggestions for the future.