Portfolio Assessment

Alternative assessments have evolved from an epistemological change in education. They see assessment and instruction as two sides on the same coin which go hand in hand. The traditional roles of both teachers and learners are, consequently, modified which is essential for better language development. In this line, the present study aimed at comparing the effects of portfolio and journal writing assessment on EFL learners’ autonomy. The study followed a quasi-experimental design with two study groups having a pre-test, treatment, post-test format. To this end, 39 EFL learners whose scores on PET test were one standard deviation above and below the mean were selected for the groups which were then randomly assigned for two treatment types, namely portfolio assessment (PA) and journal writing assessment (JWA). The groups’ autonomy levels were compared by one-way ANCOVA, the results of which did not reveal any significant difference in the positive effects of these two common alternative assessments. It was inferred that language teachers can take the advantage of any or both of these alternative assessment types to improve their learners’ autonomy and make them lifelong language learners. The great role of autonomy in language learning and further pedagogical implications for the findings for language learners, teachers, and curriculum developers are discussed in the paper. 

Due to the scarcity of quantitative studies as to the impact of portfolio assessment on EFL students’ writing ability and the significant impact of the interaction between portfolio assessment and self-regulation strategy, the present study aimed to explore whether portfolio assessment has any significant effect on improving Bachelor of Arts (BA) English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ paragraph writing ability, and whether this effect differs within high/low self-regulated learners or not. To do so, 60 intermediate female students were chosen out of 145 learners through the administration of a standard version of Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The participants were randomly assigned into one control (30 participants) and one experimental group (30 participants). The experimental group was assigned into two groups of high and low self-regulated learners, (15 participants for each group), based on Magno’s (2009) Academic Self-regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S) questionnaire. Participants of the control group were taught and assessed based on traditional teaching and assessment, whereas those in the experimental group were taught and assessed via portfolio-based instruction and assessment techniques. The analysis of the results of the study revealed that portfolio assessment has a significant effect on improving writing ability (p=0.001). The results also showed that high self-regulated learners have taken more advantage of portfolio assessment than the low self-regulated ones (p = 0.000). The results obtained from the present study can have beneficial contributions to teaching, curriculum development, and testing.

This paper aimed at probing the implementation of portfolio assessment in the writing classroom in an attempt to examine its effect(s) on EFL learners’ metadiscourse awareness. It addressed the following questions: Does portfolio assessment as a teaching technique have positive wash back effect on the participants’ achievement in their writing ability in an academic context? And to what extent do the students develop metadiscourse awareness in their writing by the treatment of portfolio assessment? The participants were the students of English literature enrolled for their composition course. After being homogenized for their proficiency level, they were randomly divided into an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG). As the treatment, portfolio assessment was employed as the teaching technique for the experimental group. Data was then subjected to different statistical procedures. The results of data analysis revealed that the participants in the EG outperformed those in the CG with regard to the achievement in their overall writing ability. Second, based on chi-square results, participants in the EG used metadiscourse markers more correctly and efficiently compared with those in the CG. The results of the present study may have some implications for teaching of writing to EFL learners.