Chapter One Introduction
1.1 The Background of the Study
Assessment, a significant and inseparable part of education, has often beenwrongly interpreted as the traditional "paper and pencil test，which leads to asegmentation between students' learning and teachers' instruction. In response to thissituation, the recent emphasis in foreign language teaching has shifted from “testing” to"alternative types of assessment”，which also draws educators, attention to how to makeassessment serve for teaching and learning. To integrate assessment with instruction,teachers have to adopt new forms of assessment to evaluate students' participation andprogress. Thus portfolio assessment as the prevalent type of formative assessmentshould be applied widely to monitor students' mastery of what they have learned ratherthan test scores only (Zhou Xiaoqun, 2011). A portfolio is defined as a systematic "collection of a student's works，experiences,exhibitions and self-rating", whereas portfolio assessment is “the procedure used to plan，collect，and analyze the multiple sources of data maintained in the portfolio, which canprovide accurate information about the depth and breadth of a student's capabilities inmany domains of learning，，(Moya &Malley, 1994). The description of Moya and p'Malley is very representative and widely accepted but a consistent perspective on thedefinition of portfolio assessment has not been reached yet till now.
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1.2 The Purpose and Significance of the Study
In recent 10 years, the reform in language teaching and assessment system has putforward new demands on educators and teachers who neglect students，participation andresponsibilities in the evaluation process. And the traditional standardized test has theweakness of ignoring language learners' learning process and experience which calls foran authentic form of assessment to supplement the summative assessment and integrateassessment with instruction. Thus portfolio assessment as a new means of formativeassessment starts to gain its popularity in China.However，it is still a relatively new concept in Chinese education area, especiallyfor teachers in compulsory education period. Besides，the literature of portfolioassessment is replete with assumptions on the nature of portfolio assessment which arerarely theoretically grounded in empirical investigations (Lin，Baker & Dunbar, 1991).Moreover, many researchers have declared that portfolio assessment is a useful tool incultivating students’ metacognition through their logical analysis of the benefits “orfunctions of portfolio assessment (e.g., Gottlieb，1995; Nune, 2004; Huang，2006;Clark, 2010).In fact，their experimental studies do not cover the research area ofmonitoring the users' metacognitive strategies.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 An Overview of the Researches on Portfolio Assessment
The concept of portfolio development was adopted from the field of fine arts whereportfolios were used to display illustrative samples of an artist's work (Moya & 0’Malley, 1994). In 1960s，Howard Gardner firstly applied "portfolio" to the HarvardPcroject Zero to evaluate children's multiple intelligences after which portfolios wereput into use in the field of education gradually (Wang Beild，2012).Then it was until the mid-1980s that portfolio assessment started to draweducators' attention in the United States as a reaction against the psychometric climateprevailing at that time (Shannan, Ambika，Leah，Sally & Bess, 2003; Huang，2006). Tosolve the problems in traditional evaluation and provide valid qualitative informationabout learners, Dennie Palmer Wolf，teachers in Pittsburgh Public School and staffs ofEducational Testing Service (ETS) started to explore the way to apply portfolios to titeassessment system( David Allen, 2011).Gradually this kind of learning portfolios hadbeen widely used in North America, Europe and Asia as an alternative means ofassessment to evaluate learning achievement or as an effective means to improvestudents' autonomy (Resi & Villaume，2002; Wang Hua，2011; Huang Jizhen，2012).This atmosphere led many teachers and composition researchers to start experiments onportfolio-based approaches in English as first language.Rief (1992) put portfolios into use in his writing classes and reported that writingportfolios not only provided rich evidence of what and how students were able to do butalso assisted students in setting goals and monitoring their individual growth over time.D，Aoust (1992) declaimed that writing portfolios enabled his students to indentify theirawareness as a writer and their strength and weakness in writing.
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2.2 Theoretical Foundations Supporting Portfolio Assessment
Theories proposed by constructivism and multiple intelligences contribute a lot tothe rationale development of portfolio assessment. A better understanding of these twotheories will be of benefit before educators carry out this kind of assessment in languageclassrooms. Moreover, Vygotsky，one of the most influential representatives of constructivism,puts more stress on the role of teaching and guidance as well as the formative effects ofculture and society (Paul，1998). According to the theory of Zone of ProximalDevelopment (ZPD)，teachers should be aware of students' present level of learning andtry to help students reach their potential level. This theory indicates that l,e^aming is adynamic process with the frequent communication and negotiation between teachersand learners in approaching the already set goals. Furthermore, Vygotsky's proposal oflearning through social development is also one theory that reinforces the using ofportfolios because both of them require the communication between students and peoplearound.The theory of constructivism which focuses on iteration between Ifamers andsociety，the learning process and situation of learning，has inspired the design andimplementation of portfolio assessment. On one hand, the theory of constructivismrequires a new means of evaluation to assess the dynamic and collaborative process oflearning. On the other hand, portfolio assessment is the most suitable form of evaluationwhich can be best used in constructivist learning environment to optimize students’approaches to learning (Baeten & Struyven, 2008).
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Chapter Three Methodology........ 18
3.1 Research Questions........ 18
3.2 Participants........18
3.3 Instruments........ 19
3.4 Procedures of the Research........ 20
Chapter Four Results and Discussion........ 26
4.1 Data from the Experiment and Writing Samples........ 26
4.2 Data from the Questionnaires ........35
4.3 Discussion ........38
Chapter Five Conclusion........ 42
5.1 Major Findings ........42
5.2 Limitations of the Research........ 43
5.3 Suggestions for the Future Study........ 44
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Data from the Experiment and Writing Samples
In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the learners' development inwriting，the students in the two classes are divided into three levels according to theirscores in the pretest. And then the comparison of the pretest and posttest of the threelevels of students are performed by the means of SPSS 19.0. The data from the threeindependent sample tests are presented in the following table. Both the EG and the CGhave 40 students participating in the research. According to Henning (1987:51), theoptimal size of high group and low group is 28% of the total sample. So both thehigh-level group and low-level group have 12 students in the study and the rest of thestudents belong to the intermediate-level group which means the total number of thestudents in intermediate-level group is 26 in each class.
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Conclusion
The purpose of the present research is to investigate the effectiveness of theportfolio assessment in EFL writing classes. The research employs both quantitative andqualitative approaches to provide holistic and naturalistic aspects of the participants'experience and progress. It is able to provide positive responses of each researchquestion. And three main findings are summarized and presented here after the analysisand discussion on the collected materials.To begin with, the study is supported by empirical evidence collected in the writingportfolios and the results of which show that portfolio assessment is especially effectivein improving intermediate-level students' writing ability. But for students of high or lowlevels，the function of portfolio assessment is not so significant. Besides，three casespresent in-depth and contextual data which are helpful to understand the participants'development in a longitude perspective. Through the analysis of writing samples, it isfound that students，writing skills like organization and cohesion have been improvedrapidly. In summary, portfolio assessment is a relatively effective method in promotingEFL learners' writing ability. The results of the present study is in line with the studiesof Song and August (2002) and Wang Hua (2011)，which further support theirsummaries on the functions of portfolio assessment.
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Reference (omitted)
