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Presenters
Ahmad Sharifi
&
Jaleh Hassaskhah
University of Guilan
Iran

Title
The Role of Portfolio Assessment and Reflection
on Process Writing

Abstract

Language teaching and testing have always been highly interrelated in the sense that it's been impossible to work in either without taking the other into account. By the movement of language teaching in the direction of learner-centered approach, testing and assessment have begun to apply the same approach. However, it seems that applying a single test at the end of the course is still popular. Since any single measure seems incapable of estimating the diversity of skills, knowledge, processes, and strategies that combine to determine student progress, scholars have begun to incorporate alternative assessment techniques to yield more useful information about students' achievement and classroom instruction. One of these alternative assessment techniques is portfolio assessment.

The present study has devoted itself to investigate the effect of using portfolio assessment technique and reflection activities on students' writings and process writing. This study, which followed the quasi experimental design, was conducted in a class of 20 students at Shahid Sattari Air University. During one semester, they took ten tests: five pretests, and five posttests. The portfolio-based teaching in the second half of the semester was introduced as the treatment. Also, a validated questionnaire was given to students to express their attitude to portfolio-based learning.

A set of paired-sample t tests was run to compare the students' tests. Each pair of tests was compared to see how much progress they made over time. The level of significance in this study was .001 as a result of using repeated measurement and Bonferroni test. Based on the findings achieved in this study, the effectiveness of the treatment was confirmed. Further, the students' responses to questionnaire indicate that their attitude was positive to portfolio-based learning.

Key Words-: Assessment, Portfolio, Portfolio Assessment, Writing Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment, Reflection, Process Writing