A study on the bennefits of using portfolios as a means of assessment in the writing development for the third year stdents of english at hanoi pedagogical university no 2

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY No. 2 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FACULTY NGUYEN THI HUE A STUDY ON THE BENEFITS OF USING PORTFOLIOS AS A MEANS OF ASSESSMENT IN THE WRITING DEVELOPMENT FOR THE THIRD-YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY No. 2 (A CASE STUDY IN THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE, HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY No. 2) SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI LE NGUYEN, M.A Hanoi, May 2014 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research is the fruit of the labor of mine and my supervisor, who has committed time, energy, resource and creativity to help me to complete the research. I am deeply grateful to my supervisor – Mrs. Nguyen Thi Le Nguyen, M.A., for her invaluable support and masterful guidance throughout the process of writing the thesis. Many sincere thanks to all the lectures at Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2, especially to the lecturers in the Faculty of Foreign Language for their dedicated instructions. And finally, a word of thanks goes to my family as well as my friends for their encouragement and enthusiastic support. ii ABSTRACT Since the application of Communicative Language Teaching approach to EFL teaching, process writing and collaborative learning have been greatly emphasized as typical features of teaching writing. Writing portfolios is one of the methods that bear both features above. Reviews on this method have been seen in a number of books and articles, yet few experimental studies have been conducted to prove its effectiveness. What is more, it has not yet been applied widely in Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2.This encourages the researcher to investigate the subject matter of what advantages of writing portfolios are for undergraduate EFL learners. To describe the characteristics of portfolios, information from materials have been collected and reflected. Also, the question of how beneficial writing portfolios are for EFL learners was addressed by means of using the core method: questionnaire. The results indicate that students’ perceptions of various aspects of the portfolio assessment practice are related to their approaches to learning. Portfolios also help improve students’ practical writing skills. In addition, students facing several obstacles and their solutions to overcome them were discussed in details. Those findings are hoped to encourage wider appliance of writing portfolios to EFL teaching and learning in Vietnam. iii STATEMENT OF THE AUTHORSHIP Title: A study on the Benefits of Using Portfolios as a Means of the Assessment in the Writing Development for the Third-year Students of English at Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2. (Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfillment for Degree of Bachelor of Arts in English) I certify that no part of the above report has been copied from other person’s work without acknowledgements and the report is originally written by me under instructions of my supervisor. Date of submission: May 2014 Student Supervisor Nguyen Thi Hue Nguyen Thi Le Nguyen, M.A. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii STATEMENT OF THE AUTHORSHIP iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION I.1. RATIONALE 1 I.2. OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH 2 I.3. SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH 3 I.4. TASKS OF THE RESEARCH 3 I.5. METHOD OF THE RESEARCH 3 I.6. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH 4 I.7. OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH 4 CHAPTER TWO THEORETICAL BACKGROUND II.1 LITERATURE REVIEW IN BRIEF 5 II.2. An overview of assessment 5 II.2.1. Definition of assessment 5 II.2.2. Reasons for assessing students 5 II.2.3. Principles for assessing students 9 II.3. An overview of portfolio 9 II.3.1. Teaching writing 9 II.3.1.1. Product approach 10 II.3.1.2. Process approach 11 II.3.2. Formative and Summative assessment 12 II.3.3. Portfolio as an assessment tool 13 II.3.3.1. Defining portfolio 13 II.3.3.2. Classifying portfolio 14 II.3.3.3. Organizing portfolio content 15 II.3.3.4. Characterizing portfolio writing process 17 II.3.3.5. Assessing portfolio 18 II.3.3.6. Benefits of using portfolios 18 II.3.4. The use of portfolios in writing lessons for third-year students in the Foreign Language Faculty at Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2. 20 II.3.4.1. Course objectives 20 v II.3.4.2. Course assessment 20 II.3.4.3. Portfolio as a formative assessment tool 21 CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY III.1. Research design 24 III.2. Setting of the study 24 III.3. Sampling 25 III.4. Participant selection 26 III.5. Data collection instrument 26 III.5.1. Questionnaire 26 III.6. Summary 27 CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS IV.1. Research question 1 and summary of findings for research question 1 29 IV.2. Research question 2 and summary of findings for research question 2 35 IV.3. Research question 3 and summary of findings for research question 3 37 IV.2. Recommendations 38 IV.2.1. Learners’ characteristics 38 IV.2.2. Design of portfolios 39 IV.2.3. Portfolios combined with other types of assignment 40 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION V.1. Summary of findings 42 V.2. Implications 43 V.2.1. Teachers 43 V.2.2. Peers 44 V.2.3. (Student) writers 44 V.3. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research 44 REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CAE Certificate in Advanced English CEFR Common European Frame of Reference for Languages EFL English as a Foreign Language ESL English as a Second Language FLF Foreign Language Faculty HPU2 Hanoi Pedagogical UniversityN o 2 ULIS University of Languages and International Studies VNU Vietnam National University vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.1 Writing V assessment criteria 21 Table 2.2 Writing portfolio evaluation criteria 22 LIST OF DIAGRAM Page Diagram 2.0 Portfolio writing process 17 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1 Students’ interest in making portfolios 29 Figure 4.2 How well students understand and use portfolios. 30 Figure 4.3 Students ‘awareness of promoting mutual interactions with teacher by using portfolios 31 Figure 4.4 Student’s abilities to organize academic information after making portfolios 32 Figure 4.5 Students’ awareness of including references function by using portfolios 33 Figure 4.6 Student’ awareness of using portfolios in the next semesters 34 - 1 - CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION This part states the research problem, the rationale for the study as well as aims, significance, scope and methods of the study. Moreover, the research questions are also clearly stated to act the parameter for the whole paper. I.1. RATIONALE A vast body of research has studied writing portfolios as a form of assessment tool or in terms of peer written feedback. However, the influence of portfolio writing process on students’ writing ability has still been a research field which is waiting for scholars and researchers to investigate and bring students practical benefits. Realizing the benefits which portfolios bring about, the Foreign Language Faculty, Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2 has started to include portfolios as an assessment tool for the third-year students of English in recent years. Aiming at C1 level for those targeted students with reference to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the writing program puts central focus on the Certificate in Advanced English design (CAE). Thus, portfolio as an assessment tool also involves elements of CAE marking descriptors. The score from portfolios makes up 35 per cent of the total assessment. There have been a certain number of studies related to the topic of portfolios in the scope of Foreign Language Faculty, Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2. Several papers and articles have investigated portfolios from the angle of an alternative assessment tool for traditional assessment. Unfortunately, they only give theoretical backgrounds with studying on any particular group of students. Besides, many other theses exploit portfolios in the aspect of peer written feedback. As a matter of fact, students’ writing portfolios are to be assessed by specific criteria. However, there has not been any study which offers an insight into students’ self- assessment of their own writing ability as a result of portfolio writing process, - 2 - guided by those criteria. Especially, the specific impacts of portfolio writing process on students ‘practical writing ability with all factors considered together still remains cryptic. To fill the gaps, this paper purports to (1) investigate the effect from the students’ self-assessment and (2) to identify the obstacles and solutions on the writing pieces. Three questions were chosen as the research design. The main data collection instrument was questionnaire. Results from document analysis of three questions for the third-year students played an important role in verifying the findings attained from their self-assessment. The study yielded fruitful findings in response to the three research questions. Findings from three research questions revealed a similarity of the most tremendous progress in coverage of main points and vocabulary. In analyzing documents collected, it was proven that positive changes were made from version to version thanks to the teacher’s and peers’ comments and the writer’s self-correction. Remarkably, there also existed noticeable discrepancy among findings of the three research questions. Some writing abilities reported as little improved turned out to be more positively progressed than the students had thought; whereas some reported as seen much enhancement but it was contrasted to what their writing pieces revealed. Based on the findings, implications were made for teachers, peers and the students themselves with the hope of making the most of the writing portfolio process. I.2. OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH The major aims of the study are:  To investigate students’ motivations and attitudes towards benefits of using portfolios as a mean of assessing their writing development.  To identify the students’ obstacles when writing their portfolios.  To find out solutions to overcome students ‘obstacles. [...]... Benefit of Using Portfolios as a Means of Assessment in Writing development for the Third- year Students of English at -6- Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2 to fill in the identified gaps in the local literature II .2 An overview of assessment II .2. 1 Definition of assessment There are many definitions of assessment which are listed as follows: According to Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education (20 04),... summative assessment as in the following table: TASKS Formative Attendance & Participation Writing Portfolios - 22 - GRADE ALLOTMENT 5% 35% Summative End -of- term Test 60% Table 2. 1: Writing V assessment criteria At the end of the semester, students’ writing ability will be assessed based closely on what they have learned throughout the semester Therefore, it normally includes an essay and a CAE task such as. .. use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development (Palomba and Banta, 1999) II .2. 2 Reasons for assessing students The primary purpose of assessment is to improve students’ learning and teachers’ teaching as both respond to the information it provides Assessment for learning is an ongoing process that arises out of the interaction between... in the study contains 60 students from two groups of the Faculty of Foreign Language, Hanoi Pedagogical University No 2. They are in the second semester of the school year 20 13 -20 14 I.4 TASKS OF THE RESEARCH The study consists of the following tasks: 1) To research into the definition and reasons for assessing students and principles of assessing students 2) To study theoretical knowledge about portfolios. .. final product grammar and usage (cited in Nguyen, 20 07) II.3 .2 Formative and Summative assessment For other language skills in general and for writing skill in particular, classroom assessment can be understood as “an on- going process aiming at understanding and improving students’ learning” (Angelo cited in Nguyen 20 07, p 21 ) or “an ongoing process in which teachers and learners gather, analyze data... SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH Portfolios are used in various fields, but within the frame of this paper, the research only approaches it in educational field The study is concerned with using portfolios as a mean of assessing students’ writing development in Writing course 6 with the third- year English- major students of the Faculty of Foreign Language, Hanoi Pedagogical University No 2 The population involved in. .. laid the theoretical basis for the whole study This chapter aims at elaborating on the participants and setting, justifying the research instruments as well as describing in details the instrument and procedures of collecting and analyzing data III.1 Research design The main instrument for the data collection included a set of survey questionnaire A set of survey questionnaire was delivered to 60 third- year. .. Quantitative approach was also applied to support qualitative one through the utilization of questionnaire This combination helped assure that the research would be reliable enough and the processing of data would be manageable within the limited time budget As already mentioned, the core research questions are formulated as follows: Question 1: What are the students’ perceptions of the benefits of using. .. was integrated to ensure the validity and reliability of the study III.5.1 Questionnaire Questionnaire was selected to find out students’ perception about benefits of using portfolios as a mean of assessing writing development The reason for applying a survey questionnaire was to get data economically from large number of participants Questionnaire can also replace interview as these two methods are... not only what we choose to assess but also how we do so Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about (AAHE, 19 92, p .2)  Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance . Title: A study on the Benefits of Using Portfolios as a Means of the Assessment in the Writing Development for the Third-year Students of English at Hanoi Pedagogical University No. 2. (Graduation. II.1.LITERATURE REVIEW The notion of portfolio-based assessment began to attract attention around the mid-1980s as a reaction against the psychometric climate prevailing educational standards remains cryptic. All the aforementioned reasons motivate the researcher to conduct a research paper entitled A study on the Benefit of Using Portfolios as a Means of Assessment in Writing development