The Wonderful World of Technolgy
Electronic Portfolios & Foreign Language Classroom
Traditional assessments fail to accurately depict students’ progress in foreign language acquisition and because of this many foreign language instructors are moving towards alternative or performance-based assessments. In order for students to attain a high level of proficiency, and to be able to compete in the world’s global market, language study should be sequential and both performance-based and standards-based. Programs need to be carefully articulated with clear objectives and instructional practices directed towards proficiency. A variety of assessments combining traditional assessments with performance assessments can provide a more accurate depiction of language acquisition.
Portfolios are a recent trend in alternative assessments and are currently being implemented in some foreign language programs. In addition, electronic portfolios have become a popular option for many foreign language teachers around the world. Portfolio assessments, as defined by James H McMillan (2004), are a “purposeful, systematic process of collecting and evaluating student products to document progress toward the attainment of learning targets or show evidence that a learning target has been achieved”.
There are three main models of learning portfolios and each can be adapted and made unique to a particular setting. Showcase or celebration portfolios usually include student selections of best works and encourage self-reflection and self evaluation. The documentary or working portfolio is like a scrapbook of information and examples. Examples can include student selections, tests, checklist and evaluations. Finally, the growth portfolio, the growth portfolio contains selections of student work collected at different times to show change in proficiency and how skills improve over time. Portfolios, if efficiently and systematically integrated, provide teachers with valuable insight, an analytical view on strengths and weaknesses of a particular student. The contents of students' portfolios can also provide valuable instructional diagnostic information for teachers which can help them make decisions about curriculum. After reviewing contents of portfolios, a teacher can be utilized the information to make instructional changes. A teacher may decide to re-teach, re-direct or continue on with the curriculum.
Implementation
It is crucial that a student portfolio capture in as many ways as possible the learner's use of the target language. A student portfolio, especially growth portfolios, can serve a dynamic purpose in the foreign language classroom. A portfolio can be used to document certain kinds of language abilities which standardized assessments fail to measure. In the foreign language classroom, a portfolio's greatest potential lies in documenting and charting students' growth in proficiency in the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
In terms of foreign language acquisition, speaking is the most difficult for teachers to assess. In foreign language learning, oral skills typically are considered more important than reading and writing skills. Oral language use in the target language cannot be captured through written means thus, the use of audiotapes and videotapes, takes on increased importance. A portfolio allows students to document oral language by recording their voice via reading passages or engaging in dialog with other students. Learners can produce oral productions and see how spoken pronunciation and the language have become more fluent. Teachers can place audiotapes and videotapes which capture the learner's use of the language into the students' portfolio. Adding audio and video to the portfolio allows the teacher to have future access, to prior speaking assessments, and to be able to reevaluate and compare it with future progress and study the change and growth over time.
Another great addition to a portfolio is a storyboard. Storyboards allow students to use acquired vocabulary and grammar structures to create mini stories about themselves or their interests. These storyboards allow teachers to evaluate proper grammar usage in communication as well as assess the student’s cross-cultural understanding by evaluating comparisons and connections of their own culture to that of the target language.
A portfolio can also be a place where students place work that they feel particularly proud of. Students often feel ownership over a performance based item because they created it themselves. Shrum and Glisan (2005) emphasize that portfolios allow the student to have ownership over their learning process, thus encouraging the student to become more active in the learning process by implementing self-assessments”. A written composition in the target language, class presentations and performances can all be added, these items can be photographed or videotaped and included as part of the students' portfolios.
Portfolios can serve as the basis of parent-teacher conferences to review student's progress over time throughout the school year. Concrete example can effectively illustrate progress more then a number or letter grade. Parents can better understand their child's progress if they have the opportunity to review compositions the child has written in the target language or to compare exercise sheets which show how the child has grown in proficiency. In addition, parents will be more assured of a child's progress, with the target language, if they are able to view videotapes or listen to audiotapes of their child actually using the target language.
Case Study
The Introduction of Electronic Portfolios to Teach and Assess
English as a Foreign Language in Taiwan
The island communities of Taiwan and the US face similar issues in regards to foreign language instruction: Authentic instruction that will prepare students for a global community, teaching and assessing foreign language proficiency and the limitations of traditional and standardized testing. Yu-Ju Chang, Chung-Te Wu and Heng-Yu Ku decided to conduct a study based on action research theories. Action research is an increasingly popular movement in educational research. It is being applied to curriculum development as well as professional development. According to Kemmis and McTaggart (2000) action research can be defined as: “A form of collective, self-reflective inquiry that participants in social situations undertake to improve: (1) the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices; (2) the participants' understanding of these practices and the situations in which they carry out these practices,” (P.597).
Students develop web pages that contained their portfolios. Students created learning portfolios by the using Microsoft’s FrontPage. Each portfolio had four main components to be completed in the target language: homepage, according to their own interests, recorded speaking by means of reading vocabulary or dialogs, a Mother’s day card and a journal. At the end of the semester, students were required to publish their website on the internet.
After the portfolio data had been collected and compiled it was assessed using a variety of criteria: Growth and development in relation to learning targets, understanding and application of key processes, completeness, correctness of products presented in the portfolio, diversity of entries and evidence of students' self-reflection or self-assessment were just a few.
Although there were some procedural problems such as lack of time and unfamiliarity with content and systems, by the culmination of the research, students expressed, overwhelmingly, positive support towards the learning activities especially integrating information technologies into education. Fend-Yun, a participating student stated, “I never entered such an interesting class before… It was an unforgettable experience”, (Chang, Wu and Ku). Other students thought it was fun, enjoyable and like the different approach, to learning a foreign language, which creating portfolios provided. This study demonstrates that portfolios are enjoyable, but also, engage students, motivate student learning and increase interest in subject matter.
Labels: Teaching With Technology
