TEACHER AND STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS REGARDING PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT IN AN EFL CONTEXT

I have always thought of portfolios as a great tool for implementing teaching practices, specially when it comes to English teaching. Portfolios offer a really wide and complete set of advantages for both students and teachers. 

Keeping a portfolio not only means keeping track and having evidence of students' work, but also promoting learners' autonomy and ability to self assess. Portfolios are excellent for assessing since they provide meaningful information about student performance and make monitoring students a lot easier for teachers. 

Although there are many strong aspects that make portfolios one of the best options to alternative assessment, there are certain important points to take into account at the time of considering the implementation of portfolios in the classroom. 

"An incoherent and disorganized alternative assessment tool may progressively reduce students' enthusiasm and enervate portfolio's authenticity and tendency to promote autonomy of learners" (Soruç, 2011) keeping a portfolio sometimes may generate a series of issues; stress, heavy workloads, lack of confidence, limited time and distrust are some of the aspects teachers and students could face when carrying out a portfolio. 

In order to launch this kind of assessment, teachers as well as students need to be trained on how to use portfolios property, so there is no unreliability at the time of the implementation. Teachers need to be subjective when it comes to assessing portfolio presentations; they need to take into account students' fluency, listening, grammar, vocabulary and writing and there must be always set a clear purpose indicating why the portfolio has been carried out.

 

By taking into account all the previous aspects, keeping portfolios in the classroom will be a lot easier and effective; students will be able to share their ideas, parents will be able to monitor and contribute in the process, teachers and students will assess themselves and if there is any trouble along the way, they will be able to change it or to improve it.