2.2 Overview on Portfolio-based Writing Assessment
In 1980s portfolios launched in western educational assessment as an alternativeapproach to traditional summative assessment. Since then portfolio-based writingassessment has attached great attention of both learners and educators as a new kindof qualitative assessment, where emphasis has shifted from product to process andfrom traditional to nontraditional measures of academic achievement and much moreconcern has been focused on the learners’ inner attitudes as well as their composingbehaviors in writing programs. Generally speaking, portfolio-based writingassessment is based on systematic collection of learners’ work samples to reflect theirlearning behaviors during the process so as to evaluate objectively andcomprehensively.Originally speaking, the term “portfolio” means an artist’s work which wasarranged thematically or chronologically to attract prospective customers. The artist’sportfolio is to hold the purpose to demonstrate the artist’s work in depth and breadthtogether with his or her interests and abilities. (see Moya. Sharon S. & L.M. O’Malley,1994). In the teaching field, portfolio is applied to provide a purposeful collection oflearners’ work with information about their attitude, emotion, efforts and progressduring the process of instruction. Portfolio assessment has been widely applied ininstructions at home and abroad for more than 20 years, but it is still difficult to give aprecise definition. Different scholars gave their own definitions out of differentperspectives.
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Chapter 3 Methodology and Research Design....24
3.1 Restatement of Research Questions......24
3.2 Participants........24
3.3 Instruments..........25
3.4 Procedures of Data Collection ......27
Chapter 4 Four Data Analysis and Discussion....32
4.1 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 1.....32
4.2 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 2.....34
4.3 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 3.....40
Chapter 5 Conclusions, Implications and Recommendations.........46
5.1 Major Findings....46
5.2 Implications.........47
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Study.....49
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion
The above three chapters mainly presented the introduction, recent relativestudies and methodology of the study, and this chapter will focus on discussion onresults from writing tests, questionnaires and interviews, and analyzes them inaccordance with research questions in this study. This chapter consists of three parts,and each part relates to one research question respectively.
4.1 Data Analysis and Discussion of Research Question 1
Research Question 1: Can portfolio help non-English majors in VocationalColleges to change their attitude and beliefs toward writing?To answer this question
