Using portfolio as a tool of assessment to improve 10th graders’ reading comprehension at Nong Cong 1 high school 1 PART 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale for the study Assessment plays a crucial part in any[.]
Trang 1PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1 Rationale for the study
Assessment plays a crucial part in any educational processes that have advantageous impact on learning and teaching Along with the recent developments in science, society and educational measurements, instructional and assessment practices become “holistic, student centered, performance based, process oriented, integrated and multidimensional” Gottlieb [4; p.12] This is accounted for by the concerns to the traditional assessments, which typically fail
to assess higher order cognitive skills and other skills essential for functioning in school Haney & Madaus [6; p.28] In addition, the traditional methods such as tests are seen as particularly irrelevant to learning process “as dark clouds hanging over learner’s heads, upsetting them with thunderous anxiety” Brown [1; p.373]
In the context of teaching and learning English as foreign language in Viet Nam, reading comprehension seems to be o n e o f the most important and useful activities, especially for the students of English at high schools to prepare for the National Entrance Examination Of the four language skills, reading has always received a great deal of attention, which is emphasized by Carrel [2; p.1] that “For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second teaching of foreign language” However, teachers of English in Vietnam have a tremendous obstacle to get students enthusiastic about reading texts Through classroom observations and real teaching context, it reveals that students often feel scared when doing long reading tasks with unfamiliar words They find it difficult to catch the main ideas of the text, to distinguish facts and details, and
to retain information longer Therefore, they often fail to catch the author’s thought From this fact, as a teacher of English at a high school, I myself think it
is essential to find something new to improve my students’ reading comprehension level so that they can improve their reading comprehension As
a result, I decided to carry out the study entitled: “Using portfolio as a tool of assessment to improve 10 th graders’ reading comprehension at Nong Cong
1 high school”
2 Purpose of the study and research questions
This study is aimed at gaining an insightful look into the uses of portfolio assessment with a view to improving students, reading skill at Nong Cong 1 high school
The aims are specified in two research questions:
(1) What are students’ perceptions about portfolio assessment?
(2) To what extent does portfolio assessment enhance student’s reading comprehension ability?
3 Scope of the study
As the title suggests, the study was carried out on a group of forty 10th
graders from class called 10C1 at Nong Cong 1 high school to examine the effectiveness of applying portfolio as a tool of assessment in reading comprehension
Trang 24 Methods of the study
This study using qualitative and quantitative research method aimed to determine whether portfolio assessment can enhance students’ comprehension skills o r have a positive affect on the ability of students to make sense of what they read The author used data collection instrument to gather information about the students involved, monitor the progress of the students when they used graphic organizers throughout the research, and determine the effectiveness of the portfolio using based on the students’ reflection and the pre-test, post-test result
The pre-tests were necessary to assess the reading comprehension level and skill the students possessed before the intervention of the strategy and used
as a baseline score The post-tests were used to determine the effectiveness
of the strategy used by the students during the experiment process by comparing the pre-test scores to the posttest scores taken at the end of the study The students’ reflection was also a reliable data for the teacher to conclude the hypothesis
Trang 3PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 2.1 Literature Review
2.1.1 Reading skill
Reading is known as an interactive process that connected the reader with the text, making comprehension The text displays letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that express meaning The reader manipulates knowledge, skills, and strategies to decide what that meaning is Up to now reading has been described differently by lots of academics
Harmer [7; p.153] shares his ideas “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages” Clearly, ideas of reading have been diverse in exploiting words and expressions but they all focus on two actions: studying with eyes and comprehending with brains of which the latter is more significant The most obvious thing in the latter is that the readers not only look at and understand the meaning of what is written but also read authors’ thinking
2.1.2 Reading comprehension
Many studies confirm that the final goal of reading instruction is
comprehension and one of the most important goals of skilled reading is decoding and understanding written text However, the decoding and the ability
to recognize words in texts are only the beginning stages of reading and reading
comprehension Grellet [5; p.3] states that “understanding a written text means
extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.” He also shows the examples in which a good reader will omit unnecessary information and find out what he or she is searching for
In another word, reading comprehension can be defined as “a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning Reading becomes meaningless without comprehension since only reading comprehension can appreciate how much readers get the text Therefore, how to aid students in having efficient reading comprehension methods is considered to be the most powerful task in teaching reading
2.1.3 Assessment classification
In the words of the worldwide leading methodological researchers there have been two general assessment approaches from which teachers can choose The first type, traditional assessment, refers to assessment that “attempts to measure an individual’s achievement or aptitude through standardized and classroom achievement tests with most closed – ended items such as true/false, multiple choice and fill – in – the blanks”
Heaton [8; p.5] advocates his point of view that “language testing is a form of measurement It is so closely related to teaching that we cannot work in testing without being constantly concerned with teaching” Another reason for teachers, schools and assessment organization to utilize multiple - choice tests is that they are fast, easy and economical to score Besides, they are scored objectively, which may give the test appearance of being fairer than subjectively scored tests
Trang 4On the other hand, alternative assessments value higher - order critical thinking skills because learners have opportunity to demonstrate what they learned Furthermore, this type of assessment tools focuses on the growth and performance of students over the time If a learner fails to perform a given task
at a particular time, s/he still has chance to demonstrate his/her ability at a different time and situation In addition, alternative assessments provide learners opportunities to practice authentic activities they might encounter in real life As this type of assessment evaluates the learning process over time and in context, teachers have chance to measure the strengths and weaknesses of students as well as get further insights into students’ knowledge and skills
2.1.4 Definition of portfolio and classification
De Fina [3; p.13] states that portfolios are systematic, purposeful, and meaningful collections of students’ working in one or more subject areas
Some other definitions share two common points Firstly, portfolio is a collection or selection of samples of student work Secondly, these samples are selected purposely in a way that they can reveal students’ learning progress over
a period of time
There are different ways to categorize portfolios In the narrow scale of
my study, however, only Venn’ view has been mentioned
According to Venn [11; p.533] portfolios have been grouped into two
types: product portfolio and process portfolio The product portfolio is used to document accomplishment while the process portfolio documents the stages of
learning and provides a progressive record of student’s growth In general, teachers prefer to use process portfolios because they are ideal for documenting the stages that students go through as they learn and progress
To sum up, different types of portfolio serve different purposes Based on the aim of the instruction, teacher can select a proper type and apply it This study examined the progress students’ reading comprehension ability when using portfolio as an assessment tool; therefore, the kind of portfolio used in this research is process portfolio
2.1.5 Portfolio Assessment
It is widely believed that portfolio can help students successfully organize and integrate newly acquired knowledge Many language teaching practitioners have applied portfolios as a tool of assessment in a variety of classroom learning environments due to a need for more equitable and authentic assessment that goes beyond traditional testing English teachers have also used portfolios to evaluate and enhance student’s learning As the use of portfolios may encourage students to take more initiative and control of learning and to reflect on their learning freely and as creatively as they can, portfolio can be a useful tool for fostering learner autonomy Portfolio has thus become a popular trend of assessment in recent years
2.2 Research context
2.2.1 Setting and participants
This study was conducted in 12 weeks from October 2017 to December
2017 in class 10C1 at Nong Cong 1 high school in rural area of Thanh Hoa province
Trang 5Forty tenth graders involved in the study They mainly came from the countryside In general, they had learnt English for over 7 years However, their proficiency is not satisfactory enough, and their learning style is quite passive
In addition, they hardly acquired any effective skills in reading, especially with long and complicated texts In their opinion, learning English means getting grammar and structures with common lexical resources As a result, they were almost beginners in reading comprehension as a high school student
After one month studying at my school, their language skills regarding listening, speaking, reading and writing had improved a little bit In term of reading skills, the students had been accustomed to basic reading skills like reading for main ideas, reading for specific information, recognizing the reading structure
2.2.2 Textbook and Reading materials
The reading materials used in the study consisted of selected texts from new English Textbook 10 (learner-centered and communicative approach with theme-based teaching) published by Education Publishing House and Pearson
In the textbook, there are 10 units with diverse topics related to 4 themes: Our lives, Our society, Our environment, Our future 5 sections were included in one
unit namely: Getting started, Language, Skills, Communication and Culture, Looking back and Project There are some samples based on the new English textbook for grade 10 in which such common organizers are appropriately applied It is hoped that English teachers will have a better insight into using portfolio as an assessment tool and become confident to integrate these effective tools into their reading comprehension practice The study was conducted when the participants were in the first semester when they already had had knowledge about basic structures as well as vocabulary in textbook in lower secondary level Therefore, the author found that it matched with the objectives of the learning program and students’ levels of competence
2.2.3 The reality of teaching and learning reading skill at Nong Cong 1 high school
As mentioned above, reading skill in new Tieng Anh 10 is the third of
eight lessons that make up of one unit in the textbook Reading lesson admittedly provides language inputs such as vocabulary, structures as well as knowledge background related to the lesson topic The students in our school, however, have been facing numerous challenges in reading lesson because of their poor source of vocabulary, structures Some get bored with long reading tasks, others don’t know how to activate their language capacity to comprehend the reading passage In addition, most of them have difficulty getting general ideas, specific information, paraphrase the meaning of the words in order to successfully explore the reading text to tackle assigned reading tasks The language of reading texts in this semester is not very complicated The comprehension questions after each text not only check students’ understanding
of the text but also provide them with background knowledge about the world and complex language structures and vocabulary
Of all reading skills targeted in new English 10, 3 skills were sorted out as major skills in this paper They are:
Trang 6- Finding main ideas
- Reading for specific information
- Understanding vocabulary from context
In my view, the three skills were chosen as main skills in the course for two reasons First, they are among the most common reading skills Second, from the researcher’s experience, these skills, especially understanding vocabulary from context and making inference are perceived as difficult to students
2.3 Stages of the study
2.3.1 Instructional Procedure
A t the beginning o f the instruction, I familiarized the students with portfolio how to u s e them to assess their reading process (see steps presented below) The students w e r e also instructed to use and present what they did in their portfolio for different types o f reading passages
2.3.2 The Pre-test and Post-test Model
Post-test is measurement o f the outcome in both groups after the experimental groups have received the treatment while pre-tests measure the student performance prior to the experimental intervention A pre test was administered to both experiment and control groups to ascertain the standard of the students in reading comprehension The pre-test scores o f both groups were recorded The test material w a s designed based on the scope o f the study It was made up o f 2 passages, totaling 20 questions which c a n be classified into four types o f reading questions (1) Identifying the main idea, (2) finding the supporting details, (3) understanding vocabulary, and (4) making inferences O u t o f 2 0 questions, there w e r e 5 main idea questions, 5 supporting detail questions, 5 vocabulary questions, and 5 inference questions Each question w a s worth 1 mark and the sum total o f the test was 20 calculated over 100 marks
Before administering the pre-test, it w a s important for the researcher
to examine whether the proficiency level o f the students in both the experimental a n d controlled groups are the same o r different I n the first session of the experiment, a pre-test was given to all the participants in the two groups The result of the pre-test proved that t h e comprehension skills of both the groups were on the same level
2.3.3 Portfolio assessment procedure
Step 1: Planning portfolio assessment
This is the initial and crucial step because it affects the success of the portfolio project There were four sub-steps in planning portfolio assessment: setting assessment purpose, specifying the content of the portfolio, establishing criteria for assessment and planning classroom procedures
The first sub - step was setting assessment purpose in Table 1 below This
project was designed to help students develop five targeted reading skills, which were reading for main ideas, reading for specific information, understanding vocabulary from context and making inferences Besides, the self – assessment skills, self – study and active learning of students were encouraged Through finding materials, the ability of material searching skills was expected to develop as well
Trang 7The second sub-step was determining the portfolio content (See Table 1 below) In this step, what to put in the portfolio and how to organize the
information were decided The portfolio contents included five portfolio entries
of targeted reading skills in the second semester Normally, each portfolio entry had to contain (1) one sample of student’s work, (2) two samples of their friends’ work (reading exercises) and (3) two types of assessment: student’s reflection and teacher’s assessment A students’ final feedback indicating their reactions towards the whole portfolio project and advantages and disadvantages
of portfolio assessment was attached with five portfolio entries before being submitted to the teacher
DESIGN OF PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT
I Portfolio purposes
To equip students with background knowledge on the following
reading skills
- Reading for main ideas
- Reading for specific information
- Understanding vocabulary from context
- Making inferences
To develop those reading
skills
To develop self-assessment
skills
To encourage self-study and active learning
To encourage material searching skills
II Portfolio contents
Each portfolio entry should consist of the following items:
A reading exercise collected by the portfolio owner
Two reading exercises from two friends
A reflection per two weeks
Teacher’s assessment
III Portfolio procedures
1 collect reading materials
2 bring to class for sharing with friends and group discussion
3 write reflection at home
4 discuss with teacher
IV Portfolio assessment
1 Self-assessment
2 Teacher’s assessment
Table 1: Design of portfolio assessment The next step is establishing criteria for assessment by which
students’ portfolios would be assessed In this project, there were two types
Trang 8of assessment used to evaluate each portfolio entry: student’s reflection and
teacher’s assessment with the help of portfolio rating scale in Table 2.
PORTFOLIO RATING SCALE Insufficient
(level 1)
Sufficient (level 2)
Proficient (level 3)
Excellent (level 4)
Your grade
Portfolio
collection
includes
less than
50% of:
- Student’s
reading
exercises
- Peers’
reading
exercises
- Personal
reflections
- Teacher
assessments
Portfolio collection includes more than 70% of:
- Student’s reading exercises
- Peers’
reading exercises
- Personal reflections
- Teacher assessments
Portfolio collection includes more than 80% of:
- Student’s reading exercises
- Peers’
reading exercise s
- Personal reflections
- Teacher assessments
Portfolio collection includes more than 90% of:
- Student’s reading exercises
- Peers’
reading exercises
- Personal reflections
- Teacher assessments
- Students
can’t do
peers’
reading
exercises
- Reflections
show little
evidence of
learning
- Reflections
do not show
an awareness
of
student
strengths and
weaknesses
- Portfolios
do not show
improvement
s
in targeted
reading
skills
- Students can
do peers’
reading exercises with some
difficulty
- Reflections show some evidence of learning
- Reflections show some awareness of student strengths and weaknesses
- Portfolios show some improvements
in targeted reading skills
- Students can do peers’
reading exercises rather well
- Reflections show
adequate evidence of learning
- Reflections show an awareness of student
strengths and
weaknesses
- Portfolios show good improvemen
ts in targeted reading
skills
Students can
do peers’
reading exercises very easily
- Reflections show a lot evidence of learning
- Reflections show full awareness of student
strengths and weaknesses
- Portfolios show remarkable improvements
in targeted reading skills
Trang 9Table 2: Portfolio rating scale (Adapted from Kemp & Toperoff [9]
The last step was planning classroom procedures presented in Table 3
Portfolios were integrated in classroom activities during the semester Each 45 - minute reading lesson was divided into two sections The 45-minute reading period in class is to present the targeted skill of each reading lesson from New English 10 textbook In the afternoon, for extra lesson, another 45- minute period was used for portfolios In this lesson, students were required to collect one reading task related to the targeted skill with the same topic of the week After collecting the right type of the reading task, they did it at home Next, they shared their task with two friends and discussed their performances Their discussion in class would serve as input information for their reflections at home The students wrote their reflection freely about their learning experience
in the week based on some suggested questions In the following week, there would be a discussion among the students and the teacher about the work they did and then students handed in all the materials on one entry to the teacher for assessment
- Entries are
not
arranged in
any order
- Entries are
badly
presented
- Materials
(reading
exercises
and
reflections)
are
hand-written and
not clear
to see
- Entries are arranged in order
- Entries are clearly presented
- Materials (reading exercises and reflections) are hand-written
- Entries are arranged in order with explanation for such organization
- Entries are clearly and well
presented
- Materials (reading exercises and
reflections) are typed
- Entries are arranged in order with good explanation for such organization
- Entries are clearly and attractively presented
- Materials (reading exercises and reflections) are typed
N Portfolios
do not meet
objectives
Portfolios need improvement
Portfolios meet objectives
Portfolios exceed objectives
YOUR FINAL GRADE
Trang 10A WEEK PLAN FOR PORTFOLIO CLASSROOM PROCEDURES
WEE
K
ED SOURCES 1
Introducing
portfolio
assessment
Discussing with students
2 & 3 Finding
main ideas
- study ‘finding main ideas’ skill
- collect materials
- skim for main ideas
- do friends’
exercises
- group discussion
- write reflection 1
at home
- matching a heading with a paragraph
- true, false, not given
- multiple choice
- workbook
- articles
- journals
- short stories
5 & 6 Reading for
specific
information
- study reading for specific
information
- collect materials
- skim for main ideas
- group discussion
- write reflection 2
at home
- multiple choice
- open answer
- true, false, not given
- complete sentence
- complete a chart, a table
- workbook
- reports
- statistics
- travel brochures
- travel guide
- timetables
8 & 9 understandin
g word in
context
- study
‘understanding vocabulary in context’ skill
- collect materials
- guess the meaning of vital new words using context clues and word study skill
- group discussion
- write reflection 3
at home
- matching (new words with meanings)
- multiple choice
- short answer questions
any
11 - Review of the whole process
- Write final feedback