The Effect of Portfolio Assessment on EFL Teenager Learners Speaking Ability

Portfolio assessment, which has recently garnered some scholarly attention (Aydin, 2010; Nezakatgoo, 2010), is viewed to be more beneficial to EFL/ESL students and teachers than other traditional forms of assessment (Delett, Barnhardt &Kevorkian, 2001; Hamp-Lyons, 1995; Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 2000; Song & August, 2002). However, there is adearth of literature on the application of portfolios in assessing and promoting speaking. This study, thus, wasundertaken to explore non-native teenage learners’ speaking performance through portfolio assessment and to measurethe impact of a portfolio assessment program on learners understanding, awareness, application, perception of and willingness toward employing portfolios. This is a mixed-methods study whose participants were 29 EFL learners (10 males, 19 females), selected through convenience sampling, who attended a speaking assessment program throughportfolios, described 16 pictures (2 per session), responded to four self-assessment reports, and were recorded for indepthcontent analysis. The findings show portfolio assessment positively affected learners speaking ability, revealingstatistically significant differences in speaking ability between males and females before and after the portfolio process.Likewise, students found portfolios more helpful and user-friendly than traditional tests. Questionnaire analyses further evinced that portfolio is of paramount significance to most learners, as they reported to feel more confident, relaxed, fluent, and accurate in speaking and autonomous in learning. To conclude, the findings suggest that with the increasing influence of portfolios, they need to be embedded in language instructional programs

کلیدواژه ها:

Assessment ، EFL learners ، portfolio ، speaking ، teenagers