TASK 15 -- Communicative approach

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Date Posted: 11:35:46 08/14/03 Thu
Author: Jos� Eur�alo dos Reis
Subject: TASK 15

TASK 15

How can we use portfolios to evaluate our students' progress?

Personally, even before knowing the ideas and remarks expressed by the authors in the articles indicated in the final bibliography of this short-term paper, I think portfolios are excellent for a process of teaching-apprenticeship, because they allow the students to realize how much they have done throughout a course and how accurately and productively they have worked in order to surpass a phases of apprenticeship. So, portfolios help the students to become critics of their own performances, which is fundamental for real apprenticeship. If they are done, little by little, during the course, they can give them good opportunities to make self-evaluations and even a whole evaluation concerning the course they have been attending.

HANCOCK (1994) points out �assessment (�) should be viewed as an interactive process that engages both teacher and student in monitoring the student's performance�. Considering that portfolios can be used as a type of assessment, we can say that they help both, teachers and students, to construct together strategies in order to make new judgments about the learners� learning process and the course of the contents given in order to attend a specific program.

For many years, portfolios have been used in foreign or second language courses as an alternative or complementary way of assessment. By using them, teachers can encourage students are to select the most relevant aspects of their performances during a course, to reflect on such aspects and analyze their own development related to the matter. Attributing such a role to portfolios the students are invited to have an active attitude concerning their own evaluation of progress, increasing their responsibility and awareness on their development as language learners and, according to their interests and relationships in classroom and outside classroom, they can help them to compare and share information as well as works and papers with colleagues.

Some teachers who use portfolios usually report their importance for promoting reflection and critical sense of their students, thanks to the potential they bring concerning to some choices and review of attitudes and experiences. Besides, portfolios can work as an opportunity for students to show their real self, adding personal papers or remarks on some tasks

Concluding, I would say that portfolio assessment can be an excellent pedagogical tool to be used in communicative learning environments, since it contributes to the interaction among students and teacher and help to promote the good reflections on the development of the course and the students� advances concerning the apprenticeship.

Bibliography
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/classuse.html
http://www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/hancoc01.html
http://www.stanford.edu/group/CFLP/research/portfolio/portfolio1.html

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