Does Portfolio Assessment Work for the Iranian EFL Junior High school Students: The Case of Grammar Learning

Although portfolio assessment has been used in language learning classrooms for decades, it is rarely used by the Iranian EFL teachers, particularly at the junior high school level. In fact, most teachers still prefer traditional assessment techniques based on the view that using alternative assessment at lower levels seems impractical. To make the teachers aware of the effectiveness and practicality of the alternative assessment, the current study was designed to explore the effect of portfolio assessment on learning simple present tense by the EFL junior high school learners. The research was carried out in a high school in Qom. Fifty students, 9th graders, from two intact classes participated in the study, one as the experimental group and the other as the control one. After ensuring the homogeneity of the participants in terms of their general language proficiency, a grammar pre-test was administered. During the implementation of instructional period lasting for five sessions, the experimental group had to keep a portfolio of all the tasks, homework, and tests. Their portfolios were continuously analyzed, corrected, and commented on by the teacher. Finally, a similar grammar post-test was employed. The data were then analyzed. The results revealed that portfolio assessment had a significant effect on grammar learning of the experimental group. It was then concluded that idea of the impracticality or ineffectiveness of using portfolio assessment at junior levels is just a myth and this kind of assessment could effectively be used as a means of teaching grammar to Iranian EFL learners.

Keywords:

portfolio assessment , grammar , simple present