Abstract
In Pakistani context, traditional assessment approach is practiced for teaching and testing writing
although it is considered less effective. In fact, educationists have proposed different alternatives
and portfolio assessment is one of them. This action research aims to examine the efficacy of
portfolio assessment in Pakistani ESL classrooms for learning and teaching of writing skills. For
this, 25 undergraduate students of Mathematics Department, University of Karachi, Pakistan,
were taught writing skills through portfolios, which were assessed by providing detailed
feedback on weekly basis. Also, students‟ controlled but anonymous feedback was taken on exit
slips after every writing class. The findings revealed that it is a useful alternative which makes
learning and teaching of writing easy for learners and teachers both since it helped learners to
improve. It also taught them the significance of feedback and they benefitted from it too as there
was a noticeable difference between their first and final drafts. Even their later write-ups were
very much improved as they worked on the provided feedback and took the feed forward.
Therefore, this study serves as a source of motivation for the teachers who are resistant to use
portfolio assessment for writing skills in Pakistani ESL classrooms.
Sharmeen Ismail. (2019) Using Portfolio Assessment in a Pakistani ESL Classroom at the University level, Balochistan Journal of Linguistics, Volume 7, Issue 1.
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