Investigating The Effictiveness Of Portfolio Assessement In Efl Students' Writing

Résumé: Assessment is the key to the improvement of the students' level and the curriculum. Recently, there has been a great shift in this domain, which is the new method that the researchers have developed. This method aims at enhancing the learning/teaching process which called "alternative assessment". This current study aims at investigating the effectiveness of the portfolio assessment which is considered as an alternative assessment used to enhance EFL students' writing. Furthermore, it is an attempt to reveal the secondary school teachers' perceptions about the importance of the EFL writing and portfolio assessment technique. To accomplish these goals, two hypotheses were proposed. The first, it is hypothesized that the portfolio assessment technique would enhance the EFL students' writing. The secondis that the teachers would show an understanding of the importance of EFL writing and recognition of the role of the portfolio assessment technique in its improvement. In attempt to test these two hypotheses, two different methods were followed a quasi-experimental design as well as a questionnaire. The experiment were conducted with two groups of twenty (20) students of the third year level, and both of them took the same writing task in the pre-test and post-test. The first group which the experimental group received a treatment of four (4) weeks using portfolio assessment while the second group which is the control group did not. Then, the questionnaire was distributed to the secondary school teachers at El-Tarf. Only twenty nine (29) teachers responded to the questionnaire. The results obtained confirmed both of the hypotheses. The experiment proved that the portfolio assessment technique is very effective in improving the EFL students' writing on many levels: organization, form, content, spelling and grammar.The questionnaire showed that almost all the teachers give the writing skill a greater concern than the other skills: listening, reading and speaking skill in the EFL classrooms and the enhancement of the portfolio assessment technique of this skill. As a deduction, teachers can use this technique to help their students achieve a high level in writing.

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