Ever since I started teaching English at the university level, I have felt that learning and teaching English at this stage (especially in the public sector) can be quite challenging for several reasons.

First and foremost is the fact that most of the students come from less privileged backgrounds owing to which they have very limited opportunities of learning and using English in their home or community. This implies that the contact time with English at university should be more. But students, during a semester study English for 48 hours (16 weeks) at the most. To be exact, they do not even get to do that for the entire 16 weeks at my university as there are so many interfering factors such as heavy rains, violence in the city, etc.

What makes the teaching and learning of English even more demanding is that the learners study English in large classes — a compulsory English class may have up to 60 students at a time. Hence, the teacher has very little (if at all) one-on-one interaction with them. Another problem is the lack of educational technologies for teaching, especially in the arts faculty.

So in order to make the teaching and learning of English meaningful in the given context, I decided on trying to achieve the following two goals in my compulsory English classes. I had 16 weeks in which I first aimed at making my students independent learners. Second, I wanted to try and expose them more to the authentic language — both spoken as well as written.

To achieve these goals, I undertook an action research that systematically helped me work on portfolio assessment. This way I was also able to share my work with the other interested colleagues of my department, that enabled me to get immediate feedback, too.

My research question for my action research study was “How can I make my students interested and independent learners of English through the use of portfolios?”

What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is a systematic, purposeful and ongoing collection of a student's work that shows progress or a range of accomplishments over a given period of time. It is a good opportunity for students to demonstrate what they learnt during the course and how and why it was important/relevant.

A portfolio is not simply a collection of all the work that the students carry out during the semester; it comprises of a selection of your work that showcases what you learnt during the semester and demonstrates how you achieved the aims and objectives of the course. The selected work is preceded by a reflective essay that summarizes one's experiences during the semester while elaborating on the rationale for selecting the work submitted.

The content of a portfolio is created in response to specific instructional objectives and evaluated in relation to those objectives.

Although teacher guidance and support are provided, portfolio development is primarily the responsibility of the learner.

Potential

While reflecting on the process of using portfolios in the classroom, I realised that they offer a number of benefits to students. Firstly, they provide on-going language learning opportunities to students even outside the classroom. Hence, students get more exposure to language.

Second, they offer opportunities for reflection, which goes on to develop self-awareness. While maintaining a portfolio, students start thinking differently about their role as a language learner. They realise that they are responsible for their own learning. Thus, they start examining their language learning practices. Consequently, they not only begin to identify their areas of strengths and weaknesses, but also develop an appreciation of their own learning/achievements.

Third, portfolios help students to explore and learn language learning strategies.

Fourth, they increase students' understanding of what, why and how they learned throughout the course.

Fifth, seeing themselves as having a role in the evaluation, students develop a sense of ownership.

Sixth, portfolios provide an opportunity for less vocal students to show their understanding of the subject.

And, finally, portfolios help students to develop systematic work habits and enhance their organisational skills.

Implementation

For the smooth implementation of portfolios in class, I prepared three things at the beginning of the semester. First, I made a planner for implementation of portfolios. This planner gave me a clearer sense of how I was to implement the portfolios in the class — the steps I needed to take and the kind of tasks students needed to carry out in order to maintain portfolios (see box). However, based on the reflections of the class, I made a few additions to the steps I needed to take to implement portfolios during the semester.

Second, I prepared a writeup for the students on portfolio assessment. The aim of this write-up was to introduce students to how they will be assessed during and at the end of the semester. It also informed them of what a portfolio was, the purposes of maintaining it, what a strong portfolio included and what tasks they are supposed to carry out that would form part of their portfolios. The write-up proved helpful for the students as well as myself.

For the students, it brought clarity on what was required of them and they referred to it throughout the semester to see what tasks they had carried out and what tasks they would be introduced to later. They also referred to it for writing their end of the semester reflections.

For me, it brought the ease of not having to explain to students again and again what was required of them. If they had any questions at any point, I would simply direct them to refer to their write-up. If required, we discussed that in class, too.

Third, I prepared a file for my students. This file contained self-help assignments on all six language skills listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary; checklists; mid-term reflection sheet, instructions on the tasks for the portfolio, etc. I provided these handouts to my students at the beginning of the semester.

Throughout the semester, I encouraged them to use the self-help assignments given in the handouts. I also made it mandatory for them to carry out two of the given on-going, self-help assignments (Self-Created Cloze and Word Power Notebook) on a daily basis. These assignments formed part of the portfolio. At the end of the semester, I turned my handouts into a manual for the next group I would be teaching.

In order to implement portfolios smoothly in a class, I think a teacher needs to plan the what, why and how of the portfolio implementation much before he/she introduces portfolio in a class. In addition, it is important to reflect in action and reflect on action throughout the implementation process.

Monitoring and feedback

At the beginning of the semester, I set some classroom procedures for the smooth management of the portfolio. For instance, students were told in categorical terms that they had to submit their assignments on the given deadline. In case they missed their deadline they would not be getting another chance for submission.

Consequently, I noticed that if it was not possible for any student to come to the university on the date of submission, he/she would send the portfolio over through a friend. I must add that the students took the submission date seriously as I had also assigned five marks for submitting work on time.

Throughout the semester, I gave a number of reading and writing tasks to my students to work on for their portfolios, both in class and at home. To keep track of their work, I collected their portfolios after every 15 days. However, it was not possible for me to check each and every assignment thoroughly since I had 70 students in my class. Hence, I went through the assignments quickly. But if required, I had one-on-one talks with the students about their work.

Near the end of the semester, I had a review conference with my students in order to provide them with verbal feedback on the work done in their portfolios. This became extremely labour-intensive and working out and managing its logistics (as it was an after-class activity) was an intense demand on my time. However, I believe that the time and effort invested was worth the benefits received.

Challenges

The single most challenging thing in the use of portfolio assessment in my class was that it was time and labour-intensive, both for me and my students, as mentioned earlier, too. It was difficult in a group of 70 students to collect portfolios after every 15 days, monitor and to keep track of the timely submission of individual assignments as well as to provide feedback on the assignments.

In addition, introducing the concept of portfolios to students did not take a single session. I had several discussions in my class to ensure that everyone understood the purpose and the efficacy of the portfolio, the requirements of assembling the portfolio and how they will reflect on their learning process throughout the semester for the final submission of the reflective essay.

By introducing students to portfolio assessment, I was able to invite students to take an active part in their language learning process and in doing so I succeeded in structuring the class to provide more autonomy to the students.

For me it suggests that teachers can add innovative assessment strategies to their repertoire of assessment strategies at the university level provided they work out a plan for doing so in their own specific contexts.

The writer teaches linguistics at the Department of English, University of Karachi.