2:1 - What is Portfolio Assessment?

Portfolios have generated a good deal of interest in recent years, with teachers taking the lead in exploring ways to use them. Teachers have integrated portfolios into instruction and assessment, gained administrative support, and answered their own as well as student, administrator, and parent questions about portfolio assessment. Concerns are often focused on reliability, validity, process, evaluation, and time. These concerns apply equally to other assessment instruments. There is no assessment instrument that meets every teacher's purpose perfectly, is entirely valid and reliable, takes no time to prepare, administer, or grade, and meets each student's learning style.

Foreign language educators need to able to choose and/or design assessments that meet their most important instructional and assessment needs and which they have the resources to implement and evaluate. Below are some strengths of portfolio assessment, seen in contrast to traditional forms of assessment. Traditional assessment vs Portfolio assessment

Traditional	Portfolio
Measures student's ability at one time	Measures student's ability over time
Done by teacher alone; student often unaware of criteria	Done by teacher and student; student aware of criteria
Conducted outside instruction	Embedded in instruction
Assigns student a grade	Involves student in own assessment
Does not capture the range of student's language ability	Captures many facets of language learning performance
Does not include the teacher's knowledge of student as a learner	Allows for expression of teacher's knowledge of student as learner
Does not give student responsibility	Student learns how to take responsibility