VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
***

ACTION RESEARCH

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

THE USE OF PORTFOLIOS IN ENHANCING GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ WRITING

SKILL

Cohort: PG37 - Group 2

Students:
Pham Mai Anh (ID 22046102)
Tran Thi Bich Ngoc (ID 22046116)
Nguyen Dieu Linh (ID 22046113)
Ho Thi Thon (ID 22046121)

May, 2022
 TABLE OF CONTENT

PART A: INTRODUCTION
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: Literature review
1. Writing skill
2. Writing approach in a second or foreign context
3. Challenges of EFL writing in Vietnamese high school contexts
4. Portfolios
5. Review of previous studies
Chapter 2: Research methodology
1. Research design
2. Intervention plan
3. Data collection methods
3.1. Questionnaire
3.2. Interview
3.3. Assessment: Pre - test and post - test
PART C: CONCLUSION
Appendix
References
 PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study:
Writing skill is a productive skill which plays a fundamental role in helping students express
their ideas in the target language. Furthermore, writing is the skill that most students are least
proficient in when acquiring a new language (Nesamalar, Saratha & Teh, 2001). In fact, students
need to spend a lot of time and effort in order to acquire the skills. It is known that the writing
process involves four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. During the writing
process, students tend to deal with a lot of challenges such as lack of vocabulary, poor grammar,
lack of coherence and cohesion. Meanwhile, teachers face some obstacles while teaching writing
skills to students in terms of time constraints, students' lack of motivation and diversity of
learners. Therefore, approaches and strategies to foster language students’ writing skills should
be developed in order to make the most of each stage in the writing process. The use of
Portfolios is a feasible approach to support students in enhancing their writing skills and solve
some common problems learners have to deal with in their writing process.

2. Aims and objectives of the study:

This study was conducted to investigate the benefits of utilizing portfolios in teaching writing.
The research question which summarizes the study is
Question 1: What are the attitudes of teachers and learners toward the use of portfolios?
Question 2: To what extent does the usage of portfolio enhance students' writing skills?

3. Scope of the study:

The research was conducted in the tenth grade of a high school in Hanoi. The participants
include 45 students from 1 class.
Period of time: Semester 1

4. Significance of the study:

The use of portfolios will give teachers a feasible approach to support their students in learning
how to write in the target language. It will concentrate on the application of portfolio in teaching
writing skills and its efficiency.

5. Method of the study:

The study utilizes action research. 45 students who are in grade 10 would participate in the
research. Students will be guided to form their own writing portfolios through a wide range of
writing activities.
The data were collected by making use of some typical instruments such as pre-tests and post-
tests, survey questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.

6. Outline of the study:

The study includes 3 main parts as follow:
Part A: presents the general view of our study (rationale, aims, objectives, the question and
methods of the research)
Part B is divided into 2 chapters which emphasizes on the theoretical frames for the study. The
first chapter will identify the role of writing skill, present some writing approaches in a second or
foreign context, challenges of EFL writing in Vietnamese high school contexts, portfolio and
review of previous studies. The second chapter provides the methods to conduct the study such
as research design, intervention plan, data collection methods, questionnaire, interview, methods
of assessment: Pre - test and post - test.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Literature Review

1. Definition of writing
In language teaching, reading and listening are regarded as receptive skills while
speaking and writing skills are productive skills since the learners have to produce their own
piece of writing and speech act. Among these skills, writing is often considered as one of the
most difficult skills to EFL learners. In terms of writing skills, there are a myriad of definitions
related to this. Chief among them is that Byrne (1979) stated writing as “an act of transforming
graphic symbols.” On the other hand, according to Clark (2007), writing is “an act of
communication between writer and audience”. In addition, some researchers have seen writing as
a complicated process. To illustrate, writing is seen as “a process of transforming the material
discovered by research inspiration, accidents, trial and error, or whatever a message with a
definite meaning.” (Lannon, 1989). Besides, writing is also assumed to “require a certain level of
linguistics knowledge, writing conventions, vocabulary and grammar” (Erkan & Saban, 2011).
Tribble (1996) defines writing “a language skill which is difficult to acquire” and “writing
normally requires some forms of instructions”. In brief, writing itself can be defined as an act,
social process or skill requiring constant practice and in the writing process, teachers and
learners should collaborate to enhance their language outcome.

2. Approaches to teaching writing

On the grounds that writing is seen as one of the most challenging skills to EFL learners,
searching for an effective approach to teaching writing is of major concern of language teachers
and educators. EFL writing instruction is now mainly subject to product – based approach, in
which both teachers and learners put an emphasis on producing the final products. This is “a
traditional approach in which students are encouraged to mimic a model text, usually presented
and analyzed at an early stage” (Gabrielatos, 2002). The outcome of this approach is “a single
written piece” which will be collected and evaluated by the teacher. That is to say, a product –
based approach does not focus on the writing process or the learners themselves.
To compensate for certain drawbacks of product – based approach, process – based
approach has come into play as an alternative approach to teaching writing. According to Tribble
(1996) there are four major stages in the process of writing, which include pre – writing,
composing/ drafting, revising, and editing. To be more specific, in the first step, writers are
expected to generate ideas for the topic, followed by organizing and outlining their ideas. After
that, writers are asked to write and revise several drafts until they produce the final piece of
writing. It can be clearly seen that such approach involves not a single piece of writing but multi
draft papers. Thanks to this, students have a great chance to revise their drafts to have a high –
quality piece of writing submitted to the teacher. Therefore, a process – based approach in
writing is a potential approach in writing instruction.
 3. Challenges of writing in high school contexts
Teaching and learning of writing in Vietnam has come with considerable challenges. One
of the most obvious challenges stems from the implementation of a product – based approach
which neglects students’ learning process. The students are asked to write and submit their single
draft at once without revision and editing. Pre – writing activities are also of concern because
high school students are not aware of the importance of these activities, leading to poor writing
performance. Another challenge worth considering is the lack of ideas in composing a piece of
writing (Luu, 2010). The reason for this is that English is a foreign language, and sometimes
Vietnamese learners are not familiar with the topics they are going to write. Students’ deficiency
in vocabulary and grammar knowledge may also hinder the route of successful writing. In other
words, students’ lack of vocabulary and grammar knowledge is the main cause for their bad
achievement in writing. One of the most practical obstacles that interfere with students’
effectiveness in writing is time constraint (Luu, 2010). He clarified that students are forced to
write in a certain limit of time, which means that some students do not complete their writing as
required. Time pressure prevents students not only from producing good pieces of writing but
also from demonstrating their true ability to write (Alfaki, 2015), and it even makes it difficult
for teachers to give feedback in large size classes.

4. Portfolios
4.1. Definitions
A portfolio is a collection of evidence that is gathered together to show a person’s
learning journey over time and to demonstrate their abilities. Many different kinds of evidence
can be used in a portfolio: samples of writing, both finished and unfinished; photographs; videos;
research projects; observations and evaluations of supervisors, and reflective thinking. It is the
reflections that are the key aspect to a portfolio (Abrami & Barrett, 2005; Klenowski, Askew, &
Carnell, 2006; Loughran & Corrigan, 1995; Smith & Tillema, 2003; Wade & Yarbrough, 1996).
In that way, those compiling portfolios are active participants in their own learning. Two other
key elements to portfolios are that they measure learning and development over time and that it
is the process of constructing a portfolio, rather than the end product, that is where the learning
takes place (Smith & Tillema, 2003).

4.2. Uses of portfolios

Portfolios can be developed for many different purposes: for learning, for professional
development, for assessment, or for job applications and promotions; and many different
audiences: for lecturers, for mentors, for employers, or for the creator him or herself. In tertiary
education, portfolios provide an alternative form of assessment (Smith & Tillema, 2003) that
moves away from summative assessments to charting the development of students’ thinking over
their course of study.

4.3. Benefits of portfolios

Specific to a teacher education setting, portfolios have a variety of purposes: to teach

prospective teachers how to be reflective, to assess their readiness to graduate, as part of the
process of registering beginning teachers, and as part of teacher education programme
accreditation (Zeichner & Wray, 2001). Portfolios can serve to measure achievement for
practicum work and to foster reflection on teaching (Smith & Tillema, 2003). As McNair and
Galanouli (2002) argue, a reflective portfolio is a way of embedding theoretical principles, skills
and knowledge in classroom practice, of making meaningful connections between university-
based learning and the classroom context, and of helping to improve performance and develop
competence.

Portfolios “encourage student teachers and teachers to think more deeply about their
teaching and about subject matter content, to become more conscious of the theories and
assumptions that guide their practices, and to develop a greater desire to engage in collaborative
dialogues about teaching” (Zeichner & Wray, 2001, p. 614) with a goal to developing confident
and capable teachers. Portfolios document the shift “from seeing oneself as student to
recognizing oneself as teacher” (Darling, 2001, p. 107), and allow students of teacher education
to develop their teaching philosophy and dispositions (Ma & Rada, 2005). In order to facilitate
the more specific focus of portfolios in teacher education, additional pieces of evidence that
might be included are: “narrative statements of teaching goals and philosophies, lesson and unit
plans, pupil work samples…excerpts from student teaching journals, communications with
parents…video-taped teaching samples, action research projects, and sample pupil assessments”
(Zeichner & Wray, 2001, p. 617). It is by reflecting on the evidence collected in their portfolios
that student teachers are able to uncover their strengths and weaknesses, develop an awareness of
their teaching and learning achievements, assume responsibility for their own learning, and begin
to anticipate their learning needs. In order to be successful, reflection must move beyond simple
description.

4.4. Types of portfolio

Zeichner and Wray (2001) emphasize three different types of portfolio as discussed in the
literature. These are a ‘learning portfolio’, which documents a student’s learning over time; a
‘credential portfolio’, which is used for registration or certification purposes; and a ‘showcase
portfolio’, which students can use when applying for employment positions. While a learning or
a credential portfolio contains examples of ‘less than perfect’ work as well as the finished
product, a showcase portfolio serves only to display a student’s best pieces of work. Similarly,
Abrami and Barrett (2005) catalog three different types of portfolio, though the purposes of each
are slightly different from those described by Zeichner and Wray. For Abrami and Barrett, the
portfolio types are a ‘process portfolio’, or a collection of work showing a learning journey;
‘showcase portfolio’, which is used to show achievements either at study or in the workplace;
and an ‘assessment portfolio’ prepared specifically for assessment or evaluative purposes. In
comparing the purpose of a portfolio with the setting of its use, Smith and Tillema (2003) come
up with four different types of portfolio. A portfolio used for job selection or promotion purposes
and for which the content is mandated is a ‘dossier portfolio’. A mandated portfolio used for
learning and development is a ‘training portfolio’. A selection or promotion portfolio that leaves
the choice of content up to the portfolio creator (or is ‘self-directed’) is a ‘reflective portfolio’.
Finally, a self-directed learning and development portfolio is a ‘personal development portfolio’.
The varying ways of classifying a portfolio all serve to emphasize the importance of deciding
upon the purpose and audience of the portfolio. A portfolio developed to show change and
progress in a student’s learning will not be appropriate for use when applying for a job, just as a
portfolio displaying only exemplary pieces of work will not be useful for assessing reflective
learning.

4.5. Characteristics of portfolios

From consideration of the above problems and issues, a number of criteria for the
successful use of portfolios have been put forward (Smith & Tillema, 2003; Wade & Yarbrough,
1996). In summary, the success criteria are:

• Familiarity with the portfolio concept, including an understanding of both the process
and the product of portfolio construction;

• Clear framework and guidelines;

• Structure tempered with freedom for creativity;

• Feedback during the evidence collection process;

• Understanding of the value of reflection;

• Understanding of the value of the portfolio for future use, such as employment;

• Motivation to learn and achieve good marks;

• Student ownership of the portfolio;

• Making connections between the portfolio content and the outside life of the student;

• Consideration of the target audience; and a

• Sense of achievement at overcoming initial struggles to understand the portfolio

concept.

5. Previous studies

5.1. Issues regarding the use of portfolios

A variety of problems and issues arise with the use of portfolios as an assessment
exercise in academic settings, some of which are mitigated by the shift to an electronic
environment, and some of which are exacerbated. A lack of well-defined guidelines and a clear
structure (Smith & Tillema, 2003) and a lack of examples of past portfolios can lead to student
confusion and anxiety about the scope, nature and value of the task (Wade & Yarbrough, 1996).
Finding a balance between student-driven construction that can lead to superficial reflections and
limited evidence, and over-prescribed guidelines that can lead to students lacking ownership and
therefore resenting their portfolios, is difficult (Zeichner & Wray, 2001). Students need a lot of
guidance and support throughout the portfolio process (Smith & Tillema, 2003), which involves
a lot of time on the part of tutors or supervisors (Wade & Yarbrough, 1996). Students often have
little academic experience with writing reflective pieces, so that again needs to be nurtured by
their supervisors. There is often a conflict between the goals of students and the goals of their
supervisors in constructing portfolios. Students “are understandably most concerned about the
uses of their portfolios as aids in gaining employment while educators are most concerned about
using portfolios to promote professional development and to make assessments” (Zeichner &
Wray, 2001, p. 618).

Concerns are also expressed over the difficulty of assessing portfolios. Smith and Tillema
(2003) see a lack of match between assessment criteria and the goals of the programme of study,
or what competencies students are expected to develop. They also see a tension between the
measurement of standards and capturing development and reflection. The danger is that learning
and reflection will get lost in the drive to measure competency.

5.2. Portfolios in students’ writing improvement

Many studies exploiting the impact of portfolio assessment on EFL writing found a
positive effect on students’ writing (Fahed-Al-Serhani,2007; Elahinia, 2004; Ghoorchaei,
Tavakoli & Ansari, 2010; Yurdabakan & Erdogan,2009), Fahed Al-Serhani (2007)’s study
shows that the group that uses portfolio assessment significantly surpasses their counterpart in
terms of four writing processes of planning, drafting, revising, and editing. In Yurdabhakan and
Erdogan (2009)’s experiment with the Turkish students on reading, listening, and writing skills,
they found significant improvement only on writing skills but not on reading and listening skills.
The findings of Ghoorchaei, Tavakoli and Ansari (2010)’s investigation of the effect of portfolio
assessment on Iranian EFL students showed that portfolio assessment empowers students’
learning more than the group without the use of portfolio. It is also advised that portfolio can
considerably improve autonomy of learners and inspire them to become active and engage in
language learning.

As portfolio assessment has achieved importance in language learning, more and more
attention on method of assessment in terms of writing skills and researchers have started to
contemplate on the effectiveness of this method of writing assessment in the last few decades.
Especially in the EFL context, many studies have conducted research to investigate the
effectiveness of portfolios. For example, the study of Aly (2002) conducted in the Cairo context
using pretest and posttest design revealed that a group with portfolio technique had higher
writing performance compared to their peer counterpart.

Chapter 2: Research Methodology

1. Research method
The study aims to discover the problems students encounter when learning writing,
finding out how to apply writing portfolios in a high school and explore its effects on students’
writing performance. Thus, action research was applied by the teacher. Below, action research is
clarified specifically to explain the selection of the methodology.
 2. Action research
In terms of definition, according to Burns (2009), action research (AR) is “related to the
ideas of ‘reflective practice’ and ‘the teacher as researcher’, AR involves taking a self -
reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring your own teaching contexts.”
With respect to its model, there are different models of action research, but in general it
consists of four main stages, namely Planning, Acting, Observing, and Reflecting.

Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1998) propose AR involving four broad phases in a cycle of
research: Planning, Action, Observation and Reflection.
 Planning: identifying a problem or issue and developing a plan of action in order
to bring about improvements in a specific area of research context.
 Action: The plan is carefully considered one which involves some deliberate
interventions into the teaching situation that the teacher puts into action over an
agreed period of time.
 Observation: This phase involves the teacher in observing systematically the
effects of the action and documenting the context, actions and opinions of those
involved. It is the data collection phase where the researcher uses different tools
to collect information.
 Reflection: At this point, the teacher reflects on, evaluates and describes the
effects of the action in order to make sense of what has happened and to
understand the issue more clearly. He may decide to do further cycles of AR to
improve the situation more.
 (Adapted from Kemmis & Mc Taggart, 1998)
In this study, action research was chosen because it is conducted with a view of a teacher rather
than a researcher; therefore, real solutions and evaluations are adopted. Moreover, action
research was applied in more than one circle so it can be revised, re - planned, and re - done to
improve the process.

3. Intervention plan
The research was developed and carried out during 17 weeks of the first semester of the
academic year 2021 – 2022. X students from class …….participated in the study. To be more
specific, the action research procedure is presented as follows.

Week 1 (Identifying
the problems)
- Giving students a diagnostic test on their writing skill to measure
students’ writing ability and identify their problems
- Giving students pre – treatment questionnaire to find out the
causes of students’ problems and to provide knowledge about
the participants which helps the teacher design a suitable
portfolio project

Week 2 (Planning) - Planning some actions to solve the problems

- Developing lesson plans and preparing writing activities
 Week 3 – Week 16 Implementing the actions planned previously
(Acting and - Introducing students writing portfolio (delivery of a portfolio
Observing the sample and instruction of creating their own writing portfolios)
action) - Providing them with scoring rubric to ensure all students could
understand how their writing is assessed
- Integrating writing portfolios into the writing lesson in class.
Each writing lesson was conducted with these following main
stages:
 Having students play games or do some activities to lead in
the writing topic
 Asking students to read a model text in the textbook and to
do practice tasks in pairs or groups, which would help
students to obtain useful words/phrases or structures related
to the writing topic
 Asking students to write the first draft individually in a
certain limit of time
 Asking students to submit their pieces of writing for
comment or feedback at the end of every lesson
 Returning their first version with comments and feedback
within two or three days
 Asking students to revise and produce the second version at
home based on the teacher’s comments or peer’s feedback
 Collecting all of a students’ writing (including both the first
and second versions) for grading within seven days
 Returning students’ scores before the next writing lesson

Week 17 - Giving students an achievement test to see whether they made

progress
- Giving students questionnaires on their satisfaction

The table below illustrates the schedule for the requirement tasks.
 Writing Week Task
assignment

1 1 Diagnostic test:
Students are required to write a short letter to reply to a request for help.

2 4 Unit 1:
Students are required to write a letter to tell their friend about how people in
their family share the housework.

3 7 Unit 2:
Students are required to write a letter to tell about their diet (what to eat or not
to eat).

4 10 Unit 3:
Students are required to write a letter to tell their friend about one of the most
famous artists in Vietnam or in the world.

5 14 Unit 4:
Students are required to write a formal letter applying for volunteer work.

6 17 Achievement test:
Students are required to write a letter to tell their friend what modern device
(smartphone, digital camera) they want to have and why.

4. Data collection method

4.1. Questionnaire

The participants in the questionnaire will be Grade 10 students. At the beginning, a letter
stating the questionnaire purpose and requesting information will be sent to the principal and the
teachers. The questionnaire contains Likert-type questions and open-ended questions. The Likert
questions attempt to evaluate teacher attitudes and knowledge regarding portfolios. The open-
ended questions deal with problems using portfolios and such. The questionnaire will be
delivered to teachers and retrieved by the researcher. Data will be processed by frequency
distribution and by measures of central tendency using Excel tool. Data analysis will be
presented in the findings.
 Pre-intervention questionnaire for students

The benefits and challenges of using portfolios

Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements by
marking an X in the box of your answer:

Statements Strongly Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly

Agree Disagree

Benefits of Portfolios

Provide a place to store and

organize writing
assignments.

Allow easy access to all

writing assignments.

Allow me to evaluate and

reflect on my writing process
or weak areas.

Allow me to keep track of

my writing progress.

Help me to become an
independent writer.

Allow me to store my works

for future reference.
 Encourage and motivate me
to produce better writing.

Challenges of Portfolios

Portfolios take a lot of time

to complete.

Portfolios can become

unorganised without clear
purposes and objectives.

Sometimes I am not honest

in my reflective writing
because I know my writing
will be assessed or graded.

Additional comments on the using of portfolios you would like to share with us:

The practice of portfolios in the classroom

1. Are using portfolios a popular practice in learning English at your school?

o Yes

o No

2. Do you intend to keep portfolios for future reference and assessment?

o Yes. (Please continue with questions 3,4,5)

o No. (Please continue with questions 6)

3. Which of the following knowledge and skills do portfolios assist your future writing? (You
may choose more than one answer.)

o Vocabulary range

o Vocabulary accuracy

o Grammar range

o Grammar accuracy

o Idea development

o Writing

o Test and exams

4. How do you describe your overall experience use of portfolios in learning?

o Positive.

o Negative

5. Name one significant problem of applying portfolios you have encountered:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

6. Name the most significant reason why you have not applied portfolios in teaching:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………
4.2. Semi-structured interview
Beside questionnaires, semi-structured interviews will also be conducted in this research. The
purpose of the interviews is to make up for what they lack in breadth, William C. Adams (2015).
Moreover, the interviews will help us identify the candid thoughts and attitude toward
portfolios.
The interviews will be conducted after the research with some participants randomly chosen
from the 45 participants of the focus group. The set of specific questions are prepared but the
responses would be flexible. Since the aim of the interview is to investigate students’ impression
of the portfolio and their willingness to continue using the portfolio in future, the questions will
focus on these two themes. To increase the validity of the interviews, the questions would be
tried out beforehand.
Before conducting interviews, we explain to participants the reason why they are being
interviewed and gain their permission for recording the interviews for further investigation.
Students will also be given assurances of confidentiality and anonymity.
The interviews will be started with warm up questions and follow up with some close questions
for confirming participants’ attitude and some open questions for participant’s genuine opinions.
The interview then will be ended with the closing questions for provoking participants
suggestions. During the interview, participants would be asked as naturally as possible to make
sure the responses are candid.

List of semi-structured interview questions:

1. Have you ever done a portfolio before?
2. What do you know about portfolio?
3. How do you like your portfolio? Do you think it is interesting?
4. Did the portfolio help you to take more responsibility for your study?
5. What do you think about the tasks included in the portfolios? Which tasks do you like
most? Which task do you dislike most?
6. Do you want to use a portfolio for your course in the future?
7. Which challenges do you meet when doing your portfolio?
8. Do you find your final product satisfying?
9. How does a portfolio help you to write better and self correct your mistakes?
10. Is there any part of the process you want to improve?

4.3. Assessment
a. Pre-test:
Diagnostic test and pre – treatment questionnaire will be used to assess students' writing ability
and some challenges students are facing during their writing process before the course.

Diagnostic test
Students will need to write a paragraph about a familiar topic.

Topic: Choose 1 invention (Computer, smartphone, electricity,…) and write a paragraph about
its benefits.

Pre – treatment questionnaire

1.Which difficulties do you face up with while writing a paragraph/ an essay/ a letter etc

 Grammar
 Vocabulary
 Ideas
 Others

2. It’s necessary for language learners to write an outline before writing.

 Agree
 Strongly Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree

3. Grammar plays a crucial role in writing a paragraph

 Agree
 Strongly Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree

4. Vocabulary plays a crucial role in writing a paragraph/ an essay/ a letter etc

 Agree
 Strongly Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree

5. You struggle to find ideas during writing a paragraph/ an essay/ a letter.

 Agree
 Strongly Agree
  Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree

6. It is necessary for language learners to check and edit their work after the writing process.

 Agree
 Strongly Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree

7. It is necessary for language learners to write drafts before writing the final version.

 Agree
 Strongly Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree

b. Post-test:
In order to evaluate students’ performance after treatment, we administer an achievement test
which requires students to write a letter to tell their friend what modern device (smartphone,
digital camera) they want to have and why . The essay then will be marked by a group of
evaluators that are not involved in the process. The T test then will be run to compare the
differences in the score of students in the diagnostic test and achievement test.
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