What is a language

portofolio?
An e-portfolio is one example of what can be achieved through using technology to
assess students and most of the teachers we spoke to were not doing this.
There is no one definition of a portfolio
but the idea is that they demonstrate and reflect the language experiences that
the student has had, and through this, demonstrate a broader picture of a student’s
language ability.
Technology in assessment
• ICT can promote, facilitate and support our current understanding of assessment.
• We can now easily record our students speaking using computers, or mobile
devices like MP3 recorders or mobile phones. More importantly, we can store,
retrieve and share these recordings very cheaply and quickly. We can video group
work or pair work interactions and then evaluate and provide feedback. We can
get students to write blogs or wikis and provide regular comments and feedback
on the development of their written work. We can easily ask the student’s peers to
provide feedback too.
• Technology does not only help with what we assess; it can even help us produce
relevant materials for assessment.
• The point is technology can play a role in assessment.
CASE STUDY : USING A VIRTUAL
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
• Yrma G teaches in Turkey. She uses Moodle to support her students’
writing skills. By having the student work drafts loaded onto Moodle,
it is much easier to access and provide feedback on the textual use of
English. Students are also encouraged to do peer review in the online
text discussion boards and this has helped develop friendships as well.

• One interesting VLE which is attracting a lot of interest at the time of

writing is Edmodo. You can create as many groups as you want and
each group has a code. Students can access their group by simply
writing in the code and do not even need to provide an email address.
Edmodo is a free powerful VLE
• Mouna works in Tunisia with groups of secondary school children
learning English.
• She likes to get them to discuss and share ideas on different topics each
week. Each week she chooses the student who has made the best
contribution. This is not based on grammar or language but on their ability
to communicate an idea effectively. Her focus is to get the students to
think less about the grammar and more about what they are saying. She is
trying to encourage more fluency in their writing and more focus on the
content of what they are trying to say.
• And the last, she is quite happy with that, but wants to find more effectives
ways.
Assessment tools that can develop oral skills
• CASE STUDY : MAKING SIMPLE AUDIO RECORDINGS
• Vocaroo is a very simple tool that allows students to record their voice for up
to five minutes and then send the resulting recording as an email.
• This tool is great for portfolios and for getting the students to build up a
collection of short recordings over a period of a module that can show their
development and progress.
• So, we use the class time to practice certain speaking activities but the
students actually do the recordings at home and then send them to me.
Students have to evaluate their recordings and then at the end of the course,
choose the recording they are most pleased with and submit this for formal
evaluation.