Investigating the Effect of Portfolio Assessment on Learning English Grammar: A Case of Iranian Msrt Applicants

IntroductionPortfolio is a purposeful collection of students' work that demonstrates to students and others their efforts, progress, and achievements in given areas. O'Malley and Chamot (1994) define portfolio as a collection of students' work showing student reflection and progress or achievement over time in one or more areas. In the context of writing instruction and assessment, a portfolio can be defined as a collection of texts the writer has produced over a defined period of time (Hamp-Lyons, 1991) and the collection may consist of selected but not necessarily polished or finished pieces (Privette, 1993).A portfolio, in point of fact, is a compilation of a variety of forms of evidence of accomplishment and attainment of learning outcomes (Hamidi & Montazeri, 2014). The portfolio can be a quite useful teaching and learning tool in language learning classrooms (Apple & Shimo, 2004; Barootchi & Keshavarz, 2002; Epstein, 2005; Hamidi, 2016; Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 2000; Lam & Lee, 2010; Yurdabakan & Erdogan, 2009). In realistic terms, and as Davis and Ponnamperuma (2005) assert, a student portfolio for assessment purposes is a collection of papers, reports, and other material, joint with the student's reflection on their learning, weaknesses and on their strengths. In line with this, Valencia (1990) holds that portfolio assessment is a systematic collection of student work that is analyzed to show progress over time with regard to instructional objectives. According to O'Malley and Chamot (1994), portfolio assessment is a selective collection of students' work, teacher's observations, and self-assessment that is used to show progress and set goals related to the work collected in a portfolio.The Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology (MSRT) regularly holds a general English language exam as a qualifying English language test for Ph.D. candidates of the state universities. This test which is simply called the MSRT test has 100 questions including listening, grammar, reading comprehension, and vocabulary items. Since the purpose of many MSRT applicants is to learn the test clues and pass the test in the shortest time possible, any technique which can help applicants master the necessary skills should be put into practice. As portfolio assessment is one of the various types of alternative assessment methods, its application in language institute classes is significant since it can be an alternative to a traditional testing system (Davis P Li, 2010; Paesani, 2006; Ruhani & Taheri, 2015), language learning autonomy (Hashemian F Shimo, 2003), reading (Valencia, 1990), yet, no study has been carried out seeking the effect of portfolio assessment on learning English grammar by Iranian MSRT applicants.This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of using portfolio assessment on learning English grammar of Iranian EFL learners and to explore if it is feasible to implement it in the simple exercises, assignments, and tasks that students are supposed to work in order to improve their knowledge of grammar in particular and language learning in general. Since the literature acknowledges that portfolio facilitates learning (Davies P Moya& O'Malley, 1994), as a result, the researcher wanted to find out whether portfolio assessment could have any positive effect on improving Iranian EFL learners' grammar learning. Considering the possible effect of the portfolio assessment on learning English grammar among Iranian EFL learners, the following research questions and null hypothesis were formulated.RQ: Does the implementation of portfolio assessment have any statistically significant effect on learning English grammar among Iranian MSRT applicants? …