Since the early 1990s, assessment for learning (AfL) has reached worldwide audience for improving teaching and learning in educational context (Cowie, 2005; Klenowski, 2009; O’Shea, 2019). Several studies have examined how AfL might benefit second/foreign language (L2) teaching pedagogy, language learning, and L2 learner performance (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2010; Dann, 2014; Darling-Hammond & McCloskey, 2008; Earl, 2013). As Ramaprasad (1983) conceptualized, AfL in language classroom needs the L2 learners’ perception of a gap between a long-term goal and their status quo, as well as their commitment to bridge the gap to attain the goal. Ideally, either language learners will engage in self-assessment to generate the information about the gap, or the teachers themselves will explore the gap and to provide feedback about it to the students. Ultimately, the action to close the gap will be taken by the fully engaged students in the process of learning (Sadler, 2010). But in reality, L2 teachers and learners have more critical steps to take. In AfL practice, the teacher needs to reinforce the capacity in the students to engage, to diligently discover the gap, and to take full responsibility for carrying out remedial actions. Thus, L2 learner self-engagement is not an option; it is a survival kit. However, the focus on learner engagement is not a common practice in most L2 classrooms, as the majority of language teachers do not welcome such shared responsibilities with students (Ecclestone, 2007; Hargreaves, 2005). In essence, as Black and Wiliam (2009) rightfully disputed, the practicality of AfL at language learning classroom level has remained insufficient and more evidence is needed to support the real benefits of various types of AfL, including portfolio assessment.
Portfolio assessment (PA), as a common platform of AfL, largely demands L2 learners to actively engage in self-assessment and self-reflection (Lam, 2013; 2014) for reaching a closure in the learning gaps. This is advised through redrafting and writing reflective journals (Hamp-Lyons, 2016; Lam & Lee, 2010). Yet, the full practice of PA in L2 setting has faced massive problems, such as teachers’ AfL malpractice (Harris & Brown, 2009; Willis, 2011) or lack of learner self-engagement (Lee & Coniam, 2013; Li, 2010). Therefore, Hyland and Hyland (2006) called for more research on the aspects of PA impact on learning of writing skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings.
Some research examined the teachers’ experience with various models of PA (i.e., progress, workshop, and showcase) (Lam, 2017; 2018a; Lee, 2016; Lam & Lee, 2010), the effects of PA on boosting L2 learner autonomy and metacognitive awareness (Aydin, 2010; Carless, 2011; Hirvela & Sweetland, 2005), and learner text revision strategies (Hamp-Lyon & Condon, 2000). However, research findings on how teacher portfolio assessment might impact the L2 learner engagement in genre-based writing have remained unclear with limited empirical evidence (Hamp-Lyons, 2007). In the same vein, while the use of portfolio approach to collect student performance on different genres of writing has been well-reported in L1 writing (Hyland, 2004; 2007), yet the contribution of portfolio assessment into EFL learners’ genre-based writing performance is largely under-documented (Lam, 2019; Wiliam, 2006). To void the gap in the literature, this study aimed to set a genre-based PA platform to investigate the role of teacher formative assessment in EFL learners’ degree of engagement in descriptive and narrative writing progress.
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Literature Review
A writing portfolio is a collection from a large body of students’ written works, often endorsed with reflection pieces of writing by the students. As a popular platform for self-regulated learning and evaluation, portfolio assessment (PA) is often assumed a better-quality alternative to traditional, product-oriented assessment for improving the student writing performance and long-term learner engagement (Benson, 2006a; Hirvela & Sweetland, 2005; Li, 2010; Mohamadi, 2018). However, as Condon and Hamp-Lyons (1994) argued, “the portfolio has simply been accepted on faith, on writing specialists’ feeling that the portfolio is better” (p. 277). Despite reported educational benefits, PA has remained controversial when utilized in classroom situations, namely due to L2 teacher inflexibility (Xu & Brown, 2016), insufficient and unwilling student engagement (Li, 2010), complicated and holistic grading system (Song & August, 2002), and lack of school support (Lam, 2018a; Lam & Lee, 2010).
As Lam (2018b) indicated, since writing portfolios are reported to sustain students’ close attention to their own progress of writing, their active engagement in teacher feedback is central (Burner, 2014). Furthermore, for a powerful PA experience, L2 writing teachers should prime such student self-reflectiveness. On the other side of the isle, however; evidence of how well students comprehend and engage in working portfolios in L2 context is still anecdotal and under-researched (Hamp-Lyons, 2007; Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 2000). To reach confidence in the student engagement and self-assessment in PA, L2 writing teachers may need ‘scaffolding’ the students in terms of tutorials on the entire portfolio process (Carless & Boud, 2018), using examples and prompts (Gregory, Cameron, & Davies, 2001), extending deadlines to sustain their engagement (Lam, 2014), and training them to writing assessment rubrics (Panadero & Romero, 2014). Romova and Andrew (2011) emphasized the critical role of self-assessment practice in PA as it warps student persistence, academic engagement (Finn & Zimmer, 2012), and ultimate achievement in PA. Successful engagement depends on how well L2 learners understand the goals of PA, how soon they picture the distance between their own status and the goals (Caner, 2010), and what they actually do to reach the goals. In other words, learner engagement is the bread and butter for effective learning, yet the topic has been overlooked in the mainstream research on PA (Price et al., 2010; Steen-Utheima & Hopfenbeck, 2018).
Apart from controversies over its aftermath in language learning context, PA is still assumed as a powerful pedagogical and assessment alternative, mostly because it reinforces the L2 learners’ “understanding of writing as a socially-situated process in academic discourse communities” (Duff, 2010, p. 169). In doing so, genre-based writing PA can assess both microscopic (i.e, mechanical, formal) and macroscopic (i.e., textural, discursive) aspects in L2 learner writing progress (Borg, 2003). Learning writing genres such as narrative, descriptive or expository is one of the critical issues of all times in SLA research (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2015; Shober, 1996). Hyland (2003) celebrated engagement in the genre-based writing process as empowering, dialogic, and systematic metacognitive awareness in language learners. Adopting a genre-based approach, Hinkel (2002) also suggested that to develop effective written discourse, EFL students should master “the mechanical aspects of composing sentences, paragraphs, and larger units of discourse that correspond to the dominant genres of the academy, a specific field, or both” (p. 57). While the process approach has an eye on the L2 writers overflow of ideas, the genre-based approach has switched its focus to the socio-literacy of the L2 writers in generating real texts that properly address the target discourse community (Hyland, 2003). While Badger and White (2000) believed that the product, process, and genre-based approaches to writing interplay, Romova and Andrew (2011) argued that the genre-based approach only integrates with the process approach, by “adding focus on text/context, and emphasizing the role of language in written communication” (p. 114). Hamp-Lyons and Condon (2000) argued that writing PA can best fit with such ‘genre-process nexus’ approach.
Genre-based approach to analysis of written narrative is no longer the sole responsibility of literary studies. Narrative analysis has entered the realm of human sciences and professional practice, including psychology and learning L2 writing (Roohani & Taheri, 2015). Assumed as an art or gift of storytelling, narration is made through every minute of every day in our life, so that we make narration plenty of times (Abbott, 2002). Lou-Conlin (1998) defined written narrative as a system of gradual development through which the writer entertains with the logical sequence of ideas and events. Narration is mostly done with the purpose of maintaining the readers’ interest in a given event or personal experience narrative (PEN) (Labov, 2001). In the same vein, descriptive genre of writing gives certain attributes to a person, place or chain of events in detail. Such entities should be described in such a way that the reader can capture the topic and enter the writer’s experience. Descriptive writing is considered as a means to improve other genres of writing such as narrative and expository or perhaps as a dominant strategy in writing academic texts (Birjandi & Hadidi Tamjid, 2012).
In line with genre-based approach to PA, EFL learners may have a chance to engage in gaining control over a variety of genre-based writing such as narrative and descriptive in the target discourse. However, literature on PA mostly pertained to general writing in L1 (Hamp-Lyons, 2006) or in L2 (Gottlieb, 2000), with marginal focus on the L2 learners’ genre-based writing performance, their weaknesses and their goals. Therefore, an urge to further research on this topic was strongly felt, particularly in EFL context.