The effects of portfolios on developing writing skills of English major students at Hanoi law university

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THE EFFECTS OF PORTFOLIOS ON DEVELOPING 
WRITING SKILLS OF ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS 
AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY 
Nhac Thanh Huong*; La Nguyen Binh Minh 
Hanoi Law University 
Received: 30/08/2018; Revised: 24/09/2018; Accepted: 20/12/2018 
Abstract: The primary focus of this study was to examine the effects of portfolios on 
enhancing writing skills of English major students at Hanoi Law University. To achieve the 
aim, 50 second-year students participating in the study were randomly divided into 
experimental and control groups. The experimental group was taught English writing skills 
using portfolios while traditional teaching method was applied to the control group. A pre- 
test and a post-test were administered to both groups to measure the differences in students’ 
writing performances. The results revealed that portfolios had positive impacts on students’ 
writing skills. The data gained from the questionnaires administered to the students in the 
experimental group to identify their perceptions of portfolios on their writing abilities 
showed that the majority of them considered portfolios to be effective. Based on the main 
findings, a number of recommendations relating to applying writing portfolios were made 
to improve the English teaching and learning process. 
 Key words: English major students, portfolios, writing skill 
1. Introduction 
 It is undeniable that writing skill is the most challenging one for English learners to master in 
either EFL or ESP context. The teaching methodology of English writing skill, therefore, has gained 
a great concern among researchers and educators. Bailey (1986) indicated that it is important that 
“students develop a good level of writing, so that they can prepare written pieces of work with no 
difficulty, focusing on vocabulary definitions and grammar structures that are consistent with the 
language level.” Specifically, the key teaching strategy to develop students’ writing skill is to use 
efficient teaching methods to obtain a continuous improvement of learning. In teaching practice, 
there has been a change in the methodology of teaching English writing skill, from the traditional 
way of the product-based approach to the process-product approach (Tabatabaei & Assefi, 2012), in 
which writing portfolios are implemented. 
 Yang (2003) defined portfolio as “a compilation of students’ work, which documents 
their effort, progress and achievement in their learning, and their reflection on the materials 
negotiated for the portfolio”. Nowadays, in English classes, portfolios have become increasingly 
popular not only to assess students’ achievement but also to demonstrate how their language 
skills have developed over a period of time. In the literature, a number of studies have been 
carried out to evaluate the effects of portfolios on improving English writing skill and students’ 
attitudes towards portfolio assessment in the EFL/ ESL context. Several researchers pointed out 
that portfolios are an effective means to promote writing skill. For example, Aydin (2010) 
conducted a case study at Balikesir University, Turkey, the results of which suggested that 
* Email: nhacthanhhuong@gmail.com 
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portfolios help learners improve vocabulary, grammar learning as well as develop proficiency 
skills. Similarly, the findings of Yurdabakan and Erdogan (2009) indicated that portfolio 
assessment had a significant effect on learners’ writing skill. It can be said that using portfolios 
in teaching and assessment was found to be of great benefit, providing complete pictures of 
students’ needs in foreign language teaching and learning. 
 However, there have been limited studies on the effect of portfolios on EFL writing skill 
and students’ attitudes toward portfolio technique, in particular in English classes at University 
level in Vietnam. This situation is similar to that at Hanoi Law University where writing skill is 
a compulsory subject to legal English major students during three semesters. At this institution, 
using portfolios in the teaching and assessment of students’ development in English writing skill 
is encouraged. However, there has not been any research to identify the impact of using 
portfolios in developing students’ writing performance. This fact suggests a need for carrying 
out the research on the impact of portfolios as well as English major students’ attitudes towards 
the use of portfolios on improving their writing skills. The study, therefore, seeks to answer the 
two following research questions: 
1. Do writing portfolios have an effect on the students’ achievement in their overall writing skill? 
2. What are the students’ attitudes towards portfolio technique? 
2. Theoretical framework 
2.1. Portfolio and portfolio assessment 
 There has been a number of ways to define portfolio in the literature. Barnard and Deyzel 
(2003) defined: “portfolio as a portable, systematic, purposeful collection of work, selected to 
provide information about attitude, level of development and growth during a given period of 
time. It is a powerful visual tool that provides evidence of self-assessment, personal reflections, 
learning, growth and development and a comprehensive and complex overview of skills”. To be 
more specific, a portfolio is defined as "a purposeful collection of students’ work that 
demonstrates their effort, progress and achievement in given area” (Genesee & Upshur, 1996). 
A writing portfolio, therefore, is a collection of student writing that is intended to demonstrate 
the writer’s development over the course of one or more academic terms. 
 Currently, in EFL classes, teachers tend to prefer using the process approach in teaching 
writing skill to the product approach. In the process approach, students spend time 
brainstorming, gathering the information, writing about the topics, revising and editing before 
submitting a final piece of writing. In other words, the process to create a final draft is even 
more important than the final draft itself. This denotes the fact that it is essential to apply an 
assessment technique instead of an only standardized test to measure the students’ writing 
development during an academic programme. It is important to note that portfolio assessment is 
a kind of portfolios, which acts as a self-reflection assessment - an evaluation tool for reviewing 
the student progress in writing as well as the end product of writing. Portfolio assessment can 
develop students' autonomy, critical thinking, and linguistic competence, and supports the 
notion that writing process involves growth, development, and learning as well as a product 
(Weiser, 1992). 
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2.2. Previous studies on the impact of portfolio on promoting students’ writing skills 
 In the literature of teaching and learning English writing skill, there are a number of 
studies on the effects of using portfolios and the students' attitudes toward using portfolios. 
 Tabatabaei and Assefi (2012) carried out a research on the effect of portfolio assessment 
technique on writing skills of EFL students, in which forty Iranian EFL learners were classified 
into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was taught writing skills using 
portfolios while the control group received the traditional method. The results indicated that 
portfolio technique had a significant impact on improving writing skills, particularly sub-skills 
of writing such as focus, organization, vocabulary, elaboration and conventions. 
 Wang and Liao (2008) also investigated students’ attitudes to portfolios for writing 
classes in the technological and vocational education system. The results of the research showed 
that the experimental group provided with portfolio technique was more satisfactory than the 
control group. Also, Shober (1996) carried out a study to examine the usefulness of portfolios 
on students’ narrative writing skills in a 12-week period. During the treatment, students were 
asked to write three pieces of writing following the procedures of prewriting, revising and 
editing. After the treatment, the statistic revealed that using portfolios had a clearly significant 
effect on students’ improvement in narrative writing. 
 Nevertheless, there are several studies in the literature, the results of which showed that 
portfolio technique did not have a great effect on students’ writing skill at all and students’ 
attitudes towards portfolio were not completely positive. 
 Hirvela and Sweetland (2005) conducted two case studies of portfolios in ESL writing 
classes. The findings indicated that although the participants liked the idea of portfolios, 
however, they did not approve their use in writing course. Liu’s study (2003) investigated ESL 
students’ experiences with writing portfolios in college composition courses and their attitudes 
towards portfolios. The participants were divided into experimental and control groups. The 
experimental group was taught through applying portfolios whereas the control group was 
taught through product-based writing instruction - the traditional method. Findings gathered 
from the study indicated that experimental group did not gain significantly better results than the 
control group. In terms of students’ attitudes, the data revealed that the majority of students 
stated that they could not see an immediate effect from reviewing their portfolio work. 
 In light of these previous studies, this current research was carried out to investigate 
whether portfolio technique had a significant effect on students’ writing skill as well as to find 
out their attitudes towards portfolios at Hanoi Law University context. 
3. Methods 
3.1. Participants 
 Fifty legal English major sophomores – the population of this study, whose age ranged 
from 18 to 22, at Hanoi Law University, were divided equally into experimental group and 
control group. As this study was carried out in the second semester of the second year, after 
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taking the final exam of the first semester, it was determined that students were between the 
intermediate level and upper-intermediate level of English proficiency. 
3.2. Data collection instruments 
 Participants’ essays 
 Two groups were required to write two in-class discussion essays of 300-350 words on 
the same topic in a pre-test administered prior to and in a post-test following the formal 
instruction. 
- Survey questionnaire 
 The student satisfaction questionnaire developed by Wang & Liao (2008) was used in 
order to identify students’ attitudes towards using portfolios. The questionnaire had 10 items on 
a 5-point Likert Scale. 
3.3. Procedures 
 The experiment was carried out in writing skill classes for 12 weeks, each of which lasts 
for 135 minutes. Before the treatment, students in both groups were required to write a 
discussion essay on the topic of “the explosion of the Internet”, which served as the pre-test. At 
the beginning of the treatment, the instructor (researcher) explained the design of the lesson, the 
goals and the content of the portfolios to the experimental group. During the treatment the 
students in the experimental group were asked to write 3 discussion essays on topics such as 
living in a city; living in dormitory and environmental problems, all of which were designed and 
chosen by the teacher. The teacher then carefully read the students’ first drafts and gave 
feedback on their writing of their essays on different criteria namely task fulfilment, 
organization, grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation. Those comments helped students realize 
the weaknesses and strengths of their pieces of writing during the treatment. In addition, 
students had to evaluate their writings as well as review their peer’s writing. Then, they revised 
to rewrite their essays drawing on their self-evaluation, their teacher’s and peer’s feedback. 
Finally, they were asked to collect their final drafts in the portfolios. The control group, on the 
other hand, were traditionally taught the structure of the essay including how to write the 
introduction, the body and the conclusion, etc., in an explicit way. Those students were also 
required to write 3 discussion essays on the same topics as the experimental group. However, 
unlike the experimental group, the students in the control group were not asked to reflect, revise 
and rewrite their essays. After that, the post-test on the topic of “the explosion of the Internet” 
was administered to both groups. It should be noted that both students’ pre-tests and post-tests 
were marked under 5 evaluation criteria mentioned above using a 10-point scale to assess the 
students’ writing performance. 
4. Findings 
Research question 1: Do writing portfolios have an effect on the students’ achievement in their 
overall writing ability? 
 Before the treatment, paired samples t-test was conducted in order to investigate whether 
or not there was any difference between the control and experimental groups in terms of 
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students’ writing performance. The result was shown in table 1. 
Table 1. Paired samples t-test analysis for pre-test scores of groups 
 N Mean Std. Deviation df Sig.(2-tailed) 
Experimental group 25 7.120 .6171 24 .621 
Control group 25 7.200 .5951 
 Table 1 indicated that in terms of students’ overall writing performance there was no 
statistically significant difference in the pre-test scores of the experimental group and the 
control group with a mean of 7.120 and 7.200 respectively. In other words, it was concluded 
that the writing performance of the participants in each group was equal. 
Table 2. Comparison of pre-test, post-test scores - control group 
 Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 
Pre-test Control group 
Post-test Control group 
7.200 25 .5951 .1190 
7.360 25 .5686 .1137 
 Table 2 showed the results of paired samples t-test analysis for the pre-test and post-test 
scores of control group. According to the Table 3, there was a minor difference between pre-test 
(M=7.200, SD=0.5951) and post-test (M=7.360, SD=0.5686) scores of control group in terms of 
overall writing performance. From the statistics, although the adoption of the traditional method 
in the control group also had an effect on ESP students’ writing performance, it was not 
considered as significant. 
 Table 3. Paired samples pre-test and post - test statistics - experimental group 
 Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 
Pre-test Experimental group 
Post-test Experimental group 
7.120 25 .6171 .1234 
8.120 25 .5260 .1052 
Table 4. Comparison of pre-test, post-test scores - experimental group 
 Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-
tailed) 
Mean Std. 
Deviation 
Std. 
Error 
Mean 
95% Confidence Interval 
of the Difference 
Lower Upper 
Experimental 
group - 
Experimental 
group 
-1.0000 .4330 .0866 -1.1787 -.8213 -11.547 24 .000 
 A paired-samples t-test was also conducted to compare the mean scores of pre-test and 
post-test of the experimental group. Table 3 and 4 showed that there was a statistically 
significant difference between pre-test (M=7.120, SD= 0.6171) and post-test (M=8.120, 
SD=0.5260) scores of experimental group with regard to their writing performance (t (24) = -
11.547). The results indicated that the instruction through portfolio assessment technique was 
found to significantly affect the students’ overall writing performance. 
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Table 5. Comparison of post-test scores - Experimental and Control groups 
 Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 
Post -test Experimental group 
Post -test Control group 
8.120 25 .5260 .1052 
7.360 25 .5686 .1137 
 The statistics of Table 5 showed that there was a statistically significant difference 
between the post-test scores of the control group (M=7.360, SD=0.5686) and the experimental 
group (M=8.120, SD=0.5250). This indicated that students who received instruction through 
portfolio technique were significantly better at writing than those who received the traditional 
instruction in the control group. 
Research question 2: What are the students’ attitudes towards portfolio technique? 
 Table 6 demonstrates students’ attitudes towards the portfolio technique with 10 items 
developed by Wang & Liao (2008) using a Likert scale with five options ranging from “strongly 
agree – SA (5) to “strongly disagree” - SD (1). 
Table 6. Students’ attitude towards portfolio technique 
N=25 SA A N D SD Mean 
The course content is based on past knowledge and 
experience 
8.0 28.0 36.0 20.0 8.0 3.08 
The course can enhance my critical ability 20.0 52.0 20.0 4.0 4.0 3.80 
The course’s objectives correspond with my 
personal learning objective 
32.0 44.0 16.0 8.0 0.0 4.00 
The students know exactly what to do in the class 28.0 60.0 12.0 0.0 0.0 4.16 
Course requirements are clear 28.0 44.0 16.0 8.0 4.0 3.84 
The students can learn a lot from teacher and peer 
feedback 
36.0 48.0 8.0 4.0 4.0 4.08 
The course material corresponds with the subjects 
and the units’ objectives 
36.0 48.0 12.0 4.0 0.0 4.16 
There are opportunities for students to express 
opinions in this class 
32.0 40.0 20.0 4.0 4.0 3.92 
The teacher presents clear and relevant examples 24.0 56.0 16.0 4.0 0.0 4.00 
The teacher provides timely feedback about 
students’ progress in the class 
52.0 40.0 8.0 0.0 0.0 4.44 
 As seen from Table 6, 76% of participants in the experimental group agreed that the 
course’s objectives correspond with their personal learning objectives. At the same time most of 
the participants agreed that they know exactly what has to be done in the class (88%) and the 
course requirements are clear (72%). Moreover, the same rate of students thought that students 
can learn a lot from teacher, peer feedback and the course material corresponds with the units’ 
objectives, which accounted for 84%. 90% and 92% of participants agreed that the teacher 
presents clear, relevant examples and provides timely feedback about students’ progress 
respectively. In general, the students expressed a positive attitude towards portfolio technique in 
English writing class with the high mean ranging from 3.08 to 4.44 (strongly agree (5) to 
“strongly disagree” (1)). 
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5. Discussion and implications 
 This study aimed to investigate the differences between the students’ overall writing 
performance of the experimental group taught by the portfolio technique and the control group 
taught by the traditional method as well as and to identify students’ views in the experimental 
group towards the portfolio technique. The data from the pre-test, post-test and survey 
questionnaires were then gathered and analyzed through the SPSS program. The statistics 
indicated important main findings. 
 Concerning the first research question, the results of the post-test revealed that students 
taught by the portfolio technique in the experimental group were significantly better at their 
overall writing performance than those who received the traditional method instruction in the 
control group. From the statistics, it can be seen that the current study shares similar findings 
with the previous ones such as the studies carried out by Yurdabakan and Erdogan (2009)