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Understanding the Usefulness of E-Portfolios: Linking Artefacts, Reflection, and Validation

  • Ricky Lam is Associate Professor and Associate Department Head in the Department of Education Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Ricky is the Past President of Hong Kong Association for Applied Linguistics, 2018–2020. He teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. His research interests include L2 writing assessment, digital portfolios, and language assessment literacy. His publications have appeared in Assessing Writing, System, Language Testing, TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, ELT Journal, and other international journals. Ricky is also the author of Using Portfolios in Language Teaching (RELC New Portfolio Series 4) (2019, SEAMEO Regional Language Centre).

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Published/Copyright: August 22, 2022
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
From the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching Volume 62 Issue 2

Abstract

E-Portfolios in language education have emerged over two decades. Despite their popularity as an instructional tool, many cast doubt on their usefulness in second language classrooms, especially when scholars are not clear about how e-Portfolio artefacts can be converted into reliable learning evidence by students’ active reflection and validation via multimedia feedback to inform language teaching and learning. This paper examines the usefulness of e-Portfolios by looking into how teachers attempt the tool to connect portfolio evidence, rationalisation, and feedback. Three novice teachers with three-year school experience (Jill, Jamie, and Jackie) undertook action research projects in their secondary schools. They participated in the study by trying out their individual e-Portfolio programmes for a year. Qualitative data, including two classroom observations and three reflective journal entries per teacher were collected by the author. Content analysis of qualitative data (i.e., lesson observation transcripts and journal entries) was performed deductively. The findings showed that except Jamie, Jill and Jackie hardly enhanced the usefulness of e-Portfolios, because they could not empower students to link artefacts, reflection, and validation properly owing to multiple reasons. Pedagogical implications concerning how to scale up the usefulness of e-Portfolio in L2 classroom contexts are discussed.

Keywords: e-Portfolios; pedagogical innovations; portfolio assessment; second language (L2) classrooms
Corresponding author: Ricky Lam, AAB 811, Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, HKSAR, E-mail:

Funding source: Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR)

Award Identifier / Grant number: EDB(LE)/P&R/EL/203/12

About the author

Ricky Lam

Ricky Lam is Associate Professor and Associate Department Head in the Department of Education Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Ricky is the Past President of Hong Kong Association for Applied Linguistics, 2018–2020. He teaches a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. His research interests include L2 writing assessment, digital portfolios, and language assessment literacy. His publications have appeared in Assessing Writing, System, Language Testing, TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, ELT Journal, and other international journals. Ricky is also the author of Using Portfolios in Language Teaching (RELC New Portfolio Series 4) (2019, SEAMEO Regional Language Centre).

  1. Research funding: This work was funded by the Language Fund under Research and Development Projects 2021–22 of the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), Hong Kong SAR. The project reference number is (EDB(LE)/P&R/EL/203/12).

  2. Competing interests: None.

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Received: 2022-03-01
Accepted: 2022-07-25
Published Online: 2022-08-22
Published in Print: 2024-06-25

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Consolidating EFL content and vocabulary learning via interactive reading
  4. Understanding salient trajectories and emerging profiles in the development of Chinese learners’ motivation: a growth mixture modeling approach
  5. Multilingual pedagogies in first versus foreign language contexts: a cross-country study of language teachers
  6. Classroom assessment and learning motivation: insights from secondary school EFL classrooms
  7. Interculturality and Islam in Indonesia’s high-school EFL classrooms
  8. Collaborative writing in an EFL secondary setting: the role of task complexity
  9. Spanish heritage speakers’ processing of lexical stress
  10. Effectiveness of second language collocation instruction: a meta-analysis
  11. Understanding the Usefulness of E-Portfolios: Linking Artefacts, Reflection, and Validation
  12. Syntactic prediction in L2 learners: evidence from English disjunction processing
  13. The cognitive construction-grammar approach to teaching the Chinese Ba construction in a foreign language classroom
  14. The predictive roles of enjoyment, anxiety, willingness to communicate on students’ performance in English public speaking classes
  15. Speaking proficiency development in EFL classrooms: measuring the differential effect of TBLT and PPP teaching approaches
  16. L2 textbook input and L2 written production: a case of Korean locative postposition–verb construction
  17. What does the processing of chunks by learners of Chinese tell us? An acceptability judgment investigation
  18. Comparative analysis of written corrective feedback strategies: a linear growth modeling approach
  19. Enjoyment in language teaching: a study into EFL teachers’ subjectivities
  20. Students’ attitude and motivation towards concept mapping-based prewriting strategies
  21. Pronunciation pedagogy in English as a foreign language teacher education programs in Vietnam
  22. The role of language aptitude probed within extensive instruction experience: morphosyntactic knowledge of advanced users of L2 English
  23. The impact of different glossing conditions on the learning of EFL single words and collocations in reading
  24. Patterns of motivational beliefs among high-, medium-, and low-achieving English learners in China
  25. The effect of linguistic choices in note-taking on academic listening performance: a pedagogical translanguaging perspective
  26. A latent profile analysis of Chinese EFL learners’ enjoyment and anxiety in reading and writing: associations with imaginative capacity and story continuation writing performance
  27. Effects of monolingual and bilingual subtitles on L2 vocabulary acquisition
  28. Task complexity, task repetition, and L2 writing complexity: exploring interactions in the TBLT domain
  29. Expansion of verb-argument construction repertoires in L2 English writing
  30. Immediate versus delayed prompts, field dependence and independence cognitive style and L2 development
  31. Aural vocabulary, orthographic vocabulary, and listening comprehension
  32. The use of metadiscourse by secondary-level Chinese learners of English in examination scripts: insights from a corpus-based study
  33. Scoping review of research methodologies across language studies with deaf and hard-of-hearing multilingual learners
  34. Exploring immediate and prolonged effects of collaborative writing on young learners’ texts: L2 versus FL
  35. Discrepancy in prosodic disambiguation strategies between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers
  36. Exploring the state of research on motivation in second language learning: a review and a reliability generalization meta-analysis
  37. Japanese complaint responses in textbook dialogues and ordinary conversations: learning objects to expand interactional repertoires
https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2022-0052
Keywords for this article
e-Portfolios; pedagogical innovations; portfolio assessment; second language (L2) classrooms

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Consolidating EFL content and vocabulary learning via interactive reading
  4. Understanding salient trajectories and emerging profiles in the development of Chinese learners’ motivation: a growth mixture modeling approach
  5. Multilingual pedagogies in first versus foreign language contexts: a cross-country study of language teachers
  6. Classroom assessment and learning motivation: insights from secondary school EFL classrooms
  7. Interculturality and Islam in Indonesia’s high-school EFL classrooms
  8. Collaborative writing in an EFL secondary setting: the role of task complexity
  9. Spanish heritage speakers’ processing of lexical stress
  10. Effectiveness of second language collocation instruction: a meta-analysis
  11. Understanding the Usefulness of E-Portfolios: Linking Artefacts, Reflection, and Validation
  12. Syntactic prediction in L2 learners: evidence from English disjunction processing
  13. The cognitive construction-grammar approach to teaching the Chinese Ba construction in a foreign language classroom
  14. The predictive roles of enjoyment, anxiety, willingness to communicate on students’ performance in English public speaking classes
  15. Speaking proficiency development in EFL classrooms: measuring the differential effect of TBLT and PPP teaching approaches
  16. L2 textbook input and L2 written production: a case of Korean locative postposition–verb construction
  17. What does the processing of chunks by learners of Chinese tell us? An acceptability judgment investigation
  18. Comparative analysis of written corrective feedback strategies: a linear growth modeling approach
  19. Enjoyment in language teaching: a study into EFL teachers’ subjectivities
  20. Students’ attitude and motivation towards concept mapping-based prewriting strategies
  21. Pronunciation pedagogy in English as a foreign language teacher education programs in Vietnam
  22. The role of language aptitude probed within extensive instruction experience: morphosyntactic knowledge of advanced users of L2 English
  23. The impact of different glossing conditions on the learning of EFL single words and collocations in reading
  24. Patterns of motivational beliefs among high-, medium-, and low-achieving English learners in China
  25. The effect of linguistic choices in note-taking on academic listening performance: a pedagogical translanguaging perspective
  26. A latent profile analysis of Chinese EFL learners’ enjoyment and anxiety in reading and writing: associations with imaginative capacity and story continuation writing performance
  27. Effects of monolingual and bilingual subtitles on L2 vocabulary acquisition
  28. Task complexity, task repetition, and L2 writing complexity: exploring interactions in the TBLT domain
  29. Expansion of verb-argument construction repertoires in L2 English writing
  30. Immediate versus delayed prompts, field dependence and independence cognitive style and L2 development
  31. Aural vocabulary, orthographic vocabulary, and listening comprehension
  32. The use of metadiscourse by secondary-level Chinese learners of English in examination scripts: insights from a corpus-based study
  33. Scoping review of research methodologies across language studies with deaf and hard-of-hearing multilingual learners
  34. Exploring immediate and prolonged effects of collaborative writing on young learners’ texts: L2 versus FL
  35. Discrepancy in prosodic disambiguation strategies between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers
  36. Exploring the state of research on motivation in second language learning: a review and a reliability generalization meta-analysis
  37. Japanese complaint responses in textbook dialogues and ordinary conversations: learning objects to expand interactional repertoires
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