22 All of these students’ efforts clearly show that self-assessment encourages
students to be autonomous and independent learners. Self-assessment does give some benefits for the students. Therefore, self-assessment should be integrated
into the English classroom everyday. 2.1.5.3 Self-assessment in portfolio assessment
There are three basic elements of portfolio which are students’ artifacts, assessment criteria, and self-assessment Wyaatt III and Looper, 1999 as cited in
Marhaeni, n.d. Students’ artifacts show the development and progress that students have made during the lesson. Assessment criteria are guideline for the
students to create a good assignment which meet the requirements. Finally, self- assessment helps students to achieve the assessment criteria. Self-assessment
provides information for students about what they are good at and what they are less good at, about their skills they have and the weaknesses that they have to get
rid of, and about the progress they have made. With this information, students will be able to produce better assignments which meet the assessment criteria.
O’Malley and Pierce 1996 add, self-assessment is the key of portfolio assessment cited in Marhaeni, n.d. Moreover, “self-assessment is a good tool to
facilitate an effective writing process” Marhaeni, n.d. Using self-assessment, students can continually monitor their progress in writing. Portfolio assessment is
learner-centered. Not likely in traditional assessment where only the teacher who is aware of the assessment criteria, in portfolio assessment, students are also
aware of these criteria. Like what the researcher have explained above, if students
23 are aware of the assessment criteria, they will be able to produce better
assignments and make a good progress during the teaching-learning progress.
2.2 Review of Related Studies
This part explains some related studies on portfolio assessment that have been done by the experts. During this study, the researcher found four research
articles similar to this study. One of these four online journals discusses teachers’ perception on the use of portfoio which title is Teachers’ Perspective on Portfolio
Assessment in EFL Writing Classroom. This journal is written by Shao-Ting Alan Hung. The other three discuss students’ perception on the use of portfolio which
are Matthew Apple and Etsuko Shimo’s Perception of Portfolio Assessment in EFL Cassrooms, Davis et all’s Student Perception of a Portfolio Assessment
Process, and S Elango’s Portfolio as a Learning Tool: Students’ Perspective. Based on those four journals found by the researcher, this part will be
devided into two sections which are teachers’ perception on the use of portfolio and students’ perception on the use of portfolio.
2.2.1 Teachers’ Perception on the Use of Portfolio
In his study, Hung 2005 uses in-depth interview to gather the data. He interviewed two EFL teachers at college level. Based on his study, it is explained
that both of these EFL teachers consider traditional assessment classroom examination not fair. In this study, it is explained that “students has different
background and different language proficiencies that there are always some students who work extremely hard but still fail in the exams and there are students
24 who hardly ever participate in the activities in class but still get good grades”
Hung 2005. Hung 2005 explains that traditional examination is not the best way for
assessing students’ learning. Teachers have to find alternative assessment that can be used together with this traditional assessment. In this study, it is explained that
portfolio is considered as one of this authentic assessment. Portfolios can be used to witness students’ growth over a period of time. They show “what students can
do rather than they can not do” Hung, 2005. Teachers also agree that portfolios emerge autonomous learning. Students will be able to know their strengths and
weakneses and they can control their own learning. Students can set their own learning objective and motivate themselves to achieve this objective.
In order to make portfolio assessment effective, Hung 2005 explains that teachers have to: First, give clear explanation on the implementation of portfolio.
From Hung’s study it is found that students who are knowing that portfolio plays a role as an assessment tools for their writing classes aware writing process as
their responsible. Students are motivated to give the best effort for completing their portfolio. Second, provide a clear and specific rubricscriteria to assess their
students’ portfolio. “Clear criteria motivate students and make the assessment more attainable” Hung, 2005.
According to Hung 2005, teachers welcome portfolio very well but still they consider traditional paper-and-pencil test important as part of assessment
tools in class. Traditional assessment “gives teachers another source to evaluate students’ performance and it pushes students to study” Hung, 2005. Hung
25 conclude his study with a suggestion to combine traditional paper-and-pencil test
with portfolio assessment.
2.2.2 Students’ Perception on The Use of Portfolio
In conducting a research on students’ perception on the use of portfolio, all the experts use the same research intrument to gather the data which is
questionnaire. Davis et all and S Elango et all conducted the study in medical training field. Whereas Matthew Apple and Etsuko Shimo conduct the study on
EFL classroom in Japan. The three research articles conclude the same thing that students give a
good response on the use of portfolio as an assessment tools though the implementation of portfolio sometimes need days to finish, complicated, and
stressfull. Students believe that portfolio “hightened their understanding of the exit learning outcomes and enabled reflection on their work” Davis et all, 2009.
Moreover, portfolio encourages students to develop. Cognitively, students develop their writing skill through portfolio: they can learn from their own
mistakes or from others. Affectively, portfolio guides students to be more autonomous and active in learning.
2.3 Theoretical Framework
The issue of assessing writing is often related to the use of portfolio assessment. Portfolio assessment is considered to be alternative assessment tool
which can cover the weaknesses of traditional assessment which is paper-and- pencil test. Portfolio assessment offers a lot of benefits for both teachers and
