A Critical Review of Portfolio Assessment as an Alternative Tool in English Language Teaching Classrooms

Recent developments and issues in the education has brought radical changes in the way learners’ and teachers alike need to reconsider about assessments, particularly in ESL/EFL learning and teaching classrooms. As such, alternative assessment tools are meant to be worked out as solutions over traditional approaches, so that learners are truly assessed for the calibre of work that is produced by them. Hence, this paper will delve upon portfolio assessment as an alternative tool to gauge learners’ true potential over traditional testing methods. The paper has critically reviewed about portfolio assessment under five sub-sections with discussions about portfolio assessment in ESL/EFL teaching and learning being first, followed by the types of portfolio assessments as the second item. Then, models and implementation of portfolio assessment in the ESL/EFL classrooms next, with merit and demit points of portfolio assessment being the fourth and fifth items to be discussed respectively. The critical review is summed up by providing some recommendations and concluding remarks for the whole piece.