Students' and instructors' views on English speaking portfolios

In this study, it is aimed to analyze students' and instructors' opinions about speaking portfolio applied in English preparatory classes of a private university in Ankara. Participants are 263 students and 10 English language instructors. In the study, descriptive research method by the help of quantitative and qualitative data collection tools is used. At the end of the 16 week implementation of the speaking portfolio, the questionnaire was applied to the students. Moreover, individual interviews with instructors and a focus group interview with 6 students were made. In data collection process, the students' and instructors' attitudes towards the portfolio, the contribution of the portfolio to the speaking skill, the effect of the portfolio study on autonomous learning, the written feedbacks given to the portfolio tasks and portfolio as an assessment tool were investigated. When the findings were analyzed, it was seen that students agreed that the portfolio evaluation method was a more effective method than the traditional methods. They pointed out that speaking portfolio has a crucial role in improving speaking skills. Moreover, most of the learners have positive thoughts about feedback given by instructors. While students emphasize the positive roles of feedback, according to both the students and the instructors, the feedback form is inadequate in terms of quantity and quality, causing failure in providing sufficient benefit for learning. Throughout the learning process, students thought they became autonomous in their own learning by finding their weaknesses and deficiencies. Instructors think that students study in an organized way with the help of the portfolio and thus they develop their speaking skill. On the other hand, being a difficult process to apply and technical problems are taken as negative sides of this method. On the basis of the findings, some suggestions have been made for instructors and those who develop the curriculum in order to have a more effective process. Keywords: speaking portfolio, alternative assessment, portfolio evaluation, constructivism, autonomous learning