Using a Student Portfolio in a Grammar Class
by David Robinson
Perimeter College
Atlanta, Georgia USA

While teaching both in the U.S. and in Egypt, I have found that many, if not most, ESLIEFL courses have a "study-skills" component through which the students either explicitly or implicitly learn about being language students. A grammar-writing course provides an excellent situation in which students can learn both about the organization of English and about methods for organizing their own approaches to studying English. After all, grammar is the organization of a language and is taught in a systematic fashion. This setting of systematic study can be an effective one for students to learn to be a bit more systematic in their study habits and in their collection and storage of study materials.

Toward this end, teachers who field-tested Applied English Grammar found it very helpful to have students keep a Grammar Notebook--a "portfolio" of their work in the grammar--writing course. In addition to helping students find and retrieve course materials (instead of leafing through a wad of crumpled papers), organizing their materials into a portfolio let students have a ready reference from which they could track their own progress and see their own areas of strength or consistent weakness. This use of the grammar portfolio enabled students to begin to take responsibility for their own learning because they knew more about their own English and about their own learning styles and strategies.

The idea of requiring students to keep a notebook/portfolio came during the field-testing when my wife took a course that used a three-ring binder with dividers as its required textbook; the instructor then provided hole-punched materials to fill the notebook. The instructor of that course wanted her course materials to be easily retrievable and required the notebook so that students would have a uniform system of filing and retrieving their materials. At my suggestion, the field testing then began to use two required "textbooks"--a three-ring binder with a set of dividers along with Applied English Grammar. The bookstore cooperated by putting the dividers into notebooks that were shelved with the required textbooks for the students' other courses.

The six-tabbed dividers were labeled in the first class session so that from the beginning of the class the students had an overview of the materials that they were expected to collect in their portfolios. The five sections were (1) the course syllabus, assignment calendar, and course information; (2) the Grammar Journal exercises from Applied English Grammar along with other journal entries kept by the students; (3) class notes, handouts, and returned homework; (4) returned tests and unit review exercises; (5) writing and editing assignments; and (6) current vocabulary lists. When working on reviews or self-analysis exercises, the teacher could then easily ask students to turn to section 5 in their notebooks and retrieve writing #3 (which might have been written three weeks earlier). In my experience, without building in an organizational system, the chances of a majority of the class finding a three-week-old assignment are pretty slim.

Having a goal of helping the students be more organized in their study requires that teachers plan ahead for ways of assisting students in the process. For example, to aid students in filing their class materials (returned assignments and tests along with handouts), teachers can hole- punch these materials. To emphasize the importance of the portfolio, teachers made use of class time each week for students to do activities related to the notebook and based 10-15% of the final grade on the completeness and quality of the portfolio. Our theory is that students know what teachers value because those valued things are given class time and are included in the grade for the course. Teachers cannot expect most students to follow through on new activities just because the teacher says the activity is a "good idea."

Many of the activities in Applied English Grammar encourage active taking of responsibility by the students for their own leaming. For example, throughout the Grammar Journal, students refer to their earlier work on the Diagnostic Test and the Diagnostic Paragraph, analyzing their problems and planning for change. Students are encouraged to plan their study time with their own problems in mind. In addition, many of the grammar exercises ask for data from previous writing. Organizing the materials for retrieval by students is assumed in the text. Thus, in addition to their study of English grammar and of the process of editing their own written English, students are leaming study skill methods that should be of use to them long after they have finished their study of ESL.