The Effect of Portfolio-Keeping on EFL Young Learners’ Writing Achievement and Their Motivation Towards Writing

Abstract

The common view that writing skill in a foreign language is difficult to acquire may lead to loss of motivation and therefore lack of success among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Portfolio application as an alternative method in foreign language teaching may alleviate such a problem and appear as an effective means to increase students’ motivation and success levels in EFL writing classes. Its application, therefore, needs to be disseminated in teaching English in the Turkish context. With such a purpose, this study aims to investigate the effect of portfolio keeping on young learner's writing motivation and writing achievement in teaching English as a foreign language to young learners in a public middle school in the Denizli province during the 2018-2019 academic year with 30 7^th grade students. The present study represents an experimental study as a four-month portfolio application was carried out with 15 experimental group participants while the control group (15 participants) did not receive a specific treatment. The quantitative data obtained through a writing motivation survey and pre and post writing tasks in the study were supported by qualitative data through interviews held with the participants in the experimental group. Questionnaires and pre-post tasks were analyzed through the SPSS 22.0 statistical package and interviews through content analysis. The results of the study may indicate that portfolio-keeping can be used to increase young learners’ both writing motivation and achievement in English language teaching. The study also suggests that portfolio application can improve students’ writing sub-skills such as focus, elaboration, organization, conventions and vocabulary while the portfolio keeping has improved students' focus and elaboration sub-skills the most and convention sub-skill the least. The study also showed that students' attitudes towards portfolio application were positive at the end of the study.