Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Okasha

1. Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Okasha Curriculum & Instruction Department (TEFL)

2. The Effectiveness of the Portfolio-Assessment Approach in Developing EFL Strategic Reading

3. The method that will be used in presenting 1- First, I will show the meaning of the portfolio assessment, its uses in the classroom ,its relationship with reading and how does it affect reading or how can it be used in reading? • 2- second, the meaning of reading and the meaning of strategic reading and you will notice the difference between both. • How to call readers strategic readers? • How to assess strategic reading by using portfolio assessment? • Third and the last, the main characteristics of the portfolio assessment approach.

4. Abstract: • The aim of this proposal is to investigate the effectiveness of the portfolio assessment approach in developing EFL strategic reading among students.

5. Introduction • The portfolio is considered to be a teaching and evaluation approach at the same time. It is a diagnostic and remedial that lets students know their shortcomings and know how to overcome them. • The portfolio assessment creates more independence for the students and assists them in developing their own learning, so it is considered to be constructivist learning, (Engel, et al., 2003).

6. Portfolio assessment in the classroom: • The use of portfolios in the classroom may involve students in reflecting on their work to promote self-evaluation as well as to increase students' sense of ownership in their literacy activities (Herbert, E. 1992).The use of portfolios to assess reading progress has become more prominent in the past few years. There is a great emphasis on methods that require students to demonstrate reading abilities through written responses. • Teachers are not simply relying on traditional, multiple-choice tests to determine the progress of their students in reading. Rather, many teachers reported using classroom assessment procedures in the shape of activities-written paragraphs, projects or presentations, and reading portfolios (Farr, 1992). Portfolio is used to compare learner to himself not to others via comparing his work over a period of time to see and notice how much progress and development he has done, (Venezkey, 1992).

7. What’s reading? • Reading has been defined as a process of thinking, evaluating, judging, imagining, reasoning, and problem solving. Reading specialists identify four steps in the reading act: perception, comprehension, reaction, and integration. Perception is the ability to pronounce the word as a meaningful unit. Comprehension is the ability to make individual words construct useful ideas as they are read in context. Reaction requires judgmental action-a feeling about what the author has said- and the final step is the ability to assimilate the ideas or concepts into one’s background of experience so that they are working in a meaningful use of reading as a tool in the solution of the problem, (Chen, 1990; Hoffner, 1991) .

8. What is Reading? • Reading is an extremely complex activity and one of the most important skills in language learning. There are different levels to reading and so many different factors are involved facilitating actual comprehension. Authentic reading comprehension implies deep understanding, ability to infer, analyze, apply and evaluate. It is important for ESL pupils therefore to know how to read and to be able to deal with a text independently. Before teachers expect their students to read strategically, they must invest the needed time in properly teaching them how.

9. What is Strategic Reading? • Research indicates that effective or expert readers are strategic. This means that readers have purposes for their reading and adjust their reading to each purpose and for each reading task. Strategic readers use a variety of strategies and skills as they construct meaning (Dorit, S. 2007). A strategy is a plan selected deliberately by the reader to accomplish a particular goal or to complete a given task (Paris, C. 1992).

10. Why is Strategic reading a must? • Learning to use strategies effectively is essential to constructing meaning. Readers who are not strategic often encounter difficulties in their reading (Paris, C. 1991). These early difficulties in reading may influence the way readers learn throughout the rest of their lives. Strategic readers use a variety of strategies to construct meaning. Students can be helped to learn strategies in a variety of ways. Some strategy learning takes place through reading and writing experiences. Strategic readers have strategies for dealing with many different learning tasks (Harris & Sipay 1990).

11. How to apply strategic reading in a class-room? • 1.      Preparation: • Choose one strategy to teach. Choose a reading selection. Read the text carefully, marking points where the strategy might be used. Make notes for yourself to guide the explanation. Choose another text, passage, or portion of the text to be used for guided practice. Read the text carefully, marking points where you want the students to stop and use the strategy on their own. List the stopping points on either individual practice sheets or on the board.

12. Step two: • 2.      Description: Define the strategy clearly. Example: “Predicting is making guesses about what will come next in the text you are reading.” Explain when the strategy should be used. Example: “You predict before and during your reading.”

13. Step three: • 3.      Demonstration: Tell the students that you will be modeling the strategy. Start by reading the selected text aloud. When you get to your marked spot, stop, and begin to think aloud. Tell the students that you have made a prediction and will read on to either confirm or reject your prediction. Continue reading until you see your prediction outcome. Tell the students the outcome.

14. Step four: • 4.      Interactive practice: Tell the students that now they will be making predictions with you. Continue reading aloud until you arrive at your next marked stopping point. Stop and invite the students to orally make predictions with you. Example: “What do you think will happen next in the book and why?” Allow the students opportunities to share their predictions. Respond to their predictions non-judgmentally. Example: “Why do you think that?”, “That’s a possibility.”, “Very likely.”

15. Step five: • 5.      Guided Practice: • Using the second chosen selection, lead the students into a guided practice of using the strategy. Hand out the text selection. Tell the students that they will read silently and stop at designated spots to use the strategy. This can be done orally or written (small group) or written (whole group). Observe and guide as needed as the students practice the strategy.

16. Step six: • Independent Use: • Tell the students that they will be using the strategy they learned while they read silently. Example: “Today we learned about the strategy __________. While you read silently, I want you to be thinking of this strategy and using it as you go along.” • As a means to connect with the text, proficient readers ask questions. They question the actual text, the author, and themselves before, during, and after reading (Jeanette, K. and Sharon, V. 2007).

17. What’s effective reading? • Effective reading depends on reading silently and quickly. Good readers must develop the ability to understand new words from the context, to understand main versus supporting ideas, and to make inferences and prediction from the written text (Integrated English Language Program2000).

18. Who are the good readers? • Good readers are brilliant at decisions about the text. • They may set their own purpose for reading. • They engage in a dialogue with the author, and thus become active readers. • Reading is a problem solving situation that involves taking all the text cues and information from prior knowledge into account. Learners need to become active readers by solving problems if they are truly to understand texts.

19. The relationship between assessment :and reading • Reading is a dynamic process in which the reader actively participates. As a result, difficulty is no longer viewed as a property of a particular reading skill or task, but rather as an interaction among the reader, text, and context of the reading situation. The real question the researchers are asking when they look at assessing reading is: What distinguishes a good reader from a poor reader? Implicit in this question is an even more fundamental question: What are learners doing when they read? Assessment is an attempt to answer the first question, but if researchers cannot at least try to answer the second, they do not know what they are assessing, and any measure or description of reading proficiency they suggest is meaningless,( John, E., 2009) .

20. How to apply assessment in strategic reading? • Teachers can collect information on reading skills using a rating scale while observing students individually, in pairs, or in small groups. • Ratings for specific skills could be based on probe questions asked of students following a silent reading exercise. Probe questions should reflect different levels of cognitive complexity, such as the following:

21. Kinds of questions: • who was the main person in this text? Where did the event take place? What was the main idea of the reading? Retell what you have read in your own words. What are the parts or features of ______? How does ______ compare with _______? Outline the components of ________. What evidence supports________? What would you predict will occur next? What ideas can you add to ________? What would you suggest is a solution for ________? Do you agree with the statement that ______? Prioritize ________ according to ________. What criteria would you use to assess ___________?

22. What is the advantage of the portfolio? • Portfolio reflects how students react to a reading selection how to tell what they felt, observed; what came to their mind while reading. It enables students to write entries for a reading journal. Students can paraphrase main ideas and support details of a reading passage. They can argue for or against an author's main idea. Students can find the topic of a reading selection and writing all the words related to it. They can choose a few words they particularly enjoyed and write down any associations which came to mind. They can identify the way the writer solved a particular problem for expressing a certain meaning or idea. Via using the portfolio, students can find out the meaning of certain grammatical structures. Students can develop questions about a reading text and explain how the answers can guide the teacher to assess the comprehension level of the students.

23. What is the advantage of the portfolio? • Students can make inferences, draw conclusion, make prediction and communicate to others in writing or speak the meaning or ideas derived from the reading activity. They can distinguish between main and secondary ideas. Through using reading portfolio assessment, students will not only read different kinds of materials but they will read them for different purposes as they would in real life.

24. The most important one is that assessment should measure the learner’s required and desired outcomes. In order to achieve this, it is fundamental that the assessment process should be participatory. In other words, the learners must be a full partner in the early assessment, the ongoing assessment and the end assessment.

25. The relationship between teacher students in this approach: • This participatory approach establishes a direct relationship between the instructor and the learner. Together, they plan the program, the pace, the type of assessment, all based on a collaborative effort, and always learner-centered. Learner-centered means, self-directed, having choices, being able to self-evaluate, taking responsibility and placing the learner at the center of the assessment procedure. The learner might describe what kinds of practices or strategies seem best suited to his/her learning styles. Part of this exchange may also include an attitude assessment, where the student reveals how he/she feels about his/her education or lifelong learning, (Taylor, 1998).

26. Characteristics of the portfolio assessment approach • There are eight characteristics to design a powerful portfolio: • A portfolio must contain information that shows that a student has engaged in self-reflection. • Student must be involved in the selection of the pieces to be included. • The portfolio must be explicitly or implicitly convey the students’ activities. • The portfolio is separate and different from the student cumulative folder. • At the end of the year, the portfolio may contain only materials that the student is willing to make public. • A portfolio may have multiple purposes. • The portfolio could contain information that illustrates growth. • The skill and techniques that are involved in producing effective portfolio don’t happen by themselves. Students need models of portfolio and how others develop and reflect upon them, (Paulson et al, 1991).