Beyond traditional summative testing: Investigating the effect of portfolio as an alternative assessment on EFL students’ writing engagement

The present study investigated the impact of portfolio assessment (PA) on the behavioral, cognitive and affective engagement in writing among Moroccan EFL learners. For this purpose, two full cohorts of high school students were recruited for the research. One group was randomly selected as the experimental group and the other was the control group. The experimental cohort participated in continuous portfolio-oriented writing evaluation tasks, including drafting, self-evaluation, peer evaluation, student-teacher discussions, and reflection. The control cohort had two summative writing achievement assessments (SWATS) following regular instructional writing practices. The information was gathered through multi-dimensional writing engagement scale and students’ reflective papers. Results showed that the experimental group performed better than the control group on all three dimensions of engagement. Moreover, the experimental group showed a statistically significant improvement from the pre-intervention to the post-intervention period of the study, particularly in the behavioral and cognitive areas. Furthermore, qualitative data revealed that most students thought physical activity was beneficial for cognitive engagement, followed by behavioral engagement, and last by emotional engagement. The findings suggest that PA may be a useful alternative or complement to the existing SWATS by providing a more interactive and dynamic assessment environment that is more consistent with the iterative nature of writing and the different needs of learners.