| dc.description.abstract | Writing being a language skill hard to acquire,
but essential for academic success, identifying the learner
attitudes towards it is important. This study is devoted
to investigate the possibility of developing the writing
process through portfolio based learning to raise learners`
self-esteem during a fifty-hour writing course. Ninety-six
first year undergraduates of the Faculty of Technology,
Wayamba University participated in this. The learners
produced ten paragraphs of different structures and
revised the first drafts on a computer based on the teacher
feedback which comprised of both direct corrections and
indirect clues. The brainstorming exercises, paragraph
outlines and first and second drafts were placed in a
portfolio, and the learners were asked to reflect on the
process and feedback every time they attempted the next
paragraph. The same questionnaire designed to identify
the learner attitudes towards writing was administered
both prior to and after the treatment to measure whether
there was an improvement. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank
Test was applied on six questions that focused on writing
skills such as the ability to generate ideas, organize ideas,
support them with appropriate and interesting examples,
write fast and accomplish a task within a given time.
The p value of 0.00 (P < 0.05) revealed that there was
a statistically significant improvement in composing
competency in their perception. Moreover, the learners`
thoughts on portfolio writing were extremely positive,
and could be coded as 'interesting, skill enhancing,
confidence building, beneficial, and supportive for future
purposes, proving the self-directed approach to portfolio
writing to be quite productive. | en_US |
