A portfolio is a collection of work produced by a student that demonstrates achievements, progress made, as well as effort invested in the task. The student usually decides what is to be included as evidence and provides an accompanying self-reflective piece of writing. Students may sometimes also be involved in helping to formulate the criteria for assessing the portfolio.

From the student's point of view, the variability of what one might consider acceptable output is probably the greatest strength of the portfolio. Depending on the topic and level, it might include:

With lower-level language tasks, one might include the completed tasks themselves, reflection on perceived weaknesses and an indication of remedial action taken.

The advantages of portfolios are that they show how a student has developed linguistically and they are thus more informative than one-off or 'snapshot' language assessments. They also show if and how students have responded positively to feedback.

On the other hand, a major problem with portfolios is that one can never be sure that all the work is the student's own. To address this concern, it may be necessary to do a viva in the FL linked to the portfolio. Furthermore, the individualized and therefore extremely diverse nature of portfolios can make it very difficult to formulate reliable marking criteria, especially if large numbers of students are involved. Indeed one might question to what extent anything that is deliberately intended to be unique to a student is amenable to fair and just assessment using fixed criteria. While they can have huge motivational benefits and provide very positive washback on classroom learning, portfolios are probably not ideal as the exclusive instruments of summative assessment, but they may well have an application in assessing residence abroad. For ideas on designing portfolios and issues to consider when marking them, see Baume (2001) and Race (2001: 68-70).

An important development in modern languages is the European Language Portfolio which aspires to promote democratic citizenship and mobility in Europe by recording the language knowledge and experiences of the holder. It consists of three parts:

Comparison of language qualifications is achieved through reference to the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe, 2001). For further details on the Portfolio, see Little and Perclová (2001) and Gauthier (2002).