Research Information System
International Conference on Social Sciences – ICOSS Cappadocia, Nevşehir, Turkey, 16 - 20 April 2018, pp.274
This study presents a review of literature concerning the advantages of e-portfolio for
language learners in EFL/ESL contexts. For this study, three literature search methods
were applied: searches in some major databases and citation search. The starting point of the literature search was set at the year 2008 to ascertain the type of tendency in this field. The search of the related literature was carried out in December 2017 and February 2018, using the databases ERIC, ERIC FirstSearch, SCOPUS, Web of Science (WOS), and Google Scholar. All of the searches were limited to the period starting from 2008 to 2017. The keywords used for the search were a combination of “e-portfolio”, “foreign language learning”, and “second language learning”. In order to narrow down the study, articles regarding teacher professional portfolios, special needs and other fields were excluded. This resulted in a total of 35 articles from the aforementioned database search. The researchers selected the articles that reported on the employment of e-portfolio in EL/SL learning contexts. In order to increase the reliability of this study, a citation search in the articles was performed through the scan of the lists of references belonging to the reviewed articles. This yielded five more relevant articles. As a result of the data search and citation search, 40 articles were chosen. Each article was examined by the researchers to construct themes through content analysis. The findings of this review study indicated that the use of e-portfolios stimulated language learners’ active participation and promoted their sense of independence in the process of language learning. Besides, it was pointed out that eportfolio provided language learners the opportunity to consciously monitor and assess their own level of language skills.