Ingilizceyi Yabanci Dil Olarak Ögrenen Ögrencilerin ve Ögretmenlerin Portfolyo Hakkindaki Algilari: Bir Polis-Hirsiz Kovalamacasi/Teachers and Students' Perceptions regarding Portfolio Assessment in an EFL context: A Cops and Robbers Chase

Though the importance of alternative assessment has been acknowledged and regarded as one of the latest contributions to the field of ELT both in theory and in practice, and though portfolio based assessment is ubiquitous in a plenty of language teaching organizations (hereafter LTOs), it is clear that hardly any study has been implemented on teachers and students' perceptions on portfolio assessment in LTOs in Turkey. The fact that the importance of portfolio based assessment is growing exponentially in the last decades has made such an assessment type be fairly common and many language schools and universities employ it all over the world. Portfolio per se is admitted to have a variety of advantages that should be taken into consideration in developing LTOs' curriculum. In addition to the known standardized and high stakes tests, portfolio based assessment has also started to control the assessment system in schools. Further, the usage of portfolio simultaneously with the standardized tests in the schools has justified that it enhances motivation, engenders individualized and collaborative learning, and inculcates a sense of responsibility and that it lets new ideas germinate in language learners' mind. As a direct consequence of this, it is not unusual to see that portfolio has become an important assessment tool in LTOs and that a large number of teachers and students have been thinking it as the sine qua non of a successful assessment and using it in their classrooms. The annals of portfolio are replete with already developed fundamental precepts that help improve the negative and outdated sides of portfolio, with which both teachers and students have beset. Additionally, to make vague definitions of portfolio system much more understandable and to underpin the underlying rationale for ensconcing such a noteworthy system in LTOs' curriculum, many researchers has defined portfolio broadly. However, the universally espoused definition of portfolio epitomizing it is that it is 'a purposeful collection of examples of learning collected over a period of time' (Segers, Gijbels, & Thurlings, 2008; 36). On the other hand, multiple-choice tests may sometimes pose a real risk of adversely representing the activities that teachers fulfill in classes. This situation can lead these tests' face or content validity to suffer. Over all, standardized tests are one-shot tests and do not help predict well learners' future success. Rather, they present us a fragmentary p