W9: Reflection

Although the use of reflection seems like a buzz word made trendy by the current popularity of e-portfolios, critical reflection in learning actually dates back to John Dewey (1859-1952). In fact, it was Dewey who said "We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience."

In fact, Dewey's ideas on reflection  in learning where instrumental in  his colleague David Kolb's development of the Experiential Learning Model wherein he hypothesized the the deepest learning experiences happened during a recursive cycle of experience, reflection, hypothesizing, and testing.

Working as a language instruction specialist, I am constantly trying to encourage my colleagues to find the value in reflection in the language learning process. So many language instructors want to merely TEACH grammar rules, however, second language acquisition (SLA) specialists can tell you that in first language acquisition (also known as child language acquisition), learners are not taught rules on grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. Instead, they here language modeling (experience/observation) and they process and think about what they hear (reflection), come up with what they think the rule is (hypothesis), and then try out the language (test). Based on the feedback (whether the interlocutor understood them or not), they judge the utterance successful or not successful, and then make adjustments as needed to their language hypothesis to store for later.

In child learning, this is all done automatically and intuitively, but in adult language learning (second language learning/foreign language learning), a teacher can actually help a learner recreate this process by actively challenging the learner to follow these steps. For instance, instead of teaching their class how to create a negative sentence construction, they can provide a resource (written dialogue, video, etc) in which speakers are using some positive and some negative constructions (experience/observation) and then ask the learner to hypothesize the rule for forming the construction. The instructor can really cement this learning in their learners' minds by asking them "why/how did you come up with that rule?" (orally or written). Then, an instructor can have the learners test their rules. And then, return to the reflections to see if there is anything then need to change and modify about their rule and how they came up with it (if their testing wasn't successful).

And this is just one example. Students can reflect on cultural content in the language classroom. And I've also successfully used reflection for self-assessment, having the student reflect on their own progress in fluency, communication, etc. over a certain period of time.

Even in language learning reflection is a critical teaching strategy. Asking students to reflect on their learning process really can:

1. empower the learner by showing them that they can figure a lot of language learning out without an instructor
2. encourage learner autonomy
3. decrease "instructor talk time"
4. provide more meaningful learning experiences (that commonly lead to the learner really acquiring a new concept, rather than learning it in the moment and forgetting it as soon as they leave class).

Instructors want to teach the grammar because they feel like it's faster. Which, in the short term it is. it is much faster to tell a student about a language grammar rule than to go through the stops above. However, just because you've told them, doesn't mean they really learned it. And if you have to spend additional time re-explaining concepts, because the learners don't really absorb them during the first telling process...then really, you aren't saving any time by avoiding the reflective process. :)

(Sternberg, R. J., and L. F. Zhang. "Experiential Learning Theory: Previous Research and New Directions." Perspectives on cognitive, learning, and thinking styles. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000.)