A Study Of Relationship Between Reflective Learning And College Students’ English Writing Competency

Reflection, as a kind of philosophic idea, has been brought into the education field byJohn Dewey in his book How We Think in1933and it has been applied into practice bySchon. Since then, there are many scholars both overseas and in China doing studies aboutreflection. They studied the influences of reflective teaching and learning on teachers andlearners. English writing as the most important part on English learning has drawnresearchers’ attention. But most of what they researched about English learning byreflection is related to the whole English learning ability.This study is also about English learning. Different from the previous researches, itsmain points are about the relationship between reflective learning and writing, especiallythe relationship between reflective learning and four aspects (vocabulary, theme, structureand grammar) of English writing. There is a new framework designed by the researcherwhich gives the students instructions on their reflection. It is about“reviewing——thinking——finding——rethinking——taking action——assessment—reviewing”. There were68English majors involved in this study who were separatedinto two groups: one is control class including35students, the other is experimental classincluding33students. The experimental class received15-week reflective training whilethe control class received traditional teaching. After15weeks, the collected data has beendealt with by SPSS.17. Through the analysis of the processed data, there were somefollowing findings. First, the students in the experimental class had improved theirreflective ability after their training. Second, the reflective learning could improve thelearners’ English writing from the results of the data. Third, the reflective learning hadpositive effects on learners’ vocabulary mostly, then the structure had ranked second placeof the most positive effects of reflective learning. But it had little effects on their writing themes and their grammars. These findings prove that the reflective learning has positiveeffects on some aspects of English learning not on all the English learning. This study alsogives a suggestion for English teachers that they should instruct the students to employ thereflective learning in their learning process. The framework in this study is applied notonly to the students but also to people who want to improve themselves out of campus.Reflective learning is a good strategy for people’s life-long learning. This framework savesstudents some time and energy in their English writing learning. This study also presentsits limitations and provides some suggestions for further study.