Write a reflection in which you summarise your main learning about your teaching and next steps. This will prepare you to design an intervention next time.
After doing a self-observation and analysis of my teaching in relation to what my learners perceive to be their difficulties in writing, from their drafts, as well as in the light of my hypotheses, I have identified some strengths as well some areas for development in my teaching.
I find the following to be areas of strengths in my teaching.
At the psychological and emotional level, my learners like it and are very comfortable sharing their writing with me. Although it is a requirement that they share their work with me and other teachers for feedback and marking, it is also indicative of a good positive teacher-students relationship. More importantly, it indicates that my learners perceive it that when they share their work with the teacher, they are expecting to learn and improve their learning on how to write.
At the same psychological and emotional level, I find it a strength when my learners perceive and indicate that they learn to write better from the corrective feedback given by their teacher on their writing drafts. I use this corrective feedback as a one-on-one teaching strategy with a great focus on addressing the individual specific needs and difficulties as they arise from their writings. I find this strategy very effective at the cognitive linguistic level because it addresses difficulties in terms of developing critical thinking skills, acquiring and generating ideas for writing, developing and structuring ideas, research and quotations, language and grammar. This consists of indifying errors as part of their interlanguage and then they are shown the correct language forms of those errors. That way the learners are beginning to learn that having language errors in their writing is a sign of their language develoment and in a positive way. When they are shown the correct language forms, the improvement in their writing begins to happen.
The learners liking the use of computer technology for sharing their work and receiving feedback is a strength itself in my learners learning to write. This is another positive psychological and emotional aspect in their learning of writing. As the main media used by students in their writing and for feedback, it is convenient for time spent on sharing and receiving feedback, communication, rewindable learning, research for content, continuity of learning, and correction or errors, to mention some few. Students are comfortable and having skills to use this technology, so it will continue to be used as the main media for their learning of English.
When I looked at my use of scaffolding in my teaching, I am comforrtable that I use it as a pedagogical strategy, but I feel I need to be more specific in content and aspects I use, the intensity of the coverage, and order of presentation in my scaffolding. I consider this as alredy a strength as I am convinced that it's important for me to use it in teaching English Language learners how to write. As a strategy I use it to generally teach what my learners need to know about writing and writing standards offered before getting the learners to begin to write. Submitting their drafts, I then began to use the corrective feedback at a individual basis.
From the same self-observation and analysis of my teaching, I identified some areas that need development in my teaching.
I found that in my teaching I hardly take any time to seek the perceptions of the learners on what they find difficult in any area of language learning or acquisition. before I begin to teach. I just begin to teach what I know or need to teach in my programme, get the learners to learn, and do the work. Yet I continue to find that my learners continue to show errors on basic areas of language use which they have not been taught or not being addressed in my teaching. From literature I learned that pre-assessing and identifying writing difficulties from my learners' preceptions and address them in my teaching might be helpful in improving my learners' writing. I decided to do that in this inquiry.
From the qualitative formative assessment, survey of perceptions and writing drafts, I found that most areas in my teaching which need development are cognitive and linguistic difficulties. These are perceived and identified by the learners themselves and also refecled in their writing drafts. These will be areas of focus in my teaching.
One main area identified is my learners not having adequate and relevant content for their writing. On top of that they are not able to generate ideas. English Language learners simply lack ideas and knowledge, and they identify that as an area of difficulty intheir writing. So there is a need to focus on this in my teaching and for the learning of my students. In order to do that, I need to begin to read with them on topics of their writing, teach research skills and how to acknowledge ideas, and help in providing them with ideas through research. Some of those aspects I haven't taught or focused on or before.
Another major area that needs development in my teaching and learning of my learners relates to the development and structure of ideas in text types with specific purposes and audience. I found that I need to be specific in the genres I need to teach and scaffolding students on how to organise or structure their ideas between paragraphs and within paragraphs. In the past I was aware of this and simply and generally trying to explain to my learners how to do these and they got on with writing. I think I need not just simply to explain but showing with exemplars before getting learners to write.
The final area I found needed to be developed is teaching my learners how to use language features and vocabulary appropriate to different text purposes and audiences. It is understandable and expected that English Language learners have limited knowledge and ability in the use of English language, but how to effectively teach them is enormous and challenging. I tend to struggle with teaching grammatically and at the same time what features to focus the teaching on. At any rate, what's clear to me is that there's still a need to teach language grammar in order to improve English Language learners use of English.
From this reflection, I have identified areas of strengths in teaching writing to my English Language learners. This gives me confidence that I should continue to use those strategies in my teaching. At the same time, some areas in my teaching are identified as ones which need to be developed or changed in order to improve my learners' ability to write. These areas would be helpful in the design and delivery of my teaching in this inquiry.
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