REFLECTIVE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25128/2415-3605.17.4.1Keywords:
reflection, self evaluation, skills, reflective portfolio, self-evaluation checklist, reflective writingAbstract
The article examines the main features of reflective learning and ways of implementing reflective pedagogy in foreign language teaching. The conclusion has been made about the connection between students’ ability to reflect on the results of their learning and autonomy. Reflection is seen as a form of meta-cognition which enables students to evaluate, revise, plan and correct. Reflective foreign language learning skills of university students have been specified and the ways of their development and facilitation in higher education contexts have been discussed in the article. A scale for self-evaluation students’ reflective skills has been suggested to help students analyze and evaluate their reflective abilities and assist teachers in assessing students’ reflective skills. As the incorporation of reflective pedagogy in foreign language learning and teaching may face different problems, it is necessary to employ effective techniques, apply efficient activities which play a dual role by facilitating reflection in higher education and promoting students’ foreign language proficiency. The article focuses on the reflective portfolio, which is a set of papers summarizing students’ experiences, opinions and feelings, evaluates the skills developed. It has also been proved that composing the reflective portfolio can be a valuable tool for developing reflection as it is an explorative process and helps to focus on product rather than process when writing. Stages of working with portfolio self-assessment checklist have been specified in the article. As reflection should be an ongoing process, students are to be encouraged to assess themselves not only at macro level (at the beginning or at the end of a semester) with the help of descriptors, but also on the micro level (after doing some task or a set of tasks) by fulfilling reflective writing assignments.
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