A Case Study Of English Learners' Language Development Through Reflective Writing On Classic Proses

Reflection is considered a distinctive characteristic of autonomous learning. As a means of fostering learners'learning, reflection has been widely studied in the educational field both abroad and at home. In the field of English as a foreign language, researchers have done many empirical studies on reflection, but most of the researches emphasized individual's unidirectional reflection, rather than the simultaneous consideration of relationship between its social elements and these individual menta7l processes.According to Sociocultural Theory (SCT), which is rooted in Vygotsky's cognitive development theory, second language acquisition, as a high mental functioning, is embodied in social interaction, mainly derives from an external-internal process, that is, first from the social plane and then individual's psychological plane. Language, while outwardly, being an important communicative tool and thus an object of learning in second language class, serves as, inwardly, a psychological tool that mediates the mental transformation process of language users. And language learners refine and develop their own language during this mediating process, that is, the goal-directed meaningful process of the language using.Reflection, reflective writing in particular, is a meaningful language using process, a language-mediated self-talk to make sense out of one's own experience (experience made out of the interaction between oneself and the surrounding world). Reading and reflective writing can be considered a dialogue, or interaction, between the learner and the author. What impact does the input material have on the learners'written outcomes? How to make use of this relationship, i.e. how to provide the most beneficial interactive resources for language learners?The present study was conducted in College of Foreign Languages in Shandong Agriculture University, with 26 English learners'reflective writing texts after classic prose( here refers to the classic prose) reading and the subsequent comments on this reflective writing activity in their journals as its primary data. The present researcher attempts to explore the impact of a well-chosen prose, beautiful in language and inspiring in emotion (classic prose) on the learners'language expressed in their after-reading reflective writing. The quest includes particularly the following two issues: (1) During their reflective writing after the classic prose reading, are there any imitation and creative using of the language forms from the reading materials? (2) Are there other impacts on learners from the classic proses reading and reflecting activity?The results of the study showed that there are indeed phenomena of language internalization from external prose to learners'own writing, which is expressed both by language form imitation and by creative using of language from the original text during the learners'reflective writing after their reading of classic prose. The imitation and creative using are mainly embodied on words, sentence structures and figures of speech. In addition to the findings from the analysis of learners'own writing texts, learners'comments from their journals on the activity also shows other impacts: 1) The reflective writing can help the learners to built up their confidence in English writing. 2) The reflective writing can motivate the learners to develop their mastery of the structure and grammar of written language when they see how it facilitates meaning for communication. 3) The reflective writing can help the learners think more smoothly and deeply.