An Empirical Study On Application Of Reflective Teaching In Improving College Students' English Writing Competence

Reflective teaching comes into existence from the early 1980s to the 1990s and is popular with educators, especially the ones of western countries. This trend of thought rises and is in the fashion in educational circles of some countries, such as America, Canada, British and Australia etc. Reflective teaching not only can improve teaching effectiveness, but also can promote teachers' self-improvement. In recent years, educators and academics of our country have started to probe into reflective teaching and applied it into all aspects of the various subjects. This paper will combine the theory of reflective teaching and the teaching of English writing. It aims to improve students' English writing competence.English writing is an integral part of learning English, and English writing is the most difficult skill of four basic skills—listening, speaking, reading and writing. It can embody English expressing ability and thinking ability of an English learner, and it also can objectively reflect the capability of comprehensively using language. However, English writing has been a weak link in teaching English. Many reasons, for example, students are not interested in English writing, or they have no words to write, have caused the obstacles of English teaching. Focusing on all above problems, this paper bases on the theory of reflective teaching, through the application of reflective teaching used in teaching English writing, emphasizes that students reflect through the learning behavior and outcomes inside and outside their classroom, and especially reflect on newly acquired knowledge and content, since reflection can increase language output and writing interest, meanwhile teachers can reflect on their teaching experience and find problems, then solve problems so that they can help students improve their English proficiency effectively.This study mainly focuses on three questions:first, during the process of reflective teaching used in improving college students'English writing competence whether or not there are significant differences; second, during the process of reflective teaching used in improving college students'English writing competence, which aspect is improved more obviously; third, what attitude students hold towards the application of reflective teaching. This study combines quantitative and qualitative research methods together, through tests, interview and observation to study the participants'English writing competence. There are 80 people tested who are freshmen belonging to Shenyang Normal University. In the preparation phase of experiment, the work of pre-test has to be finished before the experiment, the experimental data needs to be collected and analyzed, and problems need to be found and appropriate solutions needs to be proposed; in the implementation phase of experiment, the application of reflective teaching and weekly journals guide students to take the initiative to discover, analyze, study and solve problems effectively so that the theory of reflective teaching can be applied effectively in teaching English writing.This study finds the following results:1) the application of reflective teaching in teaching English writing to improve students'English writing competence is an effective way; 2) through the pre-test and post-test, students will be improved obviously in content, structure and language of writing; 3) Most students hold a positive attitude towards the application of reflective teaching. Although there are some limitations in this study, we can get some useful and important inspiration about teaching English writing. In this study, the concept of reflective teaching is organically integrated into teaching English writing. Not only teachers are taken into account, but also students are considered, two aspects are combined so that students' English writing competence can be improved, and then the whole English proficiency can be increased.