A Study Of EFL Learners' Reflection On Writing

Reflection is considered as a distinctive characteristic of autonomous learning. As a means of fostering learners'learning, reflection has been widely studied in the educational field. Educators have proposed different theoretical approaches to the study of reflection. In the field of English as a foreign language, researchers abroad have done many empirical studies on reflection while in China the empirical study of EFL learners'application of reflection has been inadequate.Using EFL learners'reflective journals as its primary data, the present researcher attempts to explore EFL learners'reflection on writing through the analysis of their reflective journals and the reflection questionnaires. To be more specific, the present study focuses on the following questions: (1) Do EFL learners do more reflection and critical reflection on their writing after writing reflective journals? (2) Does writing reflective journals foster EFL learners'reflection and critical reflection on writing? (3) Do EFL learners have any difficulty when they reflect on writing?The present study was conducted among 47 freshmen from Wenzheng College, Soochow University. The results of the study showed that the students gave a positive attitude towards reflection on their English writing. Through the method of reflective journal writing, the students had more content reflection and process reflection (the lower level of reflection), and writing reflective journals fostered the students'lower level of reflection on English writing. However, the students'critical reflection had not significantly increased. When the students reflected upon English writing, they had two difficulties. One was the repetition of the contents of their reflective journals; the other was that they felt difficult to reflect deeply on their writing. On the whole, this empirical study indicates that writing reflective journals could well foster EFL learners'lower level of reflection on writing, but could not effectively foster their critical reflection.Finally, based on the analysis of the data collected, the author makes some suggestions on how to improve EFL learners'reflection on writing. These suggestions require teachers to improve their own reflection on teaching at first, and explore different strategies of reflection in different period of learners'reflection.