A Longitudinal Research On Promoting Foreign Language Majors' Reflective Level

Reflection is a cognitive activity of reviewing the process of thinking or an experience of learning practice in order to describe,analyze,evaluate.Recent years,how to cultivate and promote the students' reflective level is to be a hot topic in the education field.The researches show that reflection which belongs to one of the effective learning strategies is the main approach for developing the autonomous learning and the promotion of reflection plays a very important role in the language learning.The previous researches focus on the reflection theory or the reflective teaching,which are relatively complete.Seldom research focuses on either the learners' reflective learning or the reflective level promotion especially the empirical longitudinal study.The subjects involved in this study were 115 first year language majors from Southwest Petroleum University(SWPU).Through four times questionnaire test,reflective journal writing and the interview,a longitudinal study is carried out to examine the promotion of reflective level of 115 language majors for the four phrases(pre-/mid-/post-/post delayed-test)in the reflective English learning training course.Three research questions are addressed in the present study:1.What is the initial reflective level of language majors before reflective English learning training course?2.What are the changes of subjects' level of reflection after the intervention of the twelve-week reflective English learning training course?Are the changes significant?What are the change trends?Whether or not these changes are enduring three months after training course?3.What are the subjects' attitudes towards reflective English learning training course?Through more than three months' reflective English learning training course for those first year foreign language majors,the teacher and tutors utilize the reflective approaches such as reflective journals,discussion,and evaluation to cultivate the subjects' awareness of reflection.The author utilizes QRT(Kember,2001)to test the 115 subjects' level of reflection in the four phrases(pre-/mid-/post-/post delayed-test)and the data will be analyzed by SPSS 21.0 to investigate the subjects' initial level of reflection and the changes of reflective level during the training course and after the training course.Through the reflective journal and semi-structured interview of six subjects,the author collect the information about the attitude towards the reflective English learning training course,which provides supplement resources for the further research.The study produces significant findings in relation to the research questions:before the reflective English learning training course,the subjects' level of overall reflection(M=3.319)is medium,which indicates that the subjects have the awareness of reflection but they lack the conscious thinking of it.As to the change trend of the subjects' reflective level,these data demonstrates that,compared with those before the training course,the subjects' habitual action decreases significantly and their understanding,reflection,critical reflection are promoted significantly.Habitual action,understanding,reflection and critical reflection improvements are enduring three months follow-up reflective-training course,which demonstrate that the reflective English learning training course is effective for the reflective level promoting.Throughout the training course,their habitual action decreases more in the first half of the training and less in the later half of the training.Understanding is affected slightly.Reflection and critical reflection increases more in the first half of the training and less in the later half.Three months after the training,compared with the third test,critical reflection decreases significantly,which indicates that critical reflection is difficult to maintain after the training.Subjects' critical reflective strategies need more training to process.In the reflective journal and interview,most of the subjects show their positive attitude to the reflective English learning training course and their level of reflection is promoted through the training by the approaches of reflective journal writing,discussion and evaluation.The present study involves both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the subjects' improvements of habitual action,understanding,reflection and critical reflection.The research benefits the deep understanding of the reflective level of the foreign language major and its promotion in the university.Furthermore,this study provides the data and research orientation for the reflective English learning training course of Chinese university students and the longitudinal study for its efficiency.These conclusions provide the basis for the future research.Considering the complexity of the construction for the reflective strategies,learners' autonomous ability and the diversity of the learners,the promotion of the learners' reflective level and the construction of the learning autonomy need to be investigated further.