Reflective Thinking through Journal Writing
There
are many advantages of conducting journal in teaching and learning process. It
is very easy to use and helpful in giving the reflection. Regarding to
reflection, it is the most natulat media in knowing what the students feel.
Therefore, the teacher can give the response or react to the journal content in
the following meetings. In short, it is a media for evaluation. However,
writing journals waste time. Therefore, most of the EFL teachers do not make it.
Also, another problem appears when the teachers do not make an appropriate
journal. That can be caused of being tired, etc. Also, the content of the
journal does not reflect to what really happens. To make it fast or to make the
teachers look professional, they sometime add what it is not needed such as
they face a problem but the teacher do not overcome it because the time is up.
Then, they write some strategies on their mind or perspective into the journal.
The movitation always takes a big role in any aspect. Since the journal is made
unappropriately, the content does not show the reflection of how critical they
are towards the situation. Therefore, there should be another more simple media
to be used.
Commonly Found Questions
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Question
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How do the teachers who do not attend university wrire a reflective
journal?
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Answer
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Since reflection is an active process of witnessing somebody’s personal
experience to examine it coler, give meaning into it, and learn from it, a
journal entry is how the teachers response through written form. Thus, it is
in the form of free or flexible. Each teacher will have different style and
it is not a problem. Also, it does not require a very good language mastery
and any skill. The teacher can also reflect to the methods and techniques
used, describe what has hapeened in the classroom or based on their ersonal
experience, ask questions about teaching methods, techniques, etc. Some comon
questions can be used such as what
happened? How did it occur? How did I react? What will I do if I have the
similar case in the future? Then, the teacher should describe the
situation, analyze, evaluate, and take a lesson from it.
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Question
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How can we elaborate more about Gibbs’ reflective cyle with an emphasis
on feelings?
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Answer
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According to Gibbs, it is not sufficient to have an experience in order
to learn without reflecting on the experience because it may be quickly
forgotten or its learning potential lost. For example, the teacher feel
unsatisfied of the content of the course, of our teaching methods,
techniques, students’ behaviour, classroom mangement, time manageent, etc. It
means that something wrong appears. We have to check and fix it. In the
reflective journal, problems hsould be firstly described, then describe how
you feel towards it, and analyze and evaluate the situation through
presenting some questions. Then, describe what stategies that you will
propose towards this problem. Also, if the teacher has the similar problem,
they can include it here and what the difference and similarities between
those are.
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Critical Analysis
Although
writing journals is wasting much time, it gives many advantages. To cope with
this problem, the teachers can utilize audio journals such as recording. They
only need to record their voice using mobile phone or other things. Also,
before recording, they are suggested to make the points so they will not forget
and miss what they are going to say. Based on my experience, making a journal
is very crucial and beneficial. If we skip doing it for , let’s say, a week, we
will forget some problems in the classroom and we will ignore it without overcoming it. If it happens, the problems may grow bigger. Therefore, it is
very important to make a journal especially if we face the similar problem, we
can play the audio and listen how the problem comes and how we solve it. It
can also help our colleagues with the same problem. Also, it should be put in
one media such as flash disk specially for one class or one year.
References
Brown, H.Douglas.
2001. Teaching by Principles. An
Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Richards, Jack C.
1998. Beyond Training. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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