Reflective writing – thinking about thinking

The temperature in the UK has plummeted so that now we are having the coldest October days for 34 years! It seems that we are always breaking records with the weather.

Today’s post is about REFLECTIVE WRITING. Reflective writing is becoming more and more common in universities because it is seen as such a useful learning process. It is particularly popular in courses where students gain some practical experience (eg teaching, care work) and are then asked to reflect on their experience. The greatest danger is that students write a description of what happened.  Simply writing about what happened to you is not reflection, it is a narrative account and you will not get good marks. The important thing about reflective writing is to think about what you have learned from the experience you had. The reason your university gives you practical work is to build up your experience, but an experience which is not reflected upon is not a useful one. You wouldn’t want to make the same mistakes again, would you? So you need to choose the most important aspects of your experience to talk about because otherwise your writing will degenerate into a descriptive account of what happened. Of course the most important things in your experience are often the worst things! It is important to show your feelings and concerns in reflective writing – but again be careful of simply describing how you felt at the time because description is not reflection.  You should also be careful about writing a reflection too soon after an experience has happened. Imagine you do something (eg give a presentation) and immediately you are asked to write about it. If it went badly you are likely to have a very negative reflection and if it went well you would be so relieved that your reflection would say how great your presentation was. It is a good idea to make some notes immediately after your experience without writing the final reflection. After a few days of mulling things over (yes, that means thinking about it for a few days) look back at your notes and think of your experience again. Think about what you wrote – think about what you thought when you wrote the notes. Do you still feel the same? Now you might think your presentation wasn’t quite so bad. If you can show that you have reflected upon your thoughts and feelings then you are getting there. Very importantly, what will you differently next time to do it better? What have you learned?

There are lots of useful links out there on reflective writing and I am going to point you to two. The first one is a very nice straightforward introduction from the University of Portsmouth. The beauty of this one is that it contains lots of useful phrases for overseas students such as: This demonstrates that… and Most importantly I have learned that… . The second link, with rather more thought provoking material, comes from the University of Exeter and is written by Jenny Moon who has written a lot about Reflective Writing. Go here for the Portsmouth link (thanks to Kasia for the tip) and here for the Exeter one.

Describing Charts, Graphs and Tables

I have noticed how much it has been raining recently – the reason I’ve noticed is that the windscreen wiper on my car is broken and I can’t see properly when it’s raining! (Not sure what windscreen wiper means? Don’t reach for your dictionary but use the context to work it out – yes, it’s the thing on the front window of the car which wipes the rain away!) The problem is that I only notice that it isn’t working when it’s raining which means of course I have to pull over to the side of the road and stand in the rain trying to fix it. I fix it a little, and then forget about it, until the next time it rains! I think that international students are often like this – they don’t worry about their English until they have to hand in their work! Then it is too late. You have to work on your English even when it’s not raining!

I get lots of students in my office with assignments which include writing about tables and charts. Describing graphs and charts can be difficult and that’s why I have got a link to a really good website to help you write about these things.  The phrases that you often need are things like: Since 2007 the rate of inflation has increased.. and many students have difficulty with these verb forms and the particular vocabulary that you can use to describe charts, graphs and tables. These writing activities are often included in IELTS examinations so this link will be particularly useful for students preparing to take their IELTS writing paper. The link comes from Leeds University Langauge Centre and you can follow it here.

The SQ3R Reading Method

It must be autumn because I have taken my boat out of the water for the winter and there has been a stock market crash!

The SQ3R is a strategy for effective academic reading which has been around for decades. It is all about standing back and looking at the outline of the text you are going to read, preparing for the reading by getting some questions ready, looking for answers as you read, remembering what you read and then reviewing what you’ve read so you don’t forget it. All these techniques lead to ACTIVE reading and reading with a DEEP APPROACH which I have mentioned before. It is completely different to the casual reading that you do in your spare time. You might be thinking ‘That sounds like hard work!’ and you would be right – it is WORK. Rather like an athelete who has to put the hours in to become fit enough to win a competition, students have to put the hours in to learn their subject and polish their academic skills so they can do well in their studies.

SQ3R stands for:

SURVEY:

Survey the text you are going to read. This means reading the title and thinking about what it means. Look through the text and look at the sub-headings and the summary. Look at any diagrams or pictures. After your survey you should have a good idea about what the text is about.

QUESTION

Before you start reading carefully look at the first heading and think of some questions that you think will be answered in this section of the text. If the text is ‘THE STORY OF COCA COLA’ and the first section has the heading ‘Beginnings’ then you might note down some questions such as:

When was the company started?

Where was it started?

Who started it?

Now you have a reason to read! Your reading should be focused with an aim.

READ

Now read that first section of the text and look for the answers to the questions that you wrote. You may not find all the answers, but what is important is that you are reading for a good reason and you will try to understand everything you read because you are looking for particular information. You may find other important information that you didn’t think of asking about. MARK YOUR TEXT! Underline things, write things in the margin!

RECALL

When you have finished reading that section stop! Can you now say what the most important parts of the text that you read are? Can you look at the questions that you wrote earlier and say the answers out loud without reading the text? This RECALL is sometimes referred to as RECITE which means ‘to say something from you memory’. If you can’t recall or recite the main points of what you’ve read then it hasn’t made an impression on you!

REVIEW

When you have worked through the whole text this way you need to review what you have read. But not just once at the end of your reading. If you never looked at this text again, it is unlikely that you would remember the content of what you read very well. Can you say what the main points of the text are the next day? If you reviewed your reading by recalling the main points of the sections of the text the following day then you would be helping this information get into your long-term memory. It is not a case of memorising sentences word for word, but a case of reviewing the main points so that you can articulate them in your own words.

There are any number of good web resources which give further information about SQ3R, just google SQ3R and you will find plenty. You should always use a number of different sources to gain a proper understanding of something.  Birbeck College, University of London, have some great learning resources. You can see the list via today’s link. Scroll down to READING SKILLS and follow the link for ‘Reading Academic Texts: SQ3R’.  Here it is.

How long are you here?

I’ve been talking a lot about academic reading recently, and I promise I am going to return to that topic in my next post. But I thought I’d say something about the present perfect tense because I have noticed how many students have difficulty in using it properly. This is when everyone groans ‘not the present perfect tense again!’ I know you know the grammatical rules! I know you know that you have to use ‘have’ and the past participle. However even though many other languages build up tenses in a similar way it does not mean that the English present perfect is used in the same way. There are even differences in how Americans and British use the tense system! Americans are more likely to use the past simple tense in the question ‘Did you eat yet? whereas Brits would say ‘Have you eaten yet?’ When I meet a new class I often ask students to find out about each other and I have heard a lot of sentences like ‘How long are you in Plymouth?’ and ‘How long are you living here?’ from students whose English is pretty fluent. The correct questions are How long have you been here? and How long have you lived here? (Or How long have you been living here?) If you look in a grammar book it may not help you much – the explanations are often so difficult and long that you close the book feeling completely fed up long before you have finished the section! You need something clear and simple to explain just the main uses and I have a link which does that for you. This simple explanation and accompanying online exercises come from the English Language Centre at the University of Victoria in Canada who have lots of great online stuff here.