Enhancing Reflective Practice in Teaching Language with Assistance of Information Technology

Abstract

With the reflective teaching approach, teachers are able to change students’ thinking way and learning style more positively and actively. English, as a result, will not be a constraint and certainly become a really big motivation for learning and personal professional development. It is conscious reflection on experience that is a pivotal factor to bring theory and practice closer effectively. In this paper, the writer will clarify benefits and challenges of using information technology in Reflective Practice to enhance skills for English major students and find out some technology-assisted strategies to support this. A set of questionnaire and open questions were administered among 60 students K42 majoring in English at Hanoi law university and 15 teachers from 3 universities in Viet Nam. The findings showed that Reflective Practice helped learners in solving their learning problems and learners were able to enhance four English skills with their conscious reflection. The respondents admitted that although they have the challenges in using information technology (IT) in reflective teaching, they can overcome them thanks to the strategies. The respondents were, moreover, of the opinion that reflective practice can make a lot of contribution to becoming a successful learner and to bringing improvement in the behavior of learners.