Reflection On Personal Learning Experience †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Reflection On Personal Learning Experience. Answer: Introduction The critical reflection will focus on my personal learning experience in order to improve my learning skills and ability. Learning Students in my country starts learning English from a very early age that is from grade three. Though schools try to provide best education facilities to their students, but its not possible for every student to gather the exact knowledge, as sometimes teachers teaches too fast, sometimes the topics are not very interesting and for this reason students could not improve their learning skills (Alharbi 2015). The same happened with me, although I seemed to achieve an average score in English language, but then it does not help me to improve my English speaking skills. Accordingly, my fluency started deteriorating and as a result I was ashamed of speaking in English in front of my friends and teachers, and this has also lowered my level of confidence. This essay elucidates on major aspects as how I improved my learning experience with the help of effective l earning styles and theories. Discussion Learning has been regarded as a very complex process and every student have different learning process. However, in my school, students are provided with English textbooks but the teachers in our school teach English in native language that is the language we use for speaking in our country. As a result, this hampers our learning and speaking skills, although we learn English language at school, but very rarely we practice it within the classroom. Furthermore, the examination system focuses more on the writing and reading skills, but they do not give any importance to the speaking and the listening skills (Saeed, Khaksari and Ghani 2016). Being a student, this educational system had a negative impact on my speaking skills, as the topmost priority was given to the listening and speaking skills. As a student, my writing and reading skills were strong, and I used to get high grades in the school assessment, but prior to that my speaking and listening skills were very poor and I was not been able to cope up with these skills. This had worried me and as a result, I had lost my level of confidence and by seeing this downfall, my parents were also worried. Though they tried to support me and help me out with every possible ways they can, in order to encourage me, but then it did not work well. However, at that point of time my parents came to know about a good English professor from some other school in my nearby location. Then my parents decided to send to that teacher to take personal teaching class, in order to improve my speaking skills. That had been a major turning point in my life, as the tutoring class not only improved by speaking and listening skills but at the same point time also increase my confidence level. The English professor being a charming lady had provided me with extra care and support and was also very competent while teaching English language to all her students. While teaching the subject, the English teacher used to implement various learning theories and styles, so that it becomes easy for students to cope up with the subject. Apart from that, my English teacher also applied various training methods such as spaced learning and self learning. Spaced learning is a training method, where the contents will be repeated three times with ten minutes break taken twice, so that students can get in depth of the subject (Velastegui et al. 2016). During the break times, students are engaged with physical activities that encourages and help students to switch in to the subject quickly. Whereas, self learning on the other hand is another such technique, which encourage students to learn new things on their own, by developing ideas and creativity (Wright and Stokes 2015). My English teacher applied this self learning technique with the use of mind maps. This has given me freedom to expand and develop new ideas based on my subject that helped me to improve my English speaking skills. The best thing that I liked about my English teache r is her friendly and supportive nature and was also approachable whenever I required help from her. Prior to that, my English teacher not only limited her teaching process to only text-books, but she formed small groups and introduced various activities such as role play, dialogues, short talks, acting and more. This personal learning experience had been highly effective as it improved my speaking skills. In order to improve my English listening and speaking skills, my English teacher has also introduced VARK learning style techniques that aim to provide better outcomes. The VARK learning style was founded by Neil Fleming that consist of four styles of learning that includes Visual learners, Auditory learners, Reading and Writing and the Kinesthetic learning style (Poonpon 2017). This learning style is widely preferred by many students as this helps to influence behaviour and learning process of the students. Accordingly, with the implication of VARK, my English teacher applied visual and auditory learning styles and accordingly tried to teach us through images, graphs and map diagram (Wright and Stokes 2015). Apart from this, she has also conducted group discussions, and extempore session, where students need to speak on any random topic. With the help of this session, I was able to redraw the content from my memory, and I also used to record my notes and used to listen to the notes numerous times on tape. This session helped me slowly in improving my listening skills. The theory of multiple intelligences that comprises of eight learning styles by Howard Gardner has also been implemented by my English teacher during the tutorial class. The eight learning styles comprises of intra-personal, spatial, naturalistic, musical, linguistic, logical, interpersonal and existential (Sternberg 2015). This learning style enables readers to understand their own preferred learning ways, and accordingly can stick to the preferred learning styles (Alshehry, Sedlmayr and Cork 2016). As for me, I always had a problem regarding listening and speaking skills, so I decided to learn through visual and intrapersonal learning styles. Intrapersonal style encouraged me to interact with other students through group discussion, dialogues and role playing and this has helped to increase my fluency level while speaking in English. In the present day, in order to provide effective education, teachers and professors tries to incorporate educational theories in their teaching methods, this helps students to have a clear understanding of the content (Awang et al. 2017). My English teacher being a very supportive lady had applied certain theories, so that she can help me to improve my speaking and listening skills. Various theories applied by her include behaviourist theories and the experimental learning theories. The behaviourist theory mainly focus on the behaviour of the students, such as the interest of the student regarding the particular subject matter, learning ability, interest for improving the learning process (Meltzer 2018). Accordingly behaviourism is considered as one of the most applied theory in learning perspectives and this theory mainly focus on the concept that the behaviours of the student can be measured and with proper training it can be changed. Moreover, this particular theory focuses on the traditional aspects of teaching, where the teacher plays t he role of a transmitter and the students as the receiver (Heeneman et al. 2015). By applying this theory my English teacher tried to view the reaction of mine as well as other students and accordingly she started focussing on the area where improvements required. As environment also plays a major role in shaping our behaviour, therefore in order to provide a healthy learning environment, my teacher introduced small group discussion and introduced workshop learning. Prior to this, rewards measures also been applied by my teacher in order to measure the learning behaviour. Another learning theory introduced by my teacher was Kolbs experimental learning theory that deals with experience, perception and behaviour. The experimental theory of Kolb comprises of four stages that includes concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation (Kolb 2014). The first stage of the concrete experience focuses on the learning experience of the learner through various activities such as field work and accordingly teacher organized a teaching session in an open environment, so that students can apply their innovation and ideas regarding the particular subject matter. The second stage comprises of reflective observation that deals with learning through observation (Biddulph and Carr 2017). Besides teaching through text books, dialogues and role plays, my English teacher also tried engaging students by watching English short films, and after watching the film, students were asked to give their own reviews regarding the film. This had been an interesting way of learning English, and moreover this movie session proved beneficial for me as this not only helped in improving my speaking skills but also improved my listening skills. The next stage comprises of conceptualization of ideas as this helps in reflecting new ideas from the existing concept as this has helped me to generate new ways to listen things (Harasim 2017). The last stage of this experimental theory is the active experimentation which is mainly focused about the results that derived from the teaching process. The overall learning style helps me to achieve my goals and also increased my level of concentration and confidence. All these learning styles and theories that were implemented by my English teacher proved advantageous and beneficial for me, as it improved my learning experience by improving by English speaking and listening skills. It is important to note that although the learning theories proved beneficial for me, but there were certain limitations while implicating such ideas and theories. In case of behaviourist theories, it does not help in influencing internal behaviours such as moods and feelings of the students. Furthermore, the main focus of the behaviourist theories on the desired behaviour and the target, but it does not explain the learning process of the students and as a result the learning process of the students does not improve much (Roberts 2016). Moreover, behavioural theory mainly ignores the mental condition that involved in learning process, as this theory deals with the learning process through experiences. As experimental learning has influenced many students during their learning process as many theories have been drawn together under one particular theory. Apart from this, there are certain limitations related to the Kolbs learning theory of the experimental theory as the experimental theory is not applicable for students who are not experienced of the learning process or students who do not have a proper understanding of the subject matter (Staddon 2016). This theory implies variety of entertainment activities that has a negative impact on the learning process, as most of the time students are being diverted from their track and most importantly through this theory student as well as the teachers not being able to predict the outcomes of this learning process (Ashby and Valentin 2017). However, limitations are also there while applying Kolbs theory as this theory down not help in solving problems every time and moreover this learning process requires ample amount of time for processing of any ideas. However, all these theories and learning styles implied by my English teacher provided me with positive outcomes, but limitations of these theories restricted my learning process at some point of time. Conclusion From the above essay it could be concluded that with the help of my English teacher I was able to improve my fluency of speaking in English as well as also improved my listening skills. As my school only focussed on the reading and practicing skills of English that degraded my power of speaking. It is only because of my personal English tutor that I have been able to overcome such problems as this had been a turning point in my life. Moreover, with the implication of various theories and learning styles such as experimental theories, constructive theories and more, the learning process have become more effective. Furthermore, with the implication of group discussion, role playing, debates, small talks the learning session had been more interesting and it became easy for me to improve my English speaking skills. References Alharbi, H.A., 2015. Improving Students' English Speaking Proficiency in Saudi Public Schools.International Journal of Instruction,8(1), pp.105-116. Alshehry, S., Sedlmayr, J. and Cork, J., 2016. VARK learning styles of first year dental students.The FASEB Journal,30(1 Supplement), pp.569-6. Ashby, F.G. and Valentin, V.V., 2017. Multiple systems of perceptual category learning: Theory and cognitive tests. InHandbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science (Second Edition)(pp. 157-188). Awang, H., Samad, N.A., Faiz, N.M., Roddin, R. and Kankia, J.D., 2017, August. Relationship between the Learning Styles Preferences and Academic Achievement. InIOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering(Vol. 226, No. 1, p. 012193). IOP Publishing. Biddulph, F. and Carr, K., 2017. 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