Reflective writing
Do the preparation task first. Then read the text and tips and do the exercises.
Preparation
In January I spent three weeks volunteering as an English teacher in my town. I've been thinking about becoming an English teacher for a while so it was a good opportunity to see what it's like. The students had all just arrived to start a new life in the UK and they had a range of levels from beginner to intermediate. They came from a variety of countries and had very different backgrounds and experiences.
For me, the most important thing was the relationship with the students. I was nervous at first and did not feel confident about speaking in front of people. However, I found it easy to build good relationships with the students as a class and as individuals and I soon relaxed with them. It was a challenge to encourage the lower-level students to speak in English, but at least they understood a lot more at the end of the course.
At first, planning lessons took a really long time and I was not happy with the results. Classes seemed to be too difficult for some students and too easy for others, who finished quickly and got bored. I found it was better to teach without a course book, adapting materials I found online to suit their needs. I learned to take extra activities for students who finished early and that was much better.
I still need to continue improving my lesson planning. I would like more ideas for teaching mixed-ability groups and I want to plan the whole course better next time. That way students have a focus for each lesson and a sense of progress and of what they've covered. I'm also going to put more confident students with beginners when they work in pairs so conversation activities give everyone more chance to speak and students can help each other.
Overall, it was a really positive experience and I learned a lot. I've decided that I would like to become an English teacher in the future.
Tips
- Reflective writing is more personal than other types of academic writing. You can use the first person (I ... , My ... , etc.) and explain how you felt.
- Think about the experience in detail. Explain what went well and what was challenging, and say what you learned in the process.
- Use a structure:
- Short introduction to the situation
- Evaluate the most important things about the experience, including solutions to problems
- Say what you would do differently next time
- Say what you learned overall.
- Keep the focus on your learning process and what you will do better in future.
My most recently learning challange was working as an English teacher at a school with classes in a range from 30 to 45 students.
I had been working a personal and particular English teacher from home. Clearly, I was used to work with smaller groups, in a range from 2 to 10 students at the most.
Suddenly, I got those wonderful opportunity of working in a very prestigious private school of my hometown, and I couldn't refuse. In the beginning, I felt a little insecure about it. I wasn't sure of myself and my skills, I doubt that I could manage such a responsibility, mainly because I knew that I had to work with a huge amount of students.
In my first year working there, I got 24 different groups of students in a range from 30 to 45 students per group. It was a big challenge for me to manage such a big workload, and the thing that I was most worried about was me capability of group management.
But the truth is that everything comes with practice. The more I teach, the better I become. And every day I learn new teaching techniques to improve at my job. I really enjoy doing this, and it's really rewarding working with kids because they are genuine and don't hesitate to show their gratitude and love towards you.
My last challenge was in July.
I went to Norway to visit my boyfriend, but we are both Portuguese.
He speaks English very well, but I... you know, I'm still learning.
His friends are all from different countries and they all speak English, so I had to face my fear.
They were so kind to me! Most of them encouraged me to speak, they kept asking questions and wanted to know about my life and my profession.
I started feeling more confident to talk.
One of my boyfriend’s friends spoke Spanish, a language more similar to Portuguese.
This guy asked me so many questions that I had to make an effort. It was wonderful!
We spoke about life, dreams, the past, the future, my job... about everything.
I never thought I could express myself like that.
Obviously, I made many mistakes.
The possibility of being alone around the city, without needing anyone’s help, was powerful. The feeling of freedom is the best feeling ever.
I would like to improve my English not only for personal relationships but also to get a better job, without borders.
This trip was challenging, but it also changed my mind and my life.
One of my most recent and challenging learning experiences was joining my company's badminton club. I initially joined just for fun, to make friends and get more exercise. And I assumed it would be easy for me since I am quite an active, sporty person. However, I quickly realized it was difficult than I expected. The club includes players of all levels, from beginners to masters, and I struggled to keep up. It made me feel discouraged and nervous, especially because no one wants to be paired with a weak player. Fortunately, my colleagues were incredibly kind and supportive. They stayed patient, enouraged me, and even taught me the basics like the rules, how to hold the racket, move on the court, and hit the shuttle. At first, it took me a long time to build confidence and get used to the game, but over time I improved my skills, made many new friends, and even lost some weight. Now I truly think badminton is a wonderful sport!
In the begining, moveing to live in UK for me was very hard. I han no clue about the culture, food and weather. However, loved the scenery and the gardens here in UK, there are variety of trees an wild flowers.
Dispise, all of the new thing to lrean, to understand and to nejoy ;the lreaning English language was all ways had been dificult for me.I always loved to communicate with people,making friens and sharing experiences
with them, but can't do those thing whitout learing the languge. Despite the challanges I worked hard and study hard most of time try to speaking with people even I felt too shy or embarrassed ,over the time my English became better and better, and I became more confident person. The more I learned and listened to radio, watched movies,listening to pod-cast and online free English lessons my English have improved alot.
Now at this stage of my life I would like to persue career and before that need to get my GCSES qualifications and acces to higher educations. I am very determined and don't gove up.
So, it is never late to start something from zero or leaning new language or change a career.
There always more roome to grow.
In May, 12 of the last year I got the driving license. It was my second try, first one was two years before but suddenly finished because I broke my leg when riding the motocross. I already got driving license of category "A" which allows to ride the motorcycle, now I needed "B" to drive a car, that's why I haven't any anxiety about getting license. Unfortunately, car is more in demand vehicle than motorcycle, so there are much more people getting B-license then A, so there much more opportunity for, so called, illegal enrichment of the department, to put it simply, corruption.
First of all, I understood that half of all traffic rules are never executed in real life, but on exam... You should be perfect. For example, you could forget on turn signal only once, second time meant failure.
The next problem was in parking exercises. When you drive one car for at least half of the year, you start to feel car sizes and automatically understand when you should stop because invisible parts of your car are ready to bump into outside world's subjects, but when you have 54 hours of classes... Well, that's it)
The second problem has been solved easy. My instructor just told me some landmarks, for example, what I should see in the mirror or where should be the road markings, so I just had to practise. It was harder to solve the first problem because inspector was picky about little things. Well, sure! Everyone loves undeclared income, but exams are taking place at the same district in the city all the time, so I just was driving a lot at this district with my instructor. Yes, it's not cheap pleasure but I'm not agree to pumper government employee.
Overall, I took an exam... in the forth try and got my driving license. Someone could say it would cheaper to pay for that and you could save the time, but I think that at first, I know how to drive a car from driving school, I don't need to be taught "by life", and in second now I know that everything is possible) I've decided that I will try to get some new category, probably, to drive a bus)))
In my job I have to assist clients with legal obligations regarding health and safety at work.
At the beginning I wasn't very confident and I only told them the main things but over the years the others could become a problem.
Now I have learned to say everything, even secondary things and above all I have learned how to say it.
In Jun 2016 I spend three months on teaching my three juniors which they had just started their bachelor degree of IT as I was almost finished my master degree of IT.
I have gathered my three students and talked to them about importance of computer courses and they have to start from now to educate their selves as I will help them by teaching them the fundamentals of hardware, software and networking so this will help them to develop their understanding from now and do not suffer too much later.
Anyway, I started to learn them computer hardware, I faced a lot of difficulties to let them pronounce the computer's components and explaining every part of the components separately in deep details, However, I scheduled my class and planned to make the class very simple and funny for them in order to attract their attention and focus on the lesson then the plan success, they become very active and participating in the class, implementing all tips and tricks I teach them regarding computers' issues and troubleshooting, after two months and half they mastered computers' hardware, software, and some networks connectivity. I was very proud of myself because I have seen my efforts on my three students college's results, we did it, their understanding for the syllabus was an excellent as subjects scoring was higher than other.
Finally, learn from mistakes, working very hard, searching about the topic, planning and scheduling, spending more time about specific matter, all are keys that lead to success.
What's up?
I'm Lara and i'm from Argentina. I have always like all about English: movies, music, series, books, videos. In high school is was a really good English student. I got a little rusty now so my challenge is re-learning and upgrade my level by self-studying. Wish me luck. I don't know if this text is completely well written but i will sometime. I hope everyone has a nice and productive learning experience. Saludos desde Argentina
Hi, guys.
My challeging learning experience at the moment is trying to study two languages at the same time.
I am studying english, but I already finished my course, but I've noticed that I need to have more contact with the language, besides , have to train more and do exercises.
The other language I am studying is spanish, it's been kind of difficult, because I am studying on my own at home, that's why I use many apps or websites to improve my accent and the flow of my speaking and listening. :)
This week I had my first presentation in English at the college. During the week before the presentation, my group and I practiced together to do it well. We prepared a short class. The day of our presentation was very good; we thought we did great. However, at the end of our class the teacher gave us very negative feedback, saying that our class lacked creativity. We were very sad and could’t understand very well what the teacher said. The one thing I'm sure of, we did our best and the fact that it was our first presentation in English, the teacher should mention the good points not only the negative parts about it.
Next time I’ll try to be more confident with my english, and ask the teacher what are the good points about the presentation you saw? you can mention those, isn’t it that right?