Dr. Ken Lau Centre for Applied English Studies The University of Hong Kong LAUKEN@HKU.HK

1. Students’ Perceptions of Independent Learning and Reflection in a Technical English Course Dr. Ken LauCentre for Applied English StudiesThe University of Hong KongLAUKEN@HKU.HK

2. Outline Course Description of ProTech& Out-of-class Component Independent Learning& Reflection Data Analysis 1: Pre- and Post-Course Questionnaires Data Analysis 2: Semi-Structured Interviews Data Analysis 3: SAR Corpus Conclusions

3. ProTech • Professional and Technical Oral Communication for Engineers • Compulsory for all first-year Engineering students (>400 students) • 12 weeks, 24 contact hours • Three presentation assessments(Diagnostic Pair, Group and Individual) • Out-of-class learning component • Self-Access and Reflection (SAR) Record

4. Self-Access and Reflection Record • Diversity of students’ abilities • Learners taking charge of their own learning; acknowledgement of ownership (Gardner and Miller, 1998) • Coherent Learning Experience • Sustainable feedback (Carless, et al., 2010)

5. Two weaknesses identified by the teacher Weakness identified by the student

6. Self Assessment and Reflection

7. Evaluation of resources chosen and used, and the quality of reflection Improvement shown in the next presentation

8. Coherent Learning Experience Feedback, Self-Access and Reflection Feedback, Self-Access and Reflection 1st Presentation 2nd Presentation 3rd Presentation Teacher’s Evaluation of Improvement Teacher’s Evaluation of Improvement

9. Students’ Perceptions of Independent Learning and Reflection: Data Set Paired Sample: 95 (21.30%)

10. Students’ Perceptions of Independent Learning and Reflection: Questionnaire Surveys

11. Self-Perceived Types of Learners

12. Paired Samples: Perceived Change in Types of Learners 46(85.18%) 27 (65.85%) 14(45.16%) 7(12.95%) 1 (1.85%) 0

13. Word-Association • Used by psychologists • Utter one-word responses to stimulus words within split-seconds • "Semantic Proximity" (Bahar & Hansell, 2000) Reflection Independent Learning

14. Word-Association Analysis:Categorisation • Actional Terms • activities or processes of accomplishing them • e.g. respond, react, improve • Physical Terms • physical objects or scientific phenomena • e.g. mirror, resources, video • Mental Terms • cognitive activities or appraisal of entities • e.g. joyful, spontaneous, difficult • Personal Terms • references to human beings • e.g. audience, myself, self • Compound Terms • Hyphenated items • Often prefixed with “self-” , e.g. self-discipline, self-evaluation

15. Word-Association Analysis:Independent Learning • Mental terms dominant in both pre-course (34.85%) and post-course (31.58%) surveys • Physical terms and personal terms decrease by 6.62% and 2.58% in the post-course surveys • Actional terms increase by 9.05% (pre-course: 21.21%; post-course: 30.26%) • Compound terms increase by 2.09% • self-access, self-learning, self-study, self-assessment, self-awareness, self-control, self-consciousness, self-evaluation, self-driven, self-motivated, self-replying

16. Word-Association Analysis:Reflection • Actional terms dominant in both pre-course (36.5%) and post-course (40.94%) survey responses • Mental, physical and personal terms decrease in the post-course survey by 2.77%, 4.79% and 1.29% respectively • Compound terms increase by 3.44% • self-assess, self-criticism, self-correction, self-work, self-exposure, self-order

17. Usefulness for Language Enhancement: Independent Learning (N=151) 107 (68.59%) 28 (17.95%) 19 (12.18%) 2 (1.28%) After taking ProTech, do you consider independent learninguseful for enhancing language skills?

18. Usefulness for Language Enhancement: Reflection (N=157) 109 (69.43%) 28 (17.83%) 19 (12.1%) 1 (0.64%) After taking ProTech, do you consider reflection useful for enhancing language skills?

19. Students’ Perceptions of Independent Learning and Reflection: Semi-Structured Interviews

20. Interviewees

21. Wilfred (Mainlander)

22. Wilfred (Mainlander)

23. Don (Hong Konger)

24. Don (Hong Konger)

25. Don (Hong Konger)

26. Wan (Mainlander)

27. Wan (Mainlander)

28. Wan (Mainlander)

29. Jeff (Hong Konger)

30. Jeff (Hong Konger)

31. Students’ Perceptions of Independent Learning and Reflection: SAR Corpus

32. SAR Corpus Analysis • Assisted by WordSmith 6.0 • Keywords Function • Identifying keywords with statistically higher instances in the SAR corpus • Comparing against a reference corpus – British Academic Written English • Selecting text files of comparable genres (narrative recount and critique) • Reference Corpus – 407 texts, 862,336 words

33. SAR Corpus Analysis • Try/Tried/Trying (3,075 instances) • Plan for action, commitment to change (present and future) • Review of action taken, often not successful (past) • Concordancing Function • Qualitative analysis of context of use of the lexical term identified

34. SAR Corpus Analysis: Try • Try + to-positive action/manner (1,427 instances) • improve, read, use, memorize, add • SAR corpus • I should try to improve my pronunciation as I read transferred as transferr-ded. (SAR056) • There is no doubt that grammar is one of the most difficult parts in learning English. In order to improve this situation, I try to read the newspaper on the internet every day. (SAR232) • I have checked the dictionary of the pronunciation of different words and I have rehearsed for a few times to try to be more fluent in the presentation. (SAR057) • Ref corpus (84 instances) • I will try to concentrate on a strong CPD programme within my future.

35. SAR Corpus Analysis: Try • Try my best + to-positive action/manner (86 instances) • Strong commitment to change/improve • SAR corpus • Learning from successful speakers is a good way to enhance myself. I will try my best to be a good speaker. (SAR624) • No examples found from the Ref corpus

36. SAR Corpus Analysis: Try • Try + to avoid + action / Try not to + negative action/manner (28 instances) • SAR corpus • In the coming presentation, I will try to avoid unnecessary stop and try to make use of the technique of changing talking speed. (SAR629) • I was nervous and not used to speaking English or giving a presentation in front of people. So, I will get used to it and try not to be nervous. (SAR238) • Ref corpus (2 instances): • I relate to these points and am often told I am over-critical of myself; I will therefore try to avoid this and will try to focus on the positives

37. SAR Corpus Analysis: Tried • Tried + to-positive action/manner (918 instances) • learn, imitate, practise, read, speak, use • SAR corpus: • Besides learning the pronunciation of IPA symbols from the websites above, I also tried to learn the rhythm of speech by repeating what had the speaker said because I thought the speaker had performed a good delivery for me to understand the IPA lesson. (SAR302) • Ref corpus (74 instances): • As part of a module called "second language teaching and learning" in my postgraduate studies I tried to learn a limited amount of conversational Persian, with associated grammar and vocabulary.

38. SAR Corpus Analysis: Tried • Tried my/our best (18 instances) • Self-reassurance of the efforts • SAR corpus: • Different people have different ability in these areas. I believe that my group mates and I have already tried our bestto give a fluent and clear speech. Indeed, there are some areas that we can improve. (SAR813) • Ref corpus (only 1 instance): • We tried our best to do accurate forecasting but forecasting is never accurate and we had penalties

39. Conclusions • Mixed methods (surveys, interviews and discourse analysis) to present a more complete picture of ProTech students’ perceptions of independent learning and reflection. • ProTech was generally successful in raising the learners’ awareness of: • the value of independent learning and reflection in skills development • the roles of the ‘significant others’ (e.g. peers) in independent learning and reflection • independent learning and reflection as transferrable skills

40. Bibliographies Bahar , M. & Hansell, M.H. (2000). The relationship between some psychological factors and their effect on the performance of grid questions and word association tests. Educational Psychology, 20(3), 349-364. Bolton, G. (2010). Reflective practice: Writing and professional development (3rd edition). London: Sage. Carless, D., Salter, D., Yang, M. and Lam, J. (2011). Developing sustainable feedback practices. Studies in Higher Education, 36(4), 395-407. Gardner, D. and Miller, L. (1998). Establishing self-access: from theory to practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lau, K. (2012). Self-access and reflection in an ESP course. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 16(1), 155-160. Luk, J. (2008). Assessing teaching practicum reflections: Distinguishing discourse features of the ‘high’ and ‘low’ grade reports. System, 36(4), 624-641. White, J. (2008). The use of reflective writing in exploring students experiences in surgery. Journal of Surgical Education, 65(6), 518-520. Williams, J. M. (2002). The engineering portfolio: Communication, reflection and student learning outcomes assessment. International Journal of Engineering Education, 18(2), 199-207.