A TEACHER’S REFLECTION ON INTRODUCING A REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN THE PRO-SKILLS CLASS

Abstract

This paper aims to present how Reflective Practice (RP) is promoted through the Professional Skills (Pro-skills) Class and describe the transformation of English learners into reflective practitioners. Pro-skills class is a tailored business English class program offered by Wallstreet English (WSE) to its students, especially corporate students, to master some professional set skills in English. The intention for this reflective paper was simply to see if it was possible to enhance corporate students' self-reflection and convince them that the lessons were essential for their personal and professional development. As a result, they needed to pay closer attention to the class material because my practical experience teaching corporate students revealed that the majority of them attended the class simply because their superiors told them to, and they tended to take all of the lessons for granted. With this in mind, I began this reflective research by introducing the participants to the concept of reflective practice from Jasper (2013), where she introduced the reflection model theory of ERA (Experience, Reflection, Action), which involves a careful distinction between theory and practice in the context of the lessons they have learned in the class. Three questions were formulated to ask the students in a five-minute reflection session before ending each class in the form of a discussion, and the session was promoted for five consecutive weeks. So this paper is fundamentally a teacher’s reflection based on the student’s reflection. The findings indicate that the RP benefits the participants more than just bringing the difference between the theory and the practice in the pro-skills class; In accordance with Philip's (2006) concept, the RP encourages all students to participate in the session, not just the top performers, and it promotes 'peer-tutoring' in some way. The RP also successfully becomes the media for the students to interact, allowing them to be aware of their reflective ability as well as the process that is being followed; this is critical if they are to transfer this skill. By reflecting academically and on job satisfaction in a subject-specific manner, students can gain insight from their mistakes and improve their future learning through RP. Reflection, in other words, includes not only skill development but also subject comprehension and knowledge acquisition. Students can also begin to notice common errors they make and see how far they have progressed. To conclude, RP offers multiple benefits to the students who took part in the research as respondents.