The practice-teacher’s pedagogical reflection as the way of foreign language vocabulary expansion

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The practice-teacher's pedagogical reflection as the way of foreign language vocabulary expansion

Nataliia Serdiuk

Стаття присвячена проблемі педагогічної рефлексії студента- практиканта як шляху розширення словникого запасу іноземної мови. Під педагогічною рефлексією автор розуміє систематичний процес самоспостереження та самооцінки педагога, який передбачає спостереження за власною діяльністю в класі, обдумування її причин і результатів з метою подальшого внесення змін. У статті виявлено основні етапи та способи рефлексії майбутніх учителів іноземної мови для розширення словникого запасу іноземної мови. Визначено роль цього процесу у формуванні професійної компетентності студентів-практикантів.

Ключові слова: розширення словникого запасу, педагогічна рефлексія, етапи, способи, практика, майбутній вчитель іноземної мови, професійна компетентність.

Статья посвещена проблеме педагогической рефлексии студента-практиканта как пути расширения словарного запаса иностранного языка. Под педагогической рефлексией автор понимает систематический процесс самонаблюдения и самооценки педагога, предусматривающий наблюдение за собственной деятельностью в классе, обдумывание ёё причин и результатов с целью последующего внесения изменений. В статье выявлены основные этапы и способы рефлексии будущих учителей иностранного языка для расширения словаря запаса иностранного языка. Определена роль этого процесса в формировании профессиональной компетентности студентов- практикантов.

Ключевые слова: педагогическая рефлексия, этапы, способы, практика, будущий учитель иностранного языка, профессиональная компетентность.

The article deals with the problem of the practice-teacher's pedagogical reflection as the way of foreign language vocabulary expansion. The pedagogical reflection is considered by the author as a teacher's systematic self-observation and self-evaluation process, providing surveillance of its own activities in a classroom and thinking about its causes and results with the aim of subsequent changes. The main phases and means of the future foreign language teachers' reflection for their foreign language vocabulary expansion were defined. The role of this process in the formation of the practice-teachers' professional competence was identified.

Key words: vocabulary expansion, pedagogical reflection, phases, means, teaching practice, future foreign language teacher, professional competence.

The concept of modem Ukrainian education modernization involves the training of qualified, competitive and competent professionals according to international standards. Up to date, an important demand for the individual of every foreign language teacher is not only a high-level theoretical knowledge and practical skills, but also the ability to non-standard creative thinking and pedagogical reflection. Such teacher forming process is made not only theoretically, but practically, so the question of reflection during a teaching practice at school as the factor of foreign language teachers's professional competence formation, including their foreign language vocabulary expansion, is considered to be important today.

Many scholars, including L. Avramchuk [1], O. Blinova [2], I. Kotyk [3] and others, have studied the teaching practice problems. The formation of foreign language teacher's professional competence has been studied also by many scientists (N. Barhramova, A. Bihych, N. Borysko, S. Nikolaeva etc.). However, the analysis of scientific literature has shown that the problem of the future foreign language teachers' reflection during their teaching practice, espessialy foreign language vocabulary expansion, is characterized by insufficient theoretical and methodological elaboration.

The purpose of the article is to identify the main phases and means of the practice-teachers' reflection for their foreign language vocabulary expansion, the role of this process in the formation of their professional competence.

Nowadays a teaching practice is an important factor for every future teacher self-esteem and self-improvement. Students should realize the prime importance of a teaching practice, which is the first time that a future teacher learns that role behavior, which will be crucial to his future career. In order to make this first attempt successful, and the their further professional competence development more effective, the student should use all available means, including an pedagogical reflection, that is a reflaction of a teacher.

The pedagogical reflection is considered by the author of the article as a teacher's systematic self-observation and self-evaluation process, providing surveillance of its own activities in a classroom and thinking about its causes and results with the aim of subsequent changes.

According to the definition given above, the reflection process of a student as a future foreign language teacher is very important espessially in the terms of teaching practice and is the effective factor of the foreign language teachers' professional competence formation, including their vocabulary expansion.

We believe that teaching practice may be apt time for future teachers to begin the process of reflection, because of a good chance to focus on at least one class, to see the features of own teaching (for example, what words you use to solve cases of bad behavior, encourage pupils to use a foreign language oftener and others), desiring to change them for better.

An emphasis should be made on the fact that such pedagogical reflection of a student-philologist being as a practice-teacher at school can have many ways, stages, means, level and others, but the most important are considered by us to be phases and means. We would like to name only those that should be not only at the very beginning of such reflection, but also during the whole this process.

The first phase in the practice-teacher's reflection towards foreign language vocabulary expansion is to collect, record and analyze an information of what is happening and has happened in the classroom from the point of view of vocabulary using. The means to be implemented at this stage can be a: 1) «Teacher's Diary», 2) peers' observation, 3) pupils' feedback (reactions and responds).

The «Teacher's Diary» is a personal diary in which a student analyzes its own and pupils' activities at a lesson from the psychological and educational point of view, tries to find causes of progresses and problems at the foreign language vocabulary usage, solutions to last, and so on. A student may also describe own reactions, feelings, vocabulary used and those observed on the part of the students. Practice-teachers are likely to begin to pose questions about what they have observed. The specifics of the diary is seen by us to promote practice-teachers' professional competence and foreign language vocabulary expansion. This kind of a diary shouldn't be confused with the other kind that is an essential and official part of documents on a practice to be given to a methodist after a practice term.

Diary writing does require a certain discipline in taking the time to do it on a regular basis. So, it is very important and nessesary for a student to make notes at «Teacher's Diary» regularly and constantly, to realise this importance and nessecity in order not to forget about it. So there are some demands to a student as a practice-teacher, they are: its responsibility, firm desire to be a teacher in future, capability to a self-discipline and self-critics, tolerant and kind person, attentive to others, and so far. On such features ground the person could associate itself with a real teacher, realising the purpose of teaching activity and having a good motivation to personal and pedagogical self-realization. That is why we propose such name of the diary - «Teacher's Diary».

We propose to divide each note of the diary into five main parts towards every lesson: 1) the purpose and objectives of it; 2) the activities and methods; 3) classroom management; 4) students; 5) teacher (self-analysis). According to such parts of a diary writing, students could:

in the first part - highlight thoughts on a level of pupils' understanding a subject; themes and objectives' complexity, and the foreign language vocabulary used; pedagogical reflection language teacher

in the second part - analyze the diversity and curiosity of teaching means and kinds of activities, the time usage, methods and principles of training, the way of new tools implementation, possible ways of improving the structure, content of the lesson, and foreign language vocabulary used;

in the third part - analyze their own classroom management: the chosen pace of a lesson, variety of selected species and the result of their use, clarity of the tasks to students, giving each student an opportunity to take an active part in a lesson, and the usage of foreign language vocabulary;

in the fourth part - analyze the level of the pupils, their interest in the course of the lesson that they liked and vice versa, to compare the mood and behavior of a class at the beginning and end of a lesson, whether during the whole lesson or not the pupils used a foreign language, to try to identify possible problems and the foreign language vocabulary used;

in the fifth part - analyze their own activities in a classroom, including the level of self-control and self-esteem, and, the most important here, the usage of foreign language vocabulary.

We suggest the sample of every note for «Teacher's Diary» in the form of parts and questions:

Lesson objectives:

Did the pupils understand what we did in the lesson? What vocabulary did I use? What problems did the pupils have (if any) and what words did I use trying to solve them?

What and how did they ask? Was there a clear outcome for the pupils? What vocabulary did they use showing this outcome?

What did they learn or practise in the lesson? What new words did they learn? Was it useful for them? What words did they used in mostly cases? What words couldn't they remember?

Activities and materials:

Did activities last the right length of time? According to what my words did they know it? What words did I use during different activities?

What was the vocabulary used to keep pupils interested in the activities and materials? Did it keep pupils interested?

What words represented new materials and methods? Did they keep pupils interested?

Could I have represented any parts of the lesson differently? What new phases could I have used?

Classroom management:

Was the pace of the lesson right? Was the used vocabulary appropriate to the chosen pace?

Did I use whole class work, groupwork, pairwork or individual work? What vocabulary did I use? What did I use it for? Did it work?

Did the pupils understand what to do in the lesson? Were my instructions clear?

What phrases did I use to provide opportunities for all the pupils to participate?

What vocabulary did I use to emphasize on the pupils ' progressing?

What new words and combinations could have been used to improve a classroom management?

Pupils:

Were all the pupils on task (i.e. doing what they were supposed to be doing)? If not, when was that and why did it happen? What phrases did they tell? Were they correct?

Was their behaviour good? If not, when was that and why did it happen? What did the pupils tell and how?

Were they active all the time? What lexis did they used? Did they always use a new vocabulary? If not, when was that and why did it happen?

Which parts of the lesson did the pupils seem to enjoy most? And least? What words did they use?

How much English did the pupils use at the lesson? What words and combinations did they often forget to use?

Teacher/Me:

Was my self-contol good? What words and combinations did I use? If it wasn't good, when was that and why did it happen? What words did I use? What words is better to use in such situations?

Did I manage to keep my positive until the end of the lesson? What words did I try to use? If not, when was that and why did it happen? What words did I use? What words is better to use in such situations?

How much English did I use? Did I tell all I planned before? If not, when was that and why did it happen?

If I taught the lesson again, what would I do differently? What new or other words and combinations would I use?

In other words, a practice-teacher can write whatever he/ she wants and considers it necessary and worthwhile; the more a student writes, the more he/she can analyse the situation in future (a well described situation can be easily remembered in a month, a year, and the more) and a new vocabulary can be easily learned. When all the information has been gathered, a practice-teacher could make conclusions as a purely subjective opinion and try to find out about the situation from the outside.

Peers' observation. A student can invite other teachers, a methodist, and university groupmates that are at practice too, to come into a class to collect information about a lesson, including the vocabulary used by practice-teacher and pupils. This may be with a simple observation task or through note taking. This will relate back to the area a student has identified to reflect upon. For example, a future teacher might ask colleagues and friends to focus on vocabulary he/she used during praising pupils or speaking about their errors, and so on.

Pupils' feedback. Using the methods of interviews and questionnaires, the student can also ask pupils what they think not only about what is happening in the classroom, their activities and cooperation, but also about their attitude towards the teacher's tone and manner to speak to them, words and phrases used. Their views and perceptions can expand and make the collected information more interesting one.

Then a future teacher should do a summary of own and other people opinions, suggestions and comments, rethink its own activities, do the work on mistakes and move on to the next step - check an activity and usage of vocabulary by recording lessons on audio and video.

The second phase - recording lessons. For a future foreign language teacher video or audio recordings of lessons can provide very useful information for reflection. The students may do and tell things in class they are not aware of or there may be things happening in the class that as the teacher they do not normally see.

The proper analysis and doing this step of reflaction again can confirm or not the progress in the teacher's foreign language vocabulary expansion, that is apart of its professional self-improvement and competence development.

We believe that audio recordings can be useful for considering aspects of future teacher talk, especially for future foreign language teacher, answering such questions: How much do you talk? What about? What words did you use? How much do you talk foreign language? Is your English grammatically correct, rich etc. ? What do you need to improve in your speech? Are instructions and explanations clear? How to improve them? How much time do you allocate to pupil talk? How do you respond to pupil talk? What words did you use?

Video recordings can be useful in showing the aspects of practice-teacher's behavior, answering such questions as, for example: Who do you speak to? How do you speak? Where do you stand? How do you come across to the students?

The third phase in teaching reflection at a practice is the search for solutions to unsolved questions and problems. As a future teacher-philologist can conclude that some issues or problems remained unresolved, he/she should look for new or relevant information about their resolution or elimination. In this case, the useful are: reading scientific works on teaching foreign languages made by ukrainian and foreign teachers and scientists; communicating with them, many of them have their own websites or pages in social nets etc.; analysing the foreign language lessons, which are of great number in Internet; sites not only for teachers, but also psychologists to find useful educational, psychological and pedagogical ideas.

For a future foreign language teacher the great importance is laid onto realizing the first and third phases not in native language, but a foreign one. This additional use of foreign languages will improve practice-teachers' oral and written foreign language speech, their foreign language vocabulary expansion, thus facilitate a communicative competence in general.

We believe that the pedagogical reflection of future foreign language teachers is a cyclic process, because as soon as a person begins to improve its own knowledge and skills, make some changes in its own teaching career, changing its results, a new cycle of self-assessment and reflection will start.

The finale element at the practice-teacher's pedagogical reflection in the course of foreign language vocabulary expansion could be proposed as a combination of some checking questions: What are you telling? What words did you use? Why and how are you telling it? How effective is it? How are the students responding? How can you do it better?

It is considered as appropriate after teaching practice to discuss not only results, creative reports of students at the final conference, but also students to present their results and achievements in their own reflection. So, in any form students should display the most interesting, important or experience supplied event of practice, caused the changes in their teaching for better and noted the conclusions to which they came and needed actions they taken.

Therefore, in our opinion, the formation of the future foreign language teachers' professional competence is very effective in terms of teaching practice in schools. The main relevance and value is seen in of the practice-teacher's pedagogical reflection as the way of foreign language vocabulary expansion that can take place in many phases, of which the most important are the following: 1) to collect, record and analyze an information, using «Teacher's Diary», peer observation and pupils' feedback; 2) recording lessons audio and video; 3) search for solutions to unsolved questions and problems. It is sure, in our opinion, that the systematic pedagogical reflection will contribute not only the future foreign language teachers' self-esteem and foreign language vocabulary expansion, but also their professional competence development.

The prospect research is to build a professiogram of a future foreign language teacher basing on a reflexive approach.

Literature

1. Аврамчук Л.А. Формування активної пізнавальної діяльності студентів / Лідія Андріївна Аврамчук // Педагогіка і психологія : науково-теоретичний та інформаційний журнал Академії педагогічних наук України. - К. : Державне видавництво «Педагогічна преса», 1997. - № 3. - С. 122-126.

2. Блінова О.Є. Відкритість як мотиваційна готовність майбутнього вчителя до педагогічного спілкування / Олена Євгенівна Блінова // Педагогіка і психологія : науково- теоретичний та інформаційний журнал Академії педагогічних наук України. - К. : Державне видавництво «Педагогічна преса», - 2002. - № 1/2. - С. 97-103.

3. Котик І.О. Роль рефлексії у формуванні готовності до вибору професії / Інна Олександрівна Котик // Практична психологія та соціальна робота : Науково-практичний освітньо- методичний журнал. - К. : Компанія «СОЦИС», 2006. - № 3. - С. 67-71.

4. Статтю рекомендовано до друку кандидатом педагогічних наук, доцентом кафедри іноземної філології і методики навчання ДВНЗ «Переяслав-Хмельницький державний педагогічний університет імені Григорія Сковороди» Шабінським М.Є.

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