Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) - Reflective Learning Journals
INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS
ENGLISH LANGUAGE SUPPORT REFLECTIVE LEARNING
JOURNAL
Your Reflective Learning Journal must include at least 8 entries that relate to what
you have done in your ELS lessons. However, you shouldn’t simply describe what you
did in the lesson - you should reflect. This means that you should think about and
comment on what you did. Each entry should be a minimum of 150 words – although
you can write more if you wish! You may submit it by email if you like.
Examples of thinking about and commenting are below. You can do all of these. You
can do some of these. Or you can decide on other areas of language that you want to
comment on. However, it should be related to your ELS course.
Examples

consider how and when you could use the skills or language covered in a
particular lesson;

set yourself goals to use new language/skills; ask yourself ‘Why have I chosen
these goals/these skills?’

comment on how you have used the skills or language in the past and how you
will change (or not!) to improve;

comment on your rate of progress and why you are progressing at this rate;

comment on any homework/self-study you have done to consolidate or extend
what was learned in class; Why do you need to extend this area of language?

comment on how you have applied what was learned in your ELS class to
your academic work, or to your social life. Were you happy with your
performance? Why/why not?

record the new vocabulary/grammar you are learning, set goals for using it and
comment on your success;

comment on your confidence levels; are they changing? Why/why not?

comment on your strengths and weaknesses; how can you improve?

comment on what you find difficult and how you will try to overcome your
difficulties;

comment on your successes! Why were you successful?

etc.
Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) - Reflective Learning Journals
HIGHER EDUCATION ACHIEVEMENT REPORT
ENGLISH LANGUAGE SUPPORT REFLECTIVE LEARNING
JOURNAL
STUDENT NAME: xxxxxxx
REGISTRATION NUMBER: xxxxxxx
DEPARTMENT: xxxxxxx
ELS COURSE CODE: RWA2b
SEMESTER/YEAR: xxxxxxx
ENTRY 1 DATE: 10 Oct 2012
Since it was the first class, we started to with brief introduction of class and ourselves. It was reading
and writing class, but it also covered some of speaking and conversational English. At this time, I
could learn the expression for the first meeting. For the rest of class, we learned about the process of
academic writing. I have learned this process when I was studying in foundation year before, but it
was good chance to review the process and it reminded me the process before I start to write my essay.
As I had an essay after the class, I could follow this step for writing essay. The first step was
clarifying the task. Since my essay topic was free, it didn’t require delicate analysis. After deciding
my topic, I collected the resources and organised it. After reflecting the information, I researched
again and made outline. I wrote my essay following next steps and the process that I learned during
the class made it easy to write because I know which step will be next.
ENTRY 2 DATE: 17 Oct 2012
For this class, I learned academic keywords use in titles. Same as before, we learned some of
conversational language during the lecture, but we mainly focused on how to analyse the title of essay
or academic writing. We learned academic keywords used in title, for example, Account for, Analyse,
Compare… Also, we learned how to analyse the question. This class was very useful because I didn’t
take analysis of question serious before. However, during the lecture, I realised that analysing the
question is really important and it provide the basic framework to write essay. Also, I could practice
the analysis of question during the class. Through the practice, I could figure out how to find subject,
instruction, key aspect, and what are the important information for writing. Using this knowledge, I
could practice individually with my essay question. It was very helpful to start to writing. I can adapt
this analysing strategy whenever I write essay or academic writing.
Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) - Reflective Learning Journals
ENTRY 3 DATE: 24 Oct 2012
The lesson of this class was how to deal with unknown words in reading. Unknown word in reading is
a problem for me because it is hard to understand the context with unknown words. If I try to find the
definition of the words, the pattern of my reading style is changed so it is hard to concentrate on
reading. If there is only small amount of unknown words, then it is not serious problem and I can keep
reading with finding the definitions, but it becomes difficult when the unknown words come a lot.
Furthermore, I definitely need to skills for dealing with unknown words. As there is a lot of reading
that I need to read, I cannot find all definition of unknown words. I could practice dealing with
unknown words through this class. Predicting before reading was good strategy to deal with unknown
words or reading, because It makes me easy to guess what the words mean. Especially when I don
scanning or skimming, this skill is very useful. As homework, I read an article to practice dealing with
unknown word in reading.
ENTRY 4 DATE: 31 Oct 2012
For this class, we learned what makes good paragraph. At the beginning, we discussed about
paragraph and we moved on to the components of paragraph. There were three important aspects:
unity, coherence and logical development. It was useful lesson because I could learn what good
paragraph is. Normally, I concentrated on grammar and sentences as important factors which should
be considered in writing, however, there is things should be considered before those. During the class,
I could practice ordering the sentences into paragraph. Through this practice, I could understand ideal
organization of paragraph. Also, as the style of writing of the East is different from the West, it was
good opportunity to understand writing style here because I should use this style to write essay in the
university in the UK. To develop my writing skills, I will practice the writing with consideration what
makes good paragraph. Before I write a paragraph, I can make outline about what will be on the
paragraph so I can make the paragraph clear to contain essential components.
ENTRY 5 DATE: 14 Nov
In this class, I learned how to read fast, not just reading fast, but how to read efficiently. When I write
essay, there are a lot of sources or materials that I need to read, and it takes enormous time to read all
and sometimes, it is almost impossible to read all. In this class, I learned how to distinguish which
material is more important with the topic of the essay. There were three parts- relevance, how recent it
is, and how authoritative it is. With the three criteria, I practiced to judge how the materials are
important. I found it is really efficient to judge the materials are related or not. With only looking the
brief information of the book, I can reduce much time for reading. Sometimes, I realised that the
material is not useful after reading, but through this activity, that problem will not happen as before. I
can focus on important materials more, so it not only reduce the time, but also let me know where I
should concentrate.
Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) - Reflective Learning Journals
ENTRY 6 DATE: 21 Nov 2012
Following last time, the class was about how to reduce the reading materials. In this class, we learned
how to improve efficiency of reading by skimming of the book. As we learned before, we skimmed
the title of the book first, so we could decide whether the book is important for topic or not. One of
the problems of my essay was the contents were not really focused on the topic. If the direction is
wrong, it is hard to get high mark, so from the reading, focusing on the topic is important in writing an
essay. As I briefly skim the contents of book, I can look only relevant materials, and if it is not, I can
quickly come back from the materials. This way of predicting reading materials improve efficiency
and make the writer focus on the topic. If I remind this skill, I can save not only time, but also easily
follow the instruction of the essay.
ENTRY 7 DATE: 28 Nov 2012
It is quite confusing to use only academic language in writing an essay. In this class, I learned some of
academic language in academic writing. As a forging student, it is hard to distinguish academic and
conversational language. For some words, I should remember whether it is academic or not but it was
easy, and I learned some lessons from this class. First, I should avoid long sentence when it is possible
to substitute for shorter sentence. Also, I was confused to use question in the essay, but I learned that
it is not academic way of writing an essay. Sometimes, when I write essay, I used no-academic words,
for example, put off, to avoid repetition, however, it made it worse. Also, I didn’t know that I should
consider the words not to be a sexist. For example, the word ‘businessman’ is the word for man, so I’d
better to use businessperson. Through this class, I learned that I should be cautious with using
academic language in academic writing.
ENTRY 8 DATE: 5 Dec 2012
In writing essay, referencing is one of the important skills. In this class, I could learn how to report
what others say. When I write an essay, there are many occasions that I need to use the opinion of
other scholars. Each time, my expression was very similar. I used only some of expressions that I
know. Through this lesson, I learned various ways to report what the others said. Also, there are
different words having different usages. When I was writing, I didn’t consider about that much,
however, I think it is better to use proper words in their proper situation. In most cases, I used
reporting verbs, but I think it is better to use reporting nouns as well. As I used only limited range of
expressions, I need to remember the words that I learned this class, so I can use those in my future
essays. At the end of the class, we practiced to find mistakes in sentences, I was not good at finding
the mistakes, so I will study about those expressions and similar cases to avoid mistake later.