The effects of reflective journal writings (rjw) on the vocabulary acquisition and writing performance of primary students at vinschool central park (vsc)

Certificate Of Originality I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis entitled “the effects of reflective journal writing RJW on the vocabulary acquisition and writing performance of

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of

Arts in TESOL

Ho Chi Minh City, 2019

Tai Lieu Chat Luong

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of

Arts in TESOL

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Pham Vu Phi Ho, Ph.D

Ho Chi Minh City, 2019

Certificate Of Originality

I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis entitled “the effects of reflective journal writing (RJW) on the vocabulary acquisition and writing performance of primary students at Vinschool Central Park.”

All sources used by me have been documented No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement This piece of work has not been submitted for assessment in this or any other subject or course at this University or elsewhere

Ho Chi Minh City, 2019 Student’s signature

Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the tremendous academic support of my supervisor, Assoc Prof Pham Vu Phi Ho, Ph.D I am especially indebted to Prof Pham Vu Phi Ho, who has been supportive of my thesis as well as encouraging me strongly during my hard times Your advice

on research has been invaluable to me

I am grateful to all of those with whom I have had the pleasure to work with during this research I would like to thank my managers, Ms.Le Thi Ngoc Diep, Ph.D – Vinschool Principal and Ms.Tran Ngoc Thuy Nhien – Vinschool Vice Principal for consulting and giving me an opportunity to conduct the study at Vinschool Central Park

My deep gratitude goes to my co-workers at Vinschool Central Park, who have been giving me emotional support and sharing their own teaching experience with me Each of the members in ESL Vinschool team has been a great inspiration and motivation for me to finish this research

Finally, but by no means least, words cannot express how grateful I am

to my family Your endless love for me has been what sustained me thus far They are the most important people in my world and I dedicate this thesis to them

Abstract

The learning and teaching English in Vietnam has not been a new issue for ages It has especially gained more attention in such a rapid economic and social development New curriculums have been planned, new textbooks have been tried out, modern teaching approaches and methods have been discussed and applied However, it is just a turning point in which not all aspects of renovation can be successfully carried out In many schools in Vietnam, Grammar Translation Method alone, which focused on the translation of text and the rote learning of vocabulary, is still used to teach all skills, no matter it is reading, writing, speaking or listening and regardless of what learning objective that is Teachers say the words, students repeat Teachers force students to memorize the words by copying Students learn writing by translating sentences from their mother tongue to English and vice versa Thus, the effectiveness of the teaching and learning English has been not as good as expected This research aimed at examining the impacts of reflective journal writings (RJW) on the learning of vocabulary and writing performance of primary students at Vinschool Central Park, Ho Chi Minh City The quasi-experimental research design was used in this study 60 primary students of level 3 in the 12-level English proficiency scale aged from 8 to 10 participated in the study These 60 students were divided into two groups of 30 including control and experimental one Both groups were taught with Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method, but the treatment group wrote reflective journals in the wrap-up phase of every vocabulary lesson in 3 months, while the control group took the regular spelling and writing practice in the wrap-up phase Pre-test and post-test were used to measure their progress before and after the reflective journal writing experiment Each test paper was marked separately by two raters, then the final score was the average number of these two scores The findings disclosed that the achievement in the participants’ writing skills and vocabulary mastery in terms of vocabulary quantity, spelling, word meaning in specific contexts, and word use of the treatment group is considerably better than that of the control group The research also confirmed the positive influence of RJW on students’

abilities to remember the words, use words in context, writing fluency and accuracy

The results might have pedagogically significant implications for material developers,

language teachers and students

Keywords:

Reflective journal writing, vocabulary acquisition, writing fluency, writing accuracy

Table of Contents

Certificate Of Originality I Acknowledgements II Abstract III

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Statement of the problem 2

1.3 Purpose of the study 5

1.4 Research questions 5

1.5 Significance of the study 6

1.6 Structure of the study 6

Chapter 2 Literature review 8

2.1 Definition of terminology 8

2.1.1 Definitions of reflective journal writing 8

2.1.2 Definition of vocabulary acquisition 9

2.1.3 Definition of writing fluency and accuracy 10

2.2 Theoretical framework 11

2.2.1 Theory-based approaches to reflective journal writing 11

2.2.2 Theory-based approaches to teaching writing 17

2.2.3 Theory-based approaches to critical thinking 18

2.2.4 Other benefits of reflective journal writing 20

2.2.5 Previous research studies and research gap 26

2.2.5.1 Previous research studies 26

2.2.5.2 Research gap 38

Chapter 3 Research methodology 41

3.1 Research design 41

3.2 Research setting and participants 42

3.2.1 Research setting 42

3.2.2 Participants 44

3.3 Research procedure 45

3.4 Teaching procedure 47

3.5 Data collection and analysis 52

3.6 Instruments 52

3.6.1 The English proficiency test 52

3.6.2 The vocabulary pre- and post-test 53

3.6.3 Reflective journals 54

3.7 The pre- and post-test construction 55

3.7.1 How to measure vocabulary knowledge? 55

3.7.2 The pre- and post-test format 57

3.7.3 The pre- and post-test construction 60

3.7.3.1 Content validity 61

3.7.3.2 Inter-rater reliability 61

3.7.3.3 Test reliability data analysis 62

Chapter 4 Results/ Findings and Discussions 65

4.1 A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition and writing performance of both groups in the pre-test 65

4.1.1 A comparison of students’ overall score in the pre-test 66

4.1.2 A comparison of students’ writing fluency in the pre-test 66

4.1.3 A comparison of students’ writing accuracy in the pre-test 67

4.2 A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition in the pre- and post-test 69 4.2.1 Control group: A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition in the pre- and post-test 69

4.2.2 Experimental group: A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition in the pre- and post-test 70

4.3 A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition of both groups in the post-test 71

4.4 A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy in the pre- and

post-test 72

4.4.1 Control group: A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy in the pre- and post-test 73

4.4.2 Experimental group: A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy in the pre- and post-test 74

4.4.3 A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy of both groups in the post-test 75

4.5 Discussion 78

4.5.1 The effect of reflective journal writing on the vocabulary acquisition of Vinschool primary students 78

4.5.2 The effect of reflective journal writing on the writing fluency of Vinschool primary students 79

4.5.3 The effect of reflective journal writing on the writing accuracy of Vinschool primary students 80

Chapter 5 Conclusions, implications and recommendations 82

5.1 A summary of the research findings 82

5.2 Conclusion 83

5.3 Implication of the study 83

5.4 Limitations and recommendations 84

References 86

Appendices 97

Appendix 1: Sample reflective journal writing with guided questions 97

Appendix 2: Sample reflective journal writing with scaffolding for the first two sessions 98

Appendix 3: Sample regular spelling and writing practice 99

Appendix 4: Writing Rubric 100

Appendix 5: Curriculum planning and detailed lesson plan for each treatment session 101

Appendix 6: Vocabulary pre-test and answer key 115

Appendix 7: Vocabulary post-test and answer key 121

Appendix 8: Students’ writing samples 127

Appendix 9: SPSS data analysis results 128

List of figures and charts Figure 2.1 Conceptual framework of reflective journal writing 26

Figure 2.2 A summary of the literature and the research gap 40

Chart 3.1 Vinschool English program level mapping 43

Chart 3.2 Control group teaching procedure 49

Chart 3.3 Experimental group teaching procedure 50

Figure 3.1 Two ways of conceptualizing breadth and depth 56

Figure 4.1 A summary of the data analysis result 77

List of tables Table 2.1 A summary of the theory-based approaches to reflective journal writing 16 Table 2.2 Reflective journal writing across academic disciplines 24

Table 2.3 A summary of the reviewed literature about reflective journal writing 32

Table 3 1 Procedures to develop the research 46

Table 3.2 Common grammar and spelling errors in the reflective journal writings 55 Table 3.3 Pre- and post-test specification 59

Table 3.4 A comparison of students’ score in the pre-test pilot 62

Table 3.5 A comparison of students’ score in the post-test pilot 62

Table 3.6 A comparison of group 1 students’ score in the pre- and post-test pilot 63

Table 3.7 A comparison of group 2 students’ score in the pre- and post-test pilot 63

Table 4.1 A comparison of students’ overall score in the pre-test 66 Table 4.2 A comparison of students’ writing fluency in the pre-test 67 Table 4.3 A comparison of students’ writing accuracy in the pre-test 68 Table 4.4 A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition in the pre-test and post-test (Control group) 69 Table 4.5 A comparison of students’ vocabulary acquisition in the pre-test and post-test (Experimental group) 70 Table 4.6 A comparison of students’ overall score in the post-test 71 Table 4.7 A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy in the pre-test and post-test (Control group) 73 Table 4.8 A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy in the pre-test and post-test (Experimental group) 74 Table 4.9 A comparison of students’ writing fluency and accuracy in the post-test 75

Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Background of the study

In such a rapid economic and social development, English, which is spoken in Vietnam as a foreign language, has gained more and more attention in families, workplaces, schools and universities recently It is a mandatory subject at primary and secondary schools, even universities not to mention English language centers As stated by the MOET (as cited in Hiep, 2007 and; Huong, 2006), the proportion of lower secondary students studying English at least three hours a week is 67% and that

of upper secondary students is 86% As for colleges or universities, all students learn

a foreign language, among that 90% choose to study English as their requirement to pass schools (Canh, 2007) In spite of the fact that English is highly focused at schools

of all levels, Vietnamese students find it hard to use the language “Many Vietnamese students do have the words, they either heard them or read them but they can’t say them or use them in certain contexts” (Patrick Hayeck, personal communication, April, 29, 2016) For example, primary students may know landfill is “an area of land where large amounts of waste material are buried under the earth” (Oxford learner’s dictionaries); however, they may not know how to use this word in a particular context like “many tons of waste go into landfill each month.”, or “plastic in landfill lasts for hundreds of years.” Fanliver Pham (personal communication, Jun 2, 2016) supposed that having studied English 7 years at schools, most of the Vietnamese students cannot use English for daily communication; they just study English for passing the exam instead

Undoubtedly, these issues are caused in relation to various factors concerning the socio-cultural environment, teaching and learning methods At school, it is said that in spite of a great number of English lessons per week, students have not got sufficient exposure to English Students, except those studying at international schools, usually speak their mother tongue outside schools or right after their English lessons Additionally, a large majority of teachers in Vietnam have been applying traditional teaching methods following teacher-centered approach Teaching

vocabulary with this method, teachers read the words, while students listen, repeat and write them only; no meaningful or authentic contexts are provided for practicing the language It turns out that at the end of the lesson, students can learn by heart the words without really knowing how to use them in either spoken or written communication Research has also demonstrated that the learning of several majors happens passively by absorbing the information and storing it the memory without any reflection on what they have learned (Neber, He, Liu, & Schofield, 2008)

Teaching writing in Vietnam is also a big issue Although renovations in teaching methods have been discussed recently, not many schools successfully apply theory into their teaching The common traditional method used in many schools, especially public schools, has been Grammar Translation Method (GTM) Students are asked to compose an essay about a specific topic, which may not be of their interest or which they do not find the need to write Students are framed and controlled too much in terms of what and how to write Hence, their creativity is limited and then killed Young learners are said not to have positive attitudes towards writing because they think it is difficult and boring

Thus, a more creative and modern method of teaching vocabulary and writing effectively should be implemented This research was conducted in this context in order to investigate the effects of reflective journal writing on vocabulary learning and writing quality

1.2 Statement of the problem

For ages, the teaching and learning of vocabulary have not been a new issue Lots of researches have been conducted; numerous methodologies and techniques have been applied to teach vocabulary However, the teaching and learning of vocabulary are still facing difficulties concerning various issues According to Nation (2001), knowing a word means knowing all its meaning, form and use In other words, the term does not definitely refer to just the recognition of words from dictionaries Knowing a word means to know how to pronoun, write and use the words or interpret word meaning in contexts Lacking any of these factors may prevent learners from a

full understanding of a word, thus negatively affect the communication either in spoken or written form However, it seems hard for one to master all the aspects of words they have learned Rohmatillah (2014) stated that difficulties students usually encounter in learning new vocabulary are related to pronunciation, spelling, pragmatic meanings and different grammatical forms of the words These issues are reflected in student’s writing performances, for instance, misspelling, misuse of the words or collocation mistakes

Another research conducted by Farjami (2013) also revealed that the failure to convert new vocabulary from short - term to long - term memory poses challenges to the writing fluency New information or input needs to be preserved in short – term memory before it turns into long-term memory This neuropsychological theory can

be applied to examine vocabulary learning process in ESL and EFL classes In English classes, English learners listen and read a large number of words or significant input, but they cannot be successfully stored in their brains for long without reviewing, practicing and using them regularly Oxford (1990) proved that one of the issues preventing learners from achieving fluency is concerning their ability to remember a great deal of vocabulary Low-frequency words are not used frequently, so EFL and ESL students may face the risk of forgetting these words forever Brown (2002); Celce-Murcia (2001); Krashen (1989) also showed that forgetting happens when learners’ brain does not receive input and produce output sufficiently A new language item needs regular practice, especially in daily context,

in order to permanently stick to one’s brain

One more issue that limits learners’ vocabulary acquisition and writing performance is regarding the method the language is taught Language, when broken down into small units like words and taught separately from context, may fail to help learners communicate effectively If a vocabulary is presented in such a way that learners can only remember instead of understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating

or creating as stated by Krathwohl (2002) that vocabulary will fade away easily It goes back to the very first problem mentioned when learners just know the new words

at the surface level, which means just know about the words or their meanings without having any idea how to use them in certain contexts That is to say, learners are not given higher-order thinking learning activities that require different cognitive levels

of complexity and enable deeper learning

Moreover, concerning writing practice in class, it is said that sometimes students are not given meaningful communicative context to write In other words, they are forced to write with assigned topics without feeling the need to write Writing topics may be not of their interest or not connected to their personal life, thus, the writing is decontextualized, which does not help fully achieve the writing outcomes Writing should be composed in a “purposeful and contextualized communicative interaction” (Silva, 2006, p 111) Salem (2007) reported that writing performance may be negatively affected by writing anxiety Writing reflective journals is considered a solution to these issues since it can significantly personalize the writing context and decrease writing apprehension

As for Vinschool Central Park, in the English first semester test, the average point for speaking and listening test was 7.7; whereas the score for reading and writing was 0.6 lower than that One of the factors affecting the reading and writing score was connected to spelling mistakes Students were able to pronoun the words and use them in context, yet failed to provide correct spellings of the words

To foster the memorization, application of the words and the creation of using these words in new contexts as well as the improvement in writing skills, reflective journal writing is applied This activity is conducted at the end of every English lesson with the aim of providing students with more time and space to recall the vocabulary they have learned, deepen their understanding of the meanings and personalize their word use for better vocabulary acquisition and writing performance

The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of reflective journal writing to the young learners’ vocabulary acquisition and writing performance at Vinschool Central Park

1.3 Purpose of the study

This research was undertaken under 3 motivating factors Firstly, witnessing the fact that primary students from Vinschool Central Park are not interested in writing, and consider writing demotivating When it comes to writing lesson, they usually do the task without any effort, not to mention the poor writing quality Students have 2 writing lessons per month, which means that the chances when they really practice writing are not many Thus, grammar or spelling mistakes is a common issue Secondly, the education innovation which promotes student-centered approach also encourages the author to conduct this study Although “student-centered” is not

a new term in Vietnam, may teachers try to apply this approach into their teaching, and the researcher is not an exception Student-centered in writing is an aspect the author really wants to promote in her teaching practice for better vocabulary acquisition and writing performance Last but not least, that students have the habit

of reflecting and noting down their reflection after every learning or working activity for the life-long development urges the author to conduct this research When they leave school, reflective journal writing is still beneficial for their future work

For those reasons, the researcher conducted this study with the aim of finding

an alternative method for traditional vocabulary learning and writing practice activity

in class

1.4 Research questions

This study is to answer the following questions

Research question 1: Does Reflective Journal Writing affect the vocabulary

acquisition of primary students at Vinschool Central Park?

Research question 2: Does Reflective Journal Writing influence the writing

fluency and accuracy of primary students at Vinschool Central Park?

1.5 Significance of the study

The findings of this study will be of significant benefits to ESL and EFL teachers, lesson planners and curriculum designers in teaching and designing vocabulary lessons at primary level

Based on the result of this research, teachers can adjust their viewpoints about teaching vocabulary and writing Teaching writing can be conducted indirectly through classroom tasks instead of just when it comes to the lessons named “writing” Teachers can also familiarize their students with writing journals to share their thoughts, assess their own learning and create their learning strategies Assessment for learning and student-centered approach may be conducted then This way, students may be trained to take accountability for their own learning Additionally, teachers may also adapt their teaching methodologies accordingly and take good advantage of every moment in class to integrate writing activities

The result of this study may change vocabulary learning strategies as well Copying words many times for word retention and writing sentences out of the context has been considered boring for long This makes writing subject a burden for students as well This research directs learners to another method of learning vocabulary and practice writing In other words, it may make word learning and writing not an academic subject at school, but a part of life or a daily task instead Hence, students may change their perspectives towards writing Practicing writing may become a habit that is stress-free and enjoyable The result of this study may also promote the ability to think critically, which is a necessary skill not only in school, but also in their real life

As for curriculum planners, this study may take reflective journal writing into consideration as a part of the curriculum For the sake of long-term benefits, curriculum planners may consider of making reflective journal writing a daily or weekly task which happens throughout the school year

1.6 Structure of the study

This research includes 5 chapters as can be presented below

Chapter 1 is the introduction of this study which reveals the background of the research and statements of problems Personal motivation, research questions and the significance of the study can also be found here

Chapter 2 introduces the literature review in which the definitions of terms and theoretical framework are stated Some previous studies of similar topics are reviewed to find out the gap for this study

Chapter 3 describes the research methodology which includes the research design, research setting and participants, data collection and the pre- and post-test construction The validity and reliability are also discussed here

Chapter 4 is the findings and analysis which aims to provide a description of the data analysis result and an explanation of the findings

Chapter 5 shows the conclusions, implications of the study and

recommendations for further studies A summary of the findings is presented here, followed by the implications, limitations and suggestions for further research

Chapter 2 Literature review 2.1 Definition of terminology

2.1.1 Definitions of reflective journal writing

Reflective Journal Writing and the theory of experiential education or reflective learning are closely connected More specifically, reflective journal writing derives from the idea of learning from experience; thus, to define reflective journal writing, much should be known about these two terms for better understanding

The term “reflective journal”, also called “learning log” or “reflective diary”, despite being mentioned earlier, has just taken much attention recently by educators This term can be defined in various ways The Oxford English Dictionary defined reflective journal as a thought that is expressed in written words; a record as a result

of careful thoughts about a subject; “a philosophical observation” According to Dewey (1997); Boyd & Fales (1983), Reflective Journal Writing starts from the experiential education, which refers to the process in which learners learn how “to transform experience into knowledge, that we use this knowledge for our individual and collective development” Boyd & Fales (1983) also supposed that Reflective Journal Writing or reflective learning is a major part of learning from experience From their perspectives, it is a process in which self is the source of learning Knowledge is internally examined, explored and triggered by an experience Likely

as stated by Andresen, Boud, & Cohen (n.d.), the idea of Reflective Journal Writing

is learning from experience, which takes the “central place in all considerations of teaching and learning” Reflective journal writing is just an example of experience-based learning, a method in which learners learn from their past experience by reflecting, evaluating and reconstructing As for Boud, reflective journal writing is an

“intellectual and affective activity” in which individuals themselves explore their new experience, thus new understanding and appreciations are found In 2002, King supposed that reflective learning is a process in which learners deliberately take time

to focus on their performance in order to decide their future actions Thus, reflective journal can be defined as a writing of a reflective learning process Chapman (2006)

suggested that it is “a collection of notes, observations, thoughts and other relevant materials built-up over a period of time and maybe result of a period of study, learning

or working experience” As stated in wikieducator.org, “a reflective journal is a personal record of students’ learning experiences.” A reflective journal reflects students’ observation and responses to contexts According to Roberts (2012), a reflective journal is “evidence of reflective thinking” with some cognitive activities such as recalling an event or an idea; examining it from different perspectives and thinking about its outcome Kamshia (2018) has defined the term “reflective journal”

as an informal or formal writing concerning a subject using knowledge, thoughts and emotions

In brief, these definitions focus on the word “reflective” when they emphasize the importance of personal experience in teaching and learning There have been numerous ways to define a reflective journal, but they all agree that Reflective Journal Writing records learners’ learning experience through observing, reflecting and recycling knowledge In this research it is used to mean a written record of students’ learning and skill development “It is not just a diary or record of what students have done, but a record of what they have learned, tried and critically reflected upon.”

2.1.2 Definition of vocabulary acquisition

“Knowing a word” has been defined in many different ways over time The typical concept explanations will be discussed below

There are five areas which need mentioning to characterize “knowing a word”

as Laufer (1991) stated that it includes word form (the ability to pronounce and spell the word), word structure (morphemes), syntactic behavior (how a word is put in a sentence), meaning (referential meaning, affective meaning and pragmatic meaning) and lexical relations (collocations, the relationship between the word with others) These five factors are demonstrated when learners are able to apply the word in a sentence in an appropriate context in both spoken and written forms

Unlike Laufer, Nation (2001) stated that to know a word involved to know 3 elements: form, meaning and use According to him, a learner was supposed to

acquire the word when he/she was able to do many things such as knowing how to pronounce or write the word, what the word means, how to use the word in certain contexts, how to combine the word with other words in a sentence to make it meaningful, etc

In 2004, Folse also defined “knowing a word” by mentioning 13 factors: polysemy; denotation and connotation; spelling and pronunciation; part of speech; frequency; usage; collocation; boundaries between conceptual meaning; homonymy; homophony; synonym; style, register, dialect and translation

As can be seen, although there may be different wordings to define “word acquisition” or “knowing a word”, the major idea is to mater individual aspects of the word Knowing a word is much more than just remember its dictionary meaning In this research, since students are at young age of around 10 years old, the simplest definition of knowing a word (Paul Nation, 2001) was applied It is the ability to pronounce, write, understand and use the words flexibly in a specific context

2.1.3 Definition of writing fluency and accuracy

Writing is usually considered as the most difficult skill of all since it deals with various language aspects: grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, etc (Hapsari

& Sukavatee, 2018) To produce a good writing product, learners are supposed to achieve writing fluency and accuracy as will be defined below

Generally, fluency is seen as the proficiency in communication, or the capacity

to produce the language with ease, smoothness and flexibility in both spoken and written form Writing fluency is defined as the number of words written in a limited amount of time as well as the writing product is understandable (Fellner & Apple, 2006) Writing fluency is measured by various elements as stated by Fillmore, (1979) Linguistically, measurement of writing fluency includes “temporality and/or continuousness; coherence/ logic and/or semantical density; degree and scope of sociolinguistic appropriacy/ efficacy; and what might be broadly termed creativity/ imagination” According to Tavakoli & Rezazadeh (2014), writing fluency is effected

by speech rate, pauses, repair fluency

Whereas, accuracy refers to the correctness in producing the language More specifically, it is the ability to make grammatically correct sentences in both speaking and writing In writing, accuracy is regarded as the level of conformability between the language produced and the target language norms (Skehan & Foster, 1997) As for Lambert & Kormos (2014), writing accuracy is considered as the error free units

in the writing product; while Pallotti (2009) argued that writing accuracy should be measured together with the complexity in a writing product, instead of just the absence of errors

Fluency and accuracy are major factors to assess writing skills In this research, since students were at the primary level and were practicing writing sentences (instead of words/ phrases), the definitions of these two terms were simplified to some extent The author used “the absence of errors” to mean accuracy and “the number of words created in a limited amount of time” to define fluency

2.2 Theoretical framework

There have been several theories that support reflective journal writing

These theories highlight the opportunities to practice real-life activities reflectively

in authentic context Three major theories including Constructivism, Experiential, Situated-Cognition Learning theory together with the theory of hierarchical ordering

of cognitive skills will be mentioned in session 2.2.1

2.2.1 Theory-based approaches to reflective journal writing

Reflective Journal Writing is closely connected with Constructivism learning theory, which can be found in the work of several researchers (Dewey, 1929; Bruner, 1961; Vygotsky, 1962; Piaget, 1980) (as cited in Bada & Olusegun, 2015) There have been different wordings to define Constructivism with a core concept that learning should happen actively in the interaction between learners and the outside world According to Dewey, learning is not a passive process of accepting knowledge existing “out there”; it requires the learners to engage with the world As for Hein (1991), constructivist learning is a “meaning – making theory” in which “learners

construct knowledge for themselves – each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning – as he or she learns” Knowledge should be internally constructed from through cognitive activities rather than externally receiving from the outsiders To support this theory, (Mughal & Zafar, 2011; Bredo, 2000) also stated

“knowledge is made rather than found” Vygotsky (1896-1934) emphasized the cognition in association with social and cultural factors rather than individual phenomena More specifically, the interaction between learners and the surrounding environments (parents, friends, communities, etc.) is very important in constructing their knowledge Influenced by Vygotsky, Bruner argued that learning should be a process of discovery, in which learners themselves discover the knowledge in the association with the social and cultural context and based on their prior background knowledge Likewise, Piaget supposed that learning is not a “passive assimilation of given knowledge”; it is a dynamic process of knowledge construction

Built on the foundation of Constructivism, Experiential learning theory was constructed and developed with the contribution of several researchers (Kolb,1984; Dewey, 1938; Wells, 1995) (as cited in Mughal & Zafar, 2011) Experiential Learning theory is “strongly underlined with the constructivist view” due to the concept of knowledge construction Besides the concept of learning should be constructed in the relationship between learners and their socio-cultural context, what is new in the Experiential learning theory is its great emphasis on reflective activities and personal experience According to Dewey, learning is closely connected to reflection process, and cannot divorce from real life Dewey also emphasized the significance of reflective activity, which needs the mental involvement Likewise, in 1984, based on the learning model of Lewin, Dewey and Piaget, Kolb created Experiential Learning Cycle, describing learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience In the four-stage Kolbian Cycle (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and experimentation), “reflective observation”, the act of reviewing or reflecting on the experience after learners have encountered new experience, is treated as an integral part of the learning process

After reflective activities, new concepts are constructed, and finally, new knowledge

or understanding is tried out in the real world It can be seen that the whole process revealed the core of “how experience is transformed through reflection into concepts” The model, then, was used as an educational platform for many non-traditional educational trends including competency-based undergraduate education (Mentkowki, 2000), professional education (Boyatzis, Cowan & Kolb, 1995), college programs for adult learners, and prior learning assessment (Keeton & Tate, 1978; Simonsko, 1988; Kolb & Kolb, 2017) Undoubtedly, Kolbian Cycle about Experiential Learning defined learning from all perspectives and demonstrated meaningful steps toward an effective learning process

Having been published in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, the taxonomy was named after him The taxonomy classified human’s cognition into six domains including knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis and evaluation, which are correspondent with six levels of critical thinking The taxonomy was then revised by Anderson and Krathwohl in 2001 in which they changed some elements of the thinking process into remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create Murphy (2007) stated that similar to Kolb’s theory, Bloom’s taxonomy emphasized the importance of reflecting at higher level of critical thinking in writing, not just rote remember Bloom’s taxonomy and Kolb’s theory have been used together to avoid superficial writing and promote profound understanding as well as critical thinking

in students’ essays Together they guide students on how to organize what has been learned and write a reflection essay The fourth of Kolb’s theory (Active Experimentation) is correspondent to the last stage in the Bloom’s taxonomy in which learners are required to create something new after they have been provided with the necessary input In writing, students must “demonstrate their ability to generalize from the situation the elements that would apply or hold true in other settings” (Murphy, 2007) Kolb’s process and Bloom’s taxonomy add depth and breadth to students’ writing products

Based on several common concepts mentioned above, Situated-Cognition Learning is treated as one of the approaches of Experiential Learning theory As for this approach, the significance of context is even more emphasized J S Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989) stated using their situated-cognition theory that a new concept should be situated and “progressively developed through activity” since learning is closely tied to authentic activities or contexts Likewise, Lave & Wenger (1991) agreed with them on the principle that knowledge should be introduced in an authentic context or setting in which the knowledge is naturally involved In other words, new knowledge can hardly be learned out of context Miller & Gildea (1987) also conducted a study comparing learning words in context and out of context The result demonstrated that the 17-year-old learners can learn 5,000 words per year (13 per day) if words are learned in context; whereas this number seems impossible if taught out of context It can be seen that a mere definition of the word, especially the abstract or low frequency one is insufficient for comprehension Brown, Collin and Duguid supposed that words are situated; consequently, a context is needed for the interpretation of the words and the sentences A situation, as for Dewey (J S Brown

et al., 1989)(1949), is a “contextual whole”, and an “environing experienced world”

An example for the close relationship between language learning and real life situation or authentic context should be the use of indexical words like I, here, this, now, next, to name a few, which can only be fully interpreted if put into a physical context Reflective Journal Writing is connected to situated-cognition theory in the way that students write in a context, which is a journal of what they themselves have experienced during a lesson Students have to respond to reflective questions such as what are three new things you learned today? What is the most interesting part of the lesson today? Why? What would you like to change about this lesson? How can you apply things you learned today to your real life? What is one question you still have? etc It means that students do not consider writing as a learning task; it is more like a journal in which they can express their own opinions using the target words taught

By so doing, students are required to do both things: applying words they have just

learned in such an authentic context, and personalizing these new words for better acquisition and comprehension

Additionally, situated cognition theory involves social interaction and negotiation Brown, Collins, and Duguid stated that “knowledge is fundamentally a co-production of the mind and the world” Brown (1989) reported that meaning of a word is “always under construction”, which means that a full meaning of a word needs to be defined by both dictionary and context of use In other words, words are never completely defined just based on dictionary definition Part of the word meanings needs to be socially developed and constructed As for Reflective Journal Writing activity, to really know a vocabulary, learners should do activities with the words, and make deliberate use of the social and physical context To write reflective journals, learners have to reflect on what they have learned in class in association with what they have experienced in their life The social interaction here can be seen

as their interconnection between knowledge learned inside and experience earned beyond classroom boundaries Learners are supposed to apply the target language taught cognitively in their own social context, which supports their memory, fosters the application of the words, and even enables them to reach the highest level in Bloom’s taxonomy – creating new uses of them

Another highlight of the situated cognition learning theory is the fact that learning is conducted from personal processing (Dewey, 1974), which deepens the understanding and promotes the applying of new knowledge According to Brown, Collins, and Duguid, “cognitive apprenticeship supports learning in a domain by enabling students to acquire, develop and use cognitive tools in authentic domain activity” Glaser (1941) and Lave.J (1990) also emphasized that learners need to involve in “community of practice”, which leads to knowledge construction This principle is directly applied in Reflective Journal Writing activity To produce a journal, learners are required to interpret meanings of the words using their own personal experiences, think deeply about learning activities and personal experiences, mediate and establish a connection between them

Much has been researched about this learning approach so far Reflective Journal Writing derives from Constructivism, and then Experiential learning and situated-cognition theory It can be seen that the concept of writing Reflective Journals align with former studies of Constructivism, Experiential and Situated-Cognition learning theory in a way that they emphasize the importance of learning through practical activities and reflection in authentic contexts and in the interaction with learners’ personal experience

To have an overview of all the theories related to reflective journal writing, summary table 2.1 was created as follows

Table 2.1 A summary of the theory-based approaches to reflective journal writing

1

Constructivism

learning theory

Dewey (1929), Bruner (1961), Vygotsky (1962), and Piaget (1980)

Knowledge should be internally constructed from through cognitive activities rather than externally receiving from the outsiders

2

Experiential

learning theory

Kolb (1984) Learning is closely connected to

reflection process, and cannot divorce from real life

Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience

3

Bloom’s

taxonomy

Benjamin Bloom (1956)

Anderson and Krathwohl

(2001)

Bloom’s taxonomy emphasized the importance of reflecting at higher level of critical thinking in writing, not just rote remember

A new concept should be situated and “progressively developed through activity” since learning is closely tied to authentic activities or contexts

Learning is conducted from personal processing, which deepens the understanding and promotes the applying of new knowledge

2.2.2 Theory-based approaches to teaching writing

Writing can be taught in many different ways depending on what type of writing that is A good writing successfully conveys the message to the readers Reflective journal writing is quite a new type of writing among expository, descriptive, argumentative, narrative and persuasive Experiential and freewriting approaches are considered the root of reflective journal writing as will be discussed below

The idea of reflective journal writing derives from the experiential approach Firstly, writing is constructed based on feelings and experience The intrinsic motivation is the desire of expressing what they have done, thought and would like

to do in the future As for reflective journal writing, students write about thoughts and emotions, present their personal opinions, self-assessment and self-improvement plan through the lessons they have experienced in class Secondly, experiential writing can

be composed under various types of discourse, even expository and academic modes

It means that students can write to describe, explain, retell or reflect things after an authentic experience Thirdly, experiential writing’s target audience can be everyone, not just for teacher In other words, it is considered a daily task or a habit that does not need assessment The pressure of scoring experiential writing is reduced to a great extent Last but not least, this writing genre promotes the conception of learning through doing and self-discovering instead of rote learning of rules In brief,

experiential writing in particular and experiential learning in general is very beneficial to students in a way that it brings learning to real life and makes sense of what students have learned from materials, thus, learning will become more practical and meaningful

Another major approach to reflective journal writing is freewriting approach The idea is that students write non-stop whatever they like or know about a general topic According to Elbow, Peter (1981), freewriting aims at familiarizing students with writing habits since students all have their autonomy to write whatever, wherever and whenever they like Students practice writing when they do not feel like they are learning writing, which considerably changes students’ attitudes towards writing Additionally, freewriting also improves fluency for the reason that time will

be optimized for writing activity instead of time “spent not writing: wondering, worrying, crossing out, having second, third and fourth thoughts” Students can produce more words within a certain amount of time Thoughts come naturally and one idea leads to the other, thus, stopping and considering time can be significantly reduced

In summary, experiential writing and freewriting, which has been proved to positively affect students’ writing ability, are influential theories of reflective journal writing In the next session, a review of how reflective journal writing affects different fields will be presented

2.2.3 Theory-based approaches to critical thinking

The term “critical thinking”, a very important skill in 21st century, was repeated quite a lot in this study It is defined differently by various researchers In

2006, Critical Thinking Cooperation defined it as the ability to think beyond memorization In other words, if a learner thinks critically, he/ she does not look at the issue the way as it is It is the ability to judge things based on rational analysis instead An example which is not critical thinking activity is just restating things from memory without any explanation, judgement or further deep thoughts about the issue Creating hypotheses and testing them against the facts are necessary steps of critical

thinking process Dewey (1910) also supposed that critical thinking derives from “the doubt of the thinker” that creates hypotheses, and observation allows him to refine or explain the hypotheses Critical thinkers only make decisions once they have analyzed the problem, considered all sides of the argument as well as being aware of its upsides and downsides

Glaser (1941) suggested 3 major components of critical thinking including thoughtful perspectives to the problems in connection with their own experience, knowledge of how to form logical inquiry and skills in applying the knowledge In accordance to Glaser, in 2008, the Open University developed the process of critical thinking with the following stages: recognizing the thrust of the information, examine the information and comparing/ contrasting and evaluating information Undoubtedly,

to be a critical thinker and complete these steps, a learner needs lots of skills: raising good questions about the issues, interpret ting the issues properly using their own knowledge and personal experience, evaluating the issues and finding out solutions

to the issues based on reasoning To do this, critical thinkers have to be people who are curious about things, open-minded and aware of their thinking process Other characteristics include the striving for understanding, readiness to solve problems by collecting evidence and habit of thinking before acting

Teaching young learners to be critical thinkers

Critical thinking is not an innate skill according to Schafersman (1991) It is

a learned skill that can be taught instead Teaching critical thinking, especially to young learners can be done in various ways as mentioned It is worth mentioning that young learners are defined as a group of learners from 7-12 years old (Kang, 2014)

At this age, students make sense of the world “in ways that are far more visibly constructivist than older learners” They are curious about everything, eager to learn and willing to acquire new knowledge Teaching critical thinking can be done through activities in class when learners do analysis, synthesis or reflection More specifically, some classroom activities to teach critical thinking to young learners can be discussed

as follows

Integrating critical questions into teacher’s major subject is an indirect way to learn this intellectual skill During the lesson, learners should be encouraged to do some tasks in which they are required to classify, analyze, compare or contrast, organize, judge the correctness of the knowledge Open-ended questions also play an important part in teaching critical thinking skill These questions require learners to connect with their own background knowledge or personal experience and think about their thinking process Some examples for this type of questions could be: how would you come up with the answers? Why do you think so? How can you explain this? What is the other way to explain the issue? Why is the other thing wrong? As learners find out the answers for these questions, they do more intellectual tasks than just saying from their memory

Writing is another way to learn critical thinking As learners write, they have

to think about how to organize ideas, how to state main points, supporting ideas and example When they write about a specific material, they have to review that material, think critically and state their opinion about it The final purpose is to produce a concise and persuasive writing product According to Schafersman, reflective writing activities can be performed through homework, quantitative exercises, term papers and examination

In short, at this young age of from 7-12 years old, learners can practice critical thinking activities indirectly through the subject matters and composing writing Critical thinking activities need adjusting to suit the age and level of English proficiency As well as activities are appropriate with learners’ background knowledge, promote the mental process and allow learners to make decisions based

on evidence, they can make young learners critical thinkers

2.2.4 Benefits of reflective journal writing

Reflective Journal Writing has been applied in general education of several fields including nursing, arts, humanities, social work and It is known that self-reflection is one of the examples of active learning strategies besides observations, hands-on activities and dialogue with others This practice may lead to a better

teaching by enhancing learners’ critical thinking, self-reflection and other 21st century skills Reflection itself is a mental processing form in which learners have to do deep thinking in association with knowledge and understanding of other subjects As stated

by Association of College and University Examiners & Bloom (1956), the level of cognitive taxonomies ranges from knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis to evaluation Based on Bloom’s taxonomy (1956), Anderson and Krathwohl (2002) made some changes to the domains as they argued analyzing, evaluating and creating were the highest levels of cognition With either taxonomy,

it can be seen that Reflective Journal Writing is linked to higher domains of the taxonomies of cognition Learners are supposed to differentiate, compare, contrast, argue, critique in order to construct a Reflective Journal Writing product Reflective Journal Writing increases learners’ critical thinking in the way that it enables them to practice what they have learned, improve their practice due to constant analysis, organize their thoughts and solve problems Writing reflective journals about what has just been learned, learners have a chance to recall, reflect and think deeply, critically and analytically about it Al-Rawahi & Al-Balushi, in their research in 2015, stated that writing Reflective journals, students can be involved in different cognitive activities including prediction, brainstorming, reflection and questioning, which highly connected to increasing critical thinking Besides, learners contextualize the new knowledge or make sense of what they have learned instead of merely memorizing In order to reflect and write, “organizational relations” between their own background knowledge and knowledge they have just learned are established, which much improves their critical thinking Instead of receiving new knowledge passively, learners have to connect it to their personal life, which turns learning into

an active process Personalization is one of the techniques of long-term memory in learning Reflective journal writing makes sense of what they have learned in the way that learners can use knowledge learned to talk about themselves Besides, thinking and curiosity about the surrounding world are aroused when learners think and reflect Since students link to their prior knowledge when asking questions, the quantity and

quality of questions to be asked can be enhanced Reflective journal writing is an activity that is closely connected with modern pedagogical methodologies and approaches such as inquiry-based, problem-based learning; and that is a shift from teacher-centered to student-centered education (Estrada & Rahman, 2014)(Rust, 2002) which allows direct participation, rich learning events and meaning construction, and supports lifelong learning process

Estrada & Rahman (2014) also revealed that reflective journal writing fosters active engagement and “personal ownership of learning”, self - regulation,

“facilitation of the learning experience”, and the appreciation of their own observation and knowledge Writing about their experience and observation, learners can be aware of their knowledge and skills gap, which is the very first step to self-improvement In 2009, (Cengiz & Karataş, 2015) suggested that Reflective Journal Writing has great influence on metacognition and self-regulation development Reflective Journal Writing makes learners more “self-aware, goal-directed, strategic, and able to monitor their own learning” Learners can participate in self-regulated learning process in which they diagnose and solve their learning issues Writing about themselves, learners can identify their own difficulties, which means to be self-aware

of their strengths and weaknesses In other words, they themselves investigate their learning gap, fill in the gap, and construct the understanding of new knowledge at the same time By so doing, they themselves discover how they learn best, and determine their own learning process The roles of teachers and learners totally change when Reflective Journal Writing is to be applied Learners do self-assessment and take full accountability of their learning process, thus, become “active decision makers”, while teachers play the role of facilitators and encouraging guides (Wilson & Wing Jan,

1993, as cited in Cengiz & Karataş, 2015) Their self-awareness usually starts with phrases like “I realized”, “I noticed”, which deepens their understanding about themselves in association with their learning process and leads to further actions in overcoming learning issues (Lee, 2013) Rie, in an interview in 2012, shared that she knew clearly what had to be done next after writing reflective journals She was able

to visualize her “step-to step action plan” when she reflected on herself and wrote things down For example, Rie said in her journal that she couldn’t open her mouth and join the communicative activity discussing the topic “shopping” that day She herself then realized that because she did not know many vocabulary words related

to shopping Being aware of her own difficulty, Rie made a learning strategy for enriching her words about this topic including some activities such as searching more English words or phrases about shopping on the Internet, reading English books concerning this topic, talking to friends who love shopping, finding a part-time sales job which requires her to communicate with foreigners, etc Rie said at the end of the interview that her speaking skills had been much improved (Interview, 2012, cited in Lee, 2013) That is to say learner’s metacognition may be strengthened with this type

of practice Learners’ metacognitive knowledge as their strengths and weaknesses helps adjust their learning and handle challenging tasks better Therefore, learners take the autonomy in their own learning process by being self-aware and well-adjusted

Additionally, writing Reflective journals does motivate learners and build up their confidence considerably since they have opportunities to express their feelings and emotions Lee (2013) stated that Reflective Journal Writing can positively influence students’ learning by improving remembering, self-encouraging, self-realizing through task completion As for (Dyment & O’Connell, 2007)DeSalvo, 1999; Pennebaker, 2000; Smyth, 1998, as learners write reflective journals, they have better mental and physical health since the emotions are expressed in journals Writing journals make learners feel like having personal conversation with themselves, thus, encouraging the development of introspective awareness Reflective Journal Writing not only teaches students how to write, but also promotes their sharing experiences and ideas Writing Reflective Journals creates an intentional connection between learners’ thoughts, feelings, experiences and learning activities, which significantly enhances learners’ motivation and understanding In addition, attitude toward writing may probably be improved with Reflective Journal Writing

Since Reflective Journal Writing is a student-centered approach, students have autonomy of what and how they write The writing content is personalized to every individual Undoubtedly, students have interesting experiences, fun stories or favorite parts of the lessons to share They will be more excited about sharing them, even in written form Besides, learners are more motivated to write since they can freely express their personal thoughts, feelings and beliefs without the fear of being graded (Dyment & O’Connell, 2007) In spite of being a type of writing, little emphasis is placed on learners’ proper spelling or proofreading The journal content attracts more attention instead Journal writers just take notes their thoughts on a piece of paper without much attention to the language form (Krashen, 1989) Reflective Journal Writing is considered a kind of free writing of thoughts rather than any kind of exercise (Jones & East, 2010); hence, no teacher’s control or limitation is put on learners’ writing products Social engagement is another reason why learners are encouraged to write Writing journals and sending them to teachers, learners feel like being heard, connecting with teachers and receiving encouragement Therefore, Reflective Journal Writing fosters writing engagement and promotes confidence in students’ learning process

In spite of the fact that Reflective Journal Writing has been used in various fields, it is evident that it is beneficial to learners as it develops their critical thinking, self-regulation and learning motivation Writing reflective journals, learners also have a chance to engage themselves in an authentic writing process, speak their own voice and are on the right track on their lifelong learning process

Table 2.2 was created to summarize the benefits of reflective journal writing

on other academic disciplines

Table 2.2 Benefits of reflective journal writing

1 Rawahi & Balushi (2015)

Reflective Journal Writing enhances learners’ critical thinking, self-reflection and other 21stcentury skills

2 (Rust, 2002)

Reflective journal writing is closely connected with enquiry-based, problem-based learning; that is a shift from teacher-centered to student-centered education which allows direct participation, rich learning events and meaning construction, and supports lifelong learning process

3

Florina F Estrada and Hjh

Mariam Abdul Rahman

Reflective Journal Writing has great influence on metacognition

Jones & East (2010)

Reflective journal writing does motivate learners and build up their confidence considerably since they have opportunities to express their feelings and emotions

A summary of the conceptual framework of reflective journal writing is

described in figure 2.1 below

Figure 2.1 Conceptual framework of reflective journal writing

2.2.5 Previous research studies and research gap

2.2.5.1 Previous research studies

Previous research studies on the influences of reflective journal writing

on vocabulary and writing performance

Personal ownership of learning, facilitation of the

learning experience, metacognition

Learners’ confidence and motivation

Constructivism learning theory Bloom’s taxonomy

Theory-based

approaches to

teaching writing Freewriting approach: write non-stop

whatever they like or know about a topic

Experiential approach: writing is constructed

based on feelings and experience

Previous researches have shown that writing reflective journals positively affects the overall writing performance in terms of vocabulary achievement (Laqaei, 2015) To share their journals with the whole class, learners will pay more attention

to the text accuracy and will work harder on their drafts to produce the best quality

of the writing More specifically, (Man, 2015) Jones (1991, as cited in Hemmati & Soltanpour, 2012) supposed that progress in writing performance concerning grammatical structure, spelling and meanings of the words could happen due to the willingness to express their thoughts and ideas in Reflective Journal Writing

A study about “Promoting journal writing to enhance students’ English competence and learning motivation in a secondary school in Hong Kong” was completed by Man (2015) In this research, he examined two main issues including whether journal writing helps develop students’ writing skills and writing motivation The participants were 24 “less academically-inclined” secondary students in which there were 10 girls and 14 boys of age ranging from 14 to 20 years old The experiment lasted from October to May and students were required to write reflective journals twice per month The author conducted surveys before and after the treatment to see changes in their writing interests; besides, he also had pre- and post- test to examine writing performance The result demonstrated that before the treatment, most students (69.5%) were neither confident about expressing themselves

in English, nor willing to improve the writing fluency, over half of them did not like writing journals However, after spending eight months practicing, they became more interested in writing and 69.5% of them considered it a habit Concerning writing performance, students were able to write 3.5% faster in a limited period of time, and achieve 18.8 % higher score in the post test including improvement in the text length, accuracy, the use of vocabulary and the variety of the sentence patterns More specifically, the author also concluded that students could write richer content with more examples, more complicated vocabulary words and grammar structures Although students still wrote Chinglish, there were fewer spelling mistakes and the journals can by understood more easily

Similarly, in 2015, Laqaei undertook a study about “the impact of Reflective Writing on Writing achievement, vocabulary achievement and critical thinking of intermediate EFL learners” Before the experiment, 90 intermediate learners of Medical Sciences, aged from 18 to 20, took the Preliminary English test (PET), in which 60 of them were selected based on their scores They were divided into two groups taking reflective journal writings and routine writing practices The instruments for this study included the PET tests, two vocabulary tests at the beginning and the end of the course as pre-and post-tests The writing PET tests were evaluated under four aspects including content, organization, vocabulary and language use As for the vocabulary pre-test, 70 vocabulary words were put in multiple choice question form Based on the result, 20 words were considered familiar and 50 words were unfamiliar to them These 50 new words were planned to be taught during the treatment time In the vocabulary post-test, these 50 new words were tested under the form of multiple choice to see how much learners improved after writing reflective journal Besides these tests, learners also took Honey’s of Critical Thinking questionnaire, which aimed at assessing three major skills of comprehension, analysis and evaluation At the end, a Multivariate Analysis of Variance was used to compare the critical thinking, vocabulary and writing achievement of control and experimental group Data were analyzed using Independent Sample t –test and Paired Sample t-test The result showed that although participants had the same level of writing ability and critical thinking, at the end of the treatment, the experimental group outperformed the control group regarding their vocabulary knowledge, writing performance and critical thinking ability It was concluded that the one with reflective journal writing considerably improved their vocabulary and writing skills

Another research on “Teacher perspectives on Reflective Journal Writing” was conducted in the same year by Bel (2015) The author used qualitative research design to investigate how teachers implement reflective journal writing in their classrooms and challenges they encounter The instrument used in this study was one-on-one interview with teachers who had conducted reflective journal writing in their

class The interview was semi-structured with prepared questions Participants were three experienced teachers (from 20 to 30 years of experience) teaching kindergarten

to the fourth grade selected from three different schools The interview lasted from

40 to 75 minutes depending on the interviewees’ answers The interviews were recorded and transcribed into Word documents The result revealed that besides the positive effects on students’ motivation and confidence, reflective journal writings also enhance writing conventions All the participants supposed that since students had had all the practice, they became good writers

In Iran, Rasouli & Shoari (2015) had a study on “the effect of diary writing on improving Iranian EFL Learners’ L2 Vocabulary Learning” in 2015 60 learners aged from nine to 14 participated in this study The instruments used for measurement included the language proficiency test (PET) prior to the treatment to evaluate learners’ four skills, pre- and post-test of which the knowledge content was selected from the term book of learners 60 learners were divided into two groups: control and experimental groups The latter group was required to make use of new words and apply them in their daily activity journals After 12 journals, the post-test was conducted with both groups, and the data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) According to the findings, learners from experimental group had higher score in the post-test than that of the control group, which did align with previous reviewed researches This was explained by the word-retention while writing diary

Tuan (2010) was aligned with those researches by arguing that students practicing Reflective Journal Writing make better progress in writing performance in general and vocabulary acquisition in particular He conducted the study on

“enhancing EFL learners’ writing skill via journal writing”, which aimed to answer two research questions: can journal writing enhance students’ writing skill in terms

of fluency and accuracy? And can journal writing generate students’ writing motivation? His participants were 85 second-year Vietnamese university students of the same English writing proficiency level who were divided into control and