English Language Teachers Reflecting on Reflections: A Malaysian Experience

Key characteristics of an efficient and effective English language teacher are fundamental pedagogical knowledge and understanding, awareness of meaningful classroom practices, linguistic capabilities, and positive attitudes and skills. Nurturing these traits among preservice teachers is difficult, especially when preservice teachers are working in a nonnative English language learning and teaching environment and when they have insufficient pedagogical and linguistic knowledge. One way of overcoming these difficulties is by facilitating activities that enable these future teachers to develop a critical and reflective awareness of their classroom practices. This article reports the practice of reflecting on reflections by future English language teachers in the Malaysian context. In the first phase, they (a) self-examine their practices (by writing their own reflections and reading others' critiques of their practices) and (b) examine others' practices (by critiquing others' practices and providing suggestions). These activities have inspired among future teachers an awareness of their own development and of current professional knowledge. Also, participants were able to identify the changes they need to make to become more effective teachers. In the next phase, reflecting on their reflections, the teachers were able to internalize pedagogical knowledge and practices that were useful to them.