The reflection paper presents my experiences during the course. The paper summarizes my key area of improvement that is the development of reading skills as I experienced weaknesses in my reading skills. I understand that reading skills are important to understanding the meaning of the text as it is the first step of any material that needs to analyze for a specific purpose. Therefore, I faced many difficulties regarding the development of reading skills but found a suitable solution in the end. The entire process of developing learning skills was derived from Gibb’s reflective cycle model that I used to get the suitable direction of developing reading skills. My learning could be elaborated on the basis of the six-stage Gibb’s model. There are six different stages described in this model including description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan.
In the first stage of my learning, I realized that I had problems with my reading skills and I had to improve them to perform better. I was unable to understand the important points and the main reason of the text that I had to read during the study. However, I was convinced by my friends that it is essential to understand this reason first. I have learned that it is better to go through the textual background rather than directly jumping to understanding the difficult words.
The next stage of my learning was that I felt the difficulty in improving my reading skills. I panicked due to the situation that I cannot understand the topic even when reading the text with complete concentration. I felt bad at that time and tried to control my emotions while getting busy with extracurricular activities. However, getting rid of anything does not necessarily means that the purpose of development can be avoided (Ghizan, 2016).
In the next stage, I committed to deeper into addressing the problem and made a list of possible solutions. My friends guided me to listen to audios and watch some related videos to get a clear idea of reading skills development (Stuart & Stainthorp, 2015). My evaluation process was useful as there were many videos available on the internet regarding the topics. I realized that afterward, I would get the reliable solution to resolve my weakness.
The most important stage was the analysis of the most relevant solution to the problem. I found it interesting to know that reading is an art that is not limited to just go through the text, but it relates to developing understanding of specific points (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2017). I have experienced that reading skills can be developed by watching relevant videos as it summarizes important points. Furthermore, one can easily get the point after decoding the information twice.
Finally, I succeeded in finding the best solution to the problem and decided to follow in the future. I realized that it is better to listen to the audio or video before reading to decode important points of the text. The main thing is to understand the central theme of the text as the entire paper covers that idea (Ghizan, 2016). Therefore, I acknowledged the improvement in my reading skills at that time and decided to follow the same pattern onwards.
I am impressed with the solution to the problem, but it may not work well all the time. Therefore, I have decided to use the technique till it provides the expected results. In the meantime, I will focus on finding other relevant solutions to resolve the reading problem. Although I have learned the way of improving reading skills, there is a need to bring perfection by using other techniques too.
- Ghizan, S. Y. (2016). The importance of developing reading for improved writing skills in the literature on adult student’s learning. New York, NY: Xlibris US.
- Stuart, M., & Stainthorp, R. (2015). Reading development and teaching. New York, NY: SAGE.
- Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2017). The complete guide to the theory and practice of materials development for language learning. Hoboken, NY: John Wiley & Sons.