‘Write it down and then what?’: Promoting pre-service teachers’ language awareness, metacognitive development and pedagogical skills through reflections on vocabulary acquisition and teaching

Abstract

This is the second of two articles based on a study of the contribution of vocabulary notebooks to the development of second language vocabulary, language awareness, metacognitive skills and pedagogical skills of non-native English-speaking pre-service teachers. In this article, the impact of reflections on non-native pre-service teachers’ language awareness and knowledge of foreign language pedagogy is explored. The data collection included examination of each participant’s vocabulary notebook reflections, individual questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Findings show that reflective learning is conducive to non-native pre-service teachers’ pedagogical and metacognitive development. Reflections also enhanced participants’ understanding of vocabulary acquisition processes. This investigation adds to the body of research on the use reflective learning for language awareness, vocabulary acquisition and language teacher education.

Keywords:

• Language awareness
• metacognitive skills
• non-native pre-service teachers
• reflective learning
• reflections
• vocabulary notebooks

Note

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the participants for sharing their written and oral reflections with me. I also thank the reviewers, whose comments have helped improve the quality of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The term second language is used here for the sake of simplicity; it refers also to foreign and additional languages.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deborah Dubiner

Deborah Dubiner (PhD in Second Language Acquisition, Carnegie Mellon University) taught foreign languages for over 20 years in three continents. Her teaching and research include teacher education, second language acquisition/ teaching, and sociolinguistics. She teaches at Oranim Academic College of Education and at Shaanan Academic Religious Teachers’ College in Israel. Email: [email protected]