Transcript of AE 484 REPLAY: How to Improve Your English with Reflective Practice

G'day, guys. What's going on? So this is where my day usually starts. In the kitchen here I have my new lens and camera, which I've been practising with like crazy. I've got my computer here with photos on it and then I've got this, which isn't breakfast, but it's what I've been putting outside to get birds to come closer for me to photograph.

So I put it on the ground here, put it on the roof over here, and it brings birds in closer. So I can use this camera right here to take photos. So today we're going to talk about reflective practice and how you can use it to improve your English as fast as possible, no matter what your level. Let's go.

How's it going guys? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I'm going to chat to you about the fastest way to improve your English, no matter what your level, guys. And I'm going to sort of draw an analogy to what I've been battling with recently, and photography. Let's go.

Oh! All right guys. So the topic for today is reflective learning. Reflective learning I wonder if you guys have heard about reflective learning before. So I've been researching this recently. My dad was the first one to sort of drill this into me quite a bit. And that's because he was a high school teacher and lecturer at university for quite a while, so he had a background in teaching.

But I've been applying this recently to photography as well as a bunch of other things like Portuguese as well when I'm learning Portuguese. But photography is what I want to talk about today.

So reflective learning, I learn about this from Donald Schon. Okay, so he was an American from MIT, a social scientist, and he did a lot of research into reflective learning in the 80s and 90s. So there are three main kinds of reflective learning.

The very first one is knowing in action. So this is when you do what you already know whilst you're doing it. Right. So you imagine that you are speaking English with someone. You are using the English you already know. You are knowing in action. You're using what you know in action.

The second type is reflection in action and this is where you are doing that thing like speaking English, but you reflect, you think about what's going on. So maybe you make a mistake and you think, 'Oh, is that the right word?' 'Was that the right tense?' 'Was that the right adjective that I should have used?' You're reflecting in action.

And the third kind and most important kind that I want to dig into a bit more today for you guys is reflection on action. Reflection on action. And this is when you reflect on the action you've done, obviously after the fact. So for instance, if you were speaking English with someone, it's a session where you're practising your English.

Maybe you're getting a lesson with someone, maybe. Maybe you're just having a conversation with someone. But when you reflect on that later, if you reflect on it later, that is reflection on action. You're analysing what you did. Could you have done it better? What else could you have done? What were your mistakes?

Okay, so let's get into that a bit more. How it applies to photography for me, and how you guys can improve your English by reflecting on action. Let's go. (song)

Recently, guys, I've been coming to Mulligans Flat quite a bit and you guys have probably seen this in my Instagram posts on YouTube in the videos. The main reason is that I'm trying to constantly practice the same thing again and again and again. Or I guess, variations of the same thing. Right? So there are lots of animals here. There are lots of little birds, lots of kangaroos, wallabies, all kinds of critters and creatures. And I'm trying to really hone in my photography skills.

So instead of sort of jumping from one thing to the next all the time and not analysing what I've done, how I've done it, how well I've gone, I've kept coming to the same place, I've kept photographing the same things in the same locations, and I've kept analysing what I've been doing after the fact. Right. So these are my practice sessions.

This is where I spend an hour or two walking around, getting a bit of exercise, looking at the environment, finding the animals, and honing my skills. When I take shots of the animals doing the same things every time that I'm out here, you know there'll be a bird on a branch and I'll be thinking about what angle do I need? Where's the sun? What are my settings on my camera? What is the shutter speed, the aperture? All of these technical things related to the camera that I really need to work on and improve.

The trouble I was having at first was that a lot of my photos were out of focus. The animals were too fast, the settings weren't correct on the camera. The the photos were overexposed. They were blurred. They were horrible. But I improved really, really rapidly because of reflective practice. Guys, okay, let's just focus on that for a sec.

All right. So how have I been applying reflective practice to photography? Obviously I've been doing number one. I have a certain set of skills in photography that I already know. And when I come out and take photos here, I use those skills knowing in action. Number two, I'm reflecting in action. I'm taking photos. I'm looking at the photos. As soon as I've taken them, I'm zooming in. I'm thinking, what the hell have I done wrong? Why don't I like this? How could I improve this? Is there something wrong with it? I'm scrutinising those images and I'm thinking in the moment, I'm reflecting in the moment on what I've done and how I could improve that.

But then, number three, I'm reflecting afterwards. So I come out here, I do my one two hours, however long it is. I take a few thousand photos, I go home and I sit down, load all the photos onto my computer, and I start going through them and I start looking at the ones that I like. I sort them out, delete the rest, and then I start scrutinising the ones that I like. And I think, how could I have improved them? Or what do I like about them? What have I done right and what could I do more of in the future?

And if I'm having specific problems, like maybe the animal is too blurred and I'll show you some of these photos in a second and how I've hopefully improved. If the animal is too blurred, I get on YouTube, I get on Google, and I start searching how to take sharper images. I take blurry images. What do I do? So I start looking at how I can improve on the mistakes that I've been making. So once I identify those mistakes and I sort of think about it, I reflect on those errors. I then planned my next practice session. I then think about next time I go out into Mulligans Flat.

Next time I go out and take some photos of whatever it is birds, kangaroos. What thing am I going to focus on and try and improve upon? What skills have I just researched? What skills have I just learnt about in order to implement? The next time that I go out? And that's what I'm doing today, I'm out here yet again. After spending the morning looking at a whole bunch of photos that I liked some of, but didn't like most of, and I'm thinking about how can I sit down, how can I practice those, and how can I improve on those mistakes today?

And I tell you what, guys, this has really helped me improve at a lightning pace. You could definitely do this by just coming out here all the time and taking as many photos as possible, but I think that would take a lot longer. In fact, you might improve, but you may not ever get to the level that you want to get to. If you're not scrutinising your own work and thinking about how to improve it in depth and having that real reflective approach to improvement.

Okay, so now let's talk about this in English and how you guys can apply this to improving your English no matter what level you currently have. Okay. We'll go up the top of the mountain. Let's head up.

Maybe that was a bad idea. This feels really steep, guys. I'm gonna have to wait for, like, ten minutes once I get to the top, just so that I'm not out of breath. And you guys don't give me a hard time about my cardio abilities. Beautiful day though. Beautiful day!

I've been walking for like ten minutes looking for these bloody kangaroos. First time ever I've been to Mulligans Flat and I couldn't see. The kangaroos have come up this hill, come all the way down here. These guys are here. The moment I set the tripod up and moved towards it and click go. There's dust and they're gone.

Anyway, I wanted to chat to you guys about applying the reflective practice, principle theory, whatever it is to your English, how this is going to help you improve your English no matter what your level is, as fast as possible, and instead of just giving you a bit of my mind spewed out, I'm going to try and give you some actionable. I want to- Are you done? Good.

I want to try and give you some actionable tips that you guys can apply to your English learning, whatever the way is that you've set it up. Okay, so you've got a routine, a schedule. Maybe you don't even have one of these, but if you have a routine or schedule, I want you to try and apply these several tips and tricks to that schedule in order to improve your English. Okay? (song)

All right. So number one. You need to define a practice session. Whatever it is however it is that you're practising when you're practising your English, I think you need to create a half an hour or maybe a one hour period at least once a week, where you are actively practising your English.

Number two, during those sessions you need feedback, whether it's internal and it's coming from you. When you can work out what it is that you're doing wrong, or whether it's external and it's coming from someone else a friend, a family member, a tutor, a teacher, whoever it is, you need to be getting some kind of feedback on which you can then practice, you can scrutinise, you can improve upon.

Number three, you need to go away and practice on the feedback that you've just been given. What is it that you got wrong and how can you do it correctly next time? Finally, number four, guys, you need to take this in mind and use it to organise your next practice session. And it becomes a cyclical process.

You need to apply this every time you do this practice session, and you're going to get results that just compound. You're going to improve a lot faster than if you were just winging it. You would just improvising every single time. So I guess finishing up this is something that I always, I always get asked when I meet people who've been in Australia for a very long time, and they say to me, I've been here for nine years and my English hasn't improved, what am I doing wrong? And I'll ask them, how are you practising? Usually they'll say I'm not or they'll say I speak, but I don't study or they will be studying, but they won't be practising the things that they've studied.

So that's it for me today, guys. Hopefully you got something useful out of this. Don't forget to hit subscribe. Don't forget to hit that bell notification button. If you would like to stay up to date with all the future episodes, and if you have suggestions, if you have questions for things you would like videos on, put them in a comment below.

And now it's my turn to put my money where my mouth is. Get out there, start taking some photos, maybe some videos as well, and working on what I've been trying to improve during my reflective practice sessions. So with that guys, let's go have a look and see what's around today in Mulligans Flat.

All right. Target acquired. I found this little bunch of trees here, and I can hear them squeaking. These are these small birds that I'm after, that I'm trying to get really sharp, nice shots of. And I've been having quite a bit of trouble with recently. Let's see how we go. (song)