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Evaluating the effectiveness of an out-of-class reflection component in a technical English course by tracing participants’ perceptual changes

This paper reports the findings of a perception study of reflection yielded from a cohort of engineering students before and after taking a technical English course. The course required that students take part in out-of-class learning in the form of self-access and reflection to improve and refine the skills taught, practised and assessed in class. Two online questionnaire surveys were administered to all the course participants (n = 446), the first one before the course began and the other after the course ended, with a view to tracing changes in the learners’ perceptions of reflection as a way of determining the success of integrating reflection into the course. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with nine course participants to probe for reasons behind changes in perceptions (if any). The results showed that, in general, the course heightened course participants’ awareness of (1) the relevance and usefulness of reflection to language enhancement, (2) the invaluable presence of ‘others’ in reflection as opposed to seeing it as a solitary act, and (3) the various ways of initiating reflection.