University Student's Personal Learning Experience Essay: Reflections

This essay provides a critical reflection on a student's personal learning experience, focusing on the enhancement of learning skills and abilities. The student, who initially struggled with English speaking, describes how they improved their skills through personalized tutoring. The essay discusses the application of various learning theories and styles, including spaced learning, self-learning, VARK learning styles (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic), and the theory of multiple intelligences. It also explores the implementation of behaviorist and experimental learning theories, such as Kolb's experimental learning theory, and the impact of these approaches. While acknowledging the benefits of these methods, the essay also addresses the limitations of each theory. Ultimately, the essay emphasizes how the student's learning journey was transformed, leading to improved fluency and confidence.

Running head: PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Introduction
The critical reflection will focus on my personal learning experience in order to
improve my learning skills and ability. Learning Students in my country starts learning
English from a very early age that is from grade three. Though schools try to provide best
education facilities to their students, but it’s not possible for every student to gather the exact
knowledge, as sometimes teachers teaches too fast, sometimes the topics are not very
interesting and for this reason students could not improve their learning skills (Alharbi 2015).
The same happened with me, although I seemed to achieve an average score in English
language, but then it does not help me to improve my English speaking skills. Accordingly,
my fluency started deteriorating and as a result I was ashamed of speaking in English in front
of my friends and teachers, and this has also lowered my level of confidence. This essay
elucidates on major aspects as how I improved my learning experience with the help of
effective learning styles and theories.
Discussion
Learning has been regarded as a very complex process and every student have
different learning process. However, in my school, students are provided with English
textbooks but the teachers in our school teach English in native language that is the language
we use for speaking in our country. As a result, this hampers our learning and speaking skills,
although we learn English language at school, but very rarely we practice it within the
classroom. Furthermore, the examination system focuses more on the writing and reading
skills, but they do not give any importance to the speaking and the listening skills (Saeed,
Khaksari and Ghani 2016). Being a student, this educational system had a negative impact on

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
my speaking skills, as the topmost priority was given to the listening and speaking skills. As a
student, my writing and reading skills were strong, and I used to get high grades in the school
assessment, but prior to that my speaking and listening skills were very poor and I was not
been able to cope up with these skills. This had worried me and as a result, I had lost my level
of confidence and by seeing this downfall, my parents were also worried. Though they tried
to support me and help me out with every possible ways they can, in order to encourage me,
but then it did not work well. However, at that point of time my parents came to know about
a good English professor from some other school in my nearby location. Then my parents
decided to send to that teacher to take personal teaching class, in order to improve my
speaking skills. That had been a major turning point in my life, as the tutoring class not only
improved by speaking and listening skills but at the same point time also increase my
confidence level. The English professor being a charming lady had provided me with extra
care and support and was also very competent while teaching English language to all her
students. While teaching the subject, the English teacher used to implement various learning
theories and styles, so that it becomes easy for students to cope up with the subject. Apart
from that, my English teacher also applied various training methods such as spaced learning
and self learning. Spaced learning is a training method, where the contents will be repeated
three times with ten minutes break taken twice, so that students can get in depth of the subject
(Velastegui et al. 2016). During the break times, students are engaged with physical activities
that encourages and help students to switch in to the subject quickly. Whereas, self learning
on the other hand is another such technique, which encourage students to learn new things on
their own, by developing ideas and creativity (Wright and Stokes 2015). My English teacher
applied this self learning technique with the use of mind maps. This has given me freedom to
expand and develop new ideas based on my subject that helped me to improve my English
speaking skills. The best thing that I liked about my English teacher is her friendly and

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
supportive nature and was also approachable whenever I required help from her. Prior to that,
my English teacher not only limited her teaching process to only text-books, but she formed
small groups and introduced various activities such as role play, dialogues, short talks, acting
and more. This personal learning experience had been highly effective as it improved my
speaking skills.
In order to improve my English listening and speaking skills, my English teacher has
also introduced VARK learning style techniques that aim to provide better outcomes. The
VARK learning style was founded by Neil Fleming that consist of four styles of learning that
includes Visual learners, Auditory learners, Reading and Writing and the Kinesthetic
learning style (Poonpon 2017). This learning style is widely preferred by many students as
this helps to influence behaviour and learning process of the students. Accordingly, with the
implication of VARK, my English teacher applied visual and auditory learning styles and
accordingly tried to teach us through images, graphs and map diagram (Wright and Stokes
2015). Apart from this, she has also conducted group discussions, and extempore session,
where students need to speak on any random topic. With the help of this session, I was able to
redraw the content from my memory, and I also used to record my notes and used to listen to
the notes numerous times on tape. This session helped me slowly in improving my listening
skills. The theory of multiple intelligences that comprises of eight learning styles by
Howard Gardner has also been implemented by my English teacher during the tutorial class.
The eight learning styles comprises of intra-personal, spatial, naturalistic, musical, linguistic,
logical, interpersonal and existential (Sternberg 2015). This learning style enables readers to
understand their own preferred learning ways, and accordingly can stick to the preferred
learning styles (Alshehry, Sedlmayr and Cork 2016). As for me, I always had a problem
regarding listening and speaking skills, so I decided to learn through visual and intrapersonal
learning styles. Intrapersonal style encouraged me to interact with other students through

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
group discussion, dialogues and role playing and this has helped to increase my fluency level
while speaking in English. In the present day, in order to provide effective education,
teachers and professors tries to incorporate educational theories in their teaching methods,
this helps students to have a clear understanding of the content (Awang et al. 2017). My
English teacher being a very supportive lady had applied certain theories, so that she can help
me to improve my speaking and listening skills. Various theories applied by her include
behaviourist theories and the experimental learning theories. The behaviourist theory
mainly focus on the behaviour of the students, such as the interest of the student regarding the
particular subject matter, learning ability, interest for improving the learning process (Meltzer
2018). Accordingly behaviourism is considered as one of the most applied theory in learning
perspectives and this theory mainly focus on the concept that the behaviours of the student
can be measured and with proper training it can be changed. Moreover, this particular theory
focuses on the traditional aspects of teaching, where the teacher plays the role of a transmitter
and the students as the receiver (Heeneman et al. 2015). By applying this theory my English
teacher tried to view the reaction of mine as well as other students and accordingly she started
focussing on the area where improvements required. As environment also plays a major role
in shaping our behaviour, therefore in order to provide a healthy learning environment, my
teacher introduced small group discussion and introduced workshop learning. Prior to this,
rewards measures also been applied by my teacher in order to measure the learning
behaviour.
Another learning theory introduced by my teacher was Kolb’s experimental learning
theory that deals with experience, perception and behaviour. The experimental theory of
Kolb comprises of four stages that includes concrete experience, reflective observation,
abstract conceptualization and active experimentation (Kolb 2014). The first stage of the
concrete experience focuses on the learning experience of the learner through various

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activities such as field work and accordingly teacher organized a teaching session in an open
environment, so that students can apply their innovation and ideas regarding the particular
subject matter. The second stage comprises of reflective observation that deals with learning
through observation (Biddulph and Carr 2017). Besides teaching through text books,
dialogues and role plays, my English teacher also tried engaging students by watching
English short films, and after watching the film, students were asked to give their own
reviews regarding the film. This had been an interesting way of learning English, and
moreover this movie session proved beneficial for me as this not only helped in improving
my speaking skills but also improved my listening skills. The next stage comprises of
conceptualization of ideas as this helps in reflecting new ideas from the existing concept as
this has helped me to generate new ways to listen things (Harasim 2017). The last stage of
this experimental theory is the active experimentation which is mainly focused about the
results that derived from the teaching process. The overall learning style helps me to achieve
my goals and also increased my level of concentration and confidence. All these learning
styles and theories that were implemented by my English teacher proved advantageous and
beneficial for me, as it improved my learning experience by improving by English speaking
and listening skills.
It is important to note that although the learning theories proved beneficial for me, but
there were certain limitations while implicating such ideas and theories. In case of
behaviourist theories, it does not help in influencing internal behaviours such as moods and
feelings of the students. Furthermore, the main focus of the behaviourist theories on the
desired behaviour and the target, but it does not explain the learning process of the students
and as a result the learning process of the students does not improve much (Roberts 2016).
Moreover, behavioural theory mainly ignores the mental condition that involved in learning
process, as this theory deals with the learning process through experiences. As experimental

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learning has influenced many students during their learning process as many theories have
been drawn together under one particular theory. Apart from this, there are certain limitations
related to the Kolb’s learning theory of the experimental theory as the experimental theory is
not applicable for students who are not experienced of the learning process or students who
do not have a proper understanding of the subject matter (Staddon 2016). This theory implies
variety of entertainment activities that has a negative impact on the learning process, as most
of the time students are being diverted from their track and most importantly through this
theory student as well as the teachers not being able to predict the outcomes of this learning
process (Ashby and Valentin 2017). However, limitations are also there while applying
Kolb’s theory as this theory down not help in solving problems every time and moreover this
learning process requires ample amount of time for processing of any ideas. However, all
these theories and learning styles implied by my English teacher provided me with positive
outcomes, but limitations of these theories restricted my learning process at some point of
time.
Conclusion
From the above essay it could be concluded that with the help of my English teacher I
was able to improve my fluency of speaking in English as well as also improved my listening
skills. As my school only focussed on the reading and practicing skills of English that
degraded my power of speaking. It is only because of my personal English tutor that I have
been able to overcome such problems as this had been a turning point in my life. Moreover,
with the implication of various theories and learning styles such as experimental theories,
constructive theories and more, the learning process have become more effective.
Furthermore, with the implication of group discussion, role playing, debates, small talks the

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learning session had been more interesting and it became easy for me to improve my English
speaking skills.

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
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