This post is part IV in a series of four articles about ways to supplement and expand “standard” writing activities in coursebooks. This continues on from previous articles (Part I: Sharing and presenting writing, Part II: Enhancing written language development, and Part III: From reading to writing) with the final article today focussing on some ideas for introducing and maximising journal writing activities in your English language learning classroom.
4. Journal writing Introducing journal writing into the ESL classroom can be a terrific way to encourage more extensive and more constant writing activity, with the huge benefit of it being more amenable to personal interests and inclinations than formal textbook and skills-based approaches to writing. But it can also become a positive outlet for the writing skills introduced and developed through course book work to materialize in students’ personal written production. Also, one of the main impediments in journal writing for students is having ideas to write about, so a broad range of topics, writing styles and examples from regular course books can become great idea generators for the students’ own journal entries. However, there are a couple of things that need to be considered if you seriously want to utilize the power of journals in your writing classes. For a start, the journal materials themselves can have a major impact on how much and how well students attend to their journal writing. Generally speaking, if you give the students tattered pieces of loose-leaf paper to write journal entries on, the quality of the writing performed will probably be of a similar standard! To do journal writing well and with any level of serious enthusiasm, the students will need a proper notebook or diary with lined pages to write on. Given journals often need to stand the test of time, it is also useful if they have harder covers and thicker paper. It may also be an option for journals to be written and sent online – the simplest and most obvious means being by basic email (though there may be other resources out there for this purpose as well – if you know of any, please feel free to post a comment below!). Secondly, it is important that the teacher understand the essential nature of journal writing and select an appropriate “journal writing mode” for his/her students. Three journal writing variations are presented here, and each involves different aims and processes. A fourth variation – what might be called a “performance journal” is not recommended here. Performance journals are those where the students are forced to write a certain number of entries each week, which a teacher then analyzes, corrects and grades. These are the most common kinds of journals applied in EFL/ESL classes, but they are also the least “genuine” and often the very reason many students don’t enjoy writing in English! Teachers who like to use this approach to journal writing are encouraged to try one of the other variations below. They may find the results are more positive in a variety of ways. Finally, ensure you show appropriate respect for students’ journals, and encourage them to be as creative and individual as they like. Beyond just written text, many learners will enjoy journal writing more if they can include pictures, clippings, stickers or whatever else they feel inclined to incorporate. See journals as an expression of individuality, and they can then make a refreshing companion to the conformity often enforced through regular textbook writing tasks. 4.1. Personal Journal This is similar to a private diary. The essential thing here is that the journal is personal and private, and to maintain that it needs to be a journal which students write in on a voluntary basis, and only show to others (the teacher or other classmates) if they really want to. The students can write about whatever they like, whenever they like, and show whomever they like (including nobody!). Teachers may be inclined to ask: “what is the point of a journal like this if we can’t see it or help the students write better in it?” Basically, if you can succeed in getting your students to write this kind of journal (through their own choice) then the journal is already a success. The real challenge is not to “see” what is being written in a personal journal, but to encourage the students to make the decision to actually start and then keep adding to a personal journal in English. The best way to do this is by setting an example. If the teacher writes a personal journal (even a ‘showcase version’ just for the class) and shows it regularly to the students, they might be inspired to follow suit. Gently, over time, the teacher can also explain and show how keeping a personal journal can be fun, interesting and good for his/her own language development. A teacher who keeps and shows a personal journal to the students, exhibits genuine enthusiasm for the activity, and demonstrates how it can be fun and non-stressful, is more likely to get his/her students to follow suit than a teacher who demands personal journal writing and demands to see and evaluate it. If a teacher manipulates his/her personal journal writing to fit the language needs of the class, this can become just the inspiration and model students need to take the plunge and make a start. Most importantly, this process begins the trust-exchange process necessary before a student will feel comfortable showing his/her journal entries to the teacher or other classmates. Many teachers feel it is their right to demand and then intrude into the personal writing of their students. In fact, getting access to a student’s personal thoughts through journal entries is a privilege – one that should be respected. Beyond the teacher-led example, sometimes learners just need a list of simple example topics to choose from to help get them started and overcome the trepidation and “blank” a lot of learners experience. Some example topics in a list could be: A great day A terrible day What happened at school An animal I like Delicious food! My family A great book An awesome movie My favorite actor A wonderful holiday Sports Why I like… Why I don’t like… My dream about… My future My country etc… Depending a little on level and experience with journal writing topics, you might also like to provide some more imaginative or mysterious topic starters, like: I don’t understand… Not again! I knew it! I tried to warn him/her… It’s not fair! I never saw it coming! Beyond the rainbow The sun always shines when… Cute What a great idea! etc… Having a nice long list of topic starters can allow students to pick and choose something according to their mood or interests, and it can be just the thing to get their minds going and help them to focus on writing/communicating something. The most important message here is that teachers should by all means encourage their students to start personal journals in English, but not demand them or force them on students who, in the end, may very well just start producing “performance” journal entries. Things like the interactive and learning journal options below are more reasonable in terms of compulsory journal-writing activities for classrooms. Personal journals, if they happen (and if teachers are actually granted access to them!) are really a bonus. 4.2. Interactive Journal This journal is a collaborative effort between the student and classroom teacher. An agreement is made about how often the journal will be written in, and at certain agreed upon times the teacher takes up the journal to read or makes a time to sit one on one with the student to read and talk about the entries together. The important thing with the interactive journal is that it actually be interactive! That is, the teacher should respond to the student’s written entries. Generally speaking, it is best if the teacher responds to what the student has written rather than how he/she has written it. This means responding to the ideas and messages in the journal more than the precise language or syntax used. It is also important that the teacher’s responses be as personal as the student’s original contributions. If, for example, the student has written about a certain topic or issue, the teacher’s response should also indicate how he/she feels about the same topic or issue. To facilitate more interaction, a teacher can add occasional questions in responses to either elicit more specific information or encourage the student to keep going (with the same or a new topic). Focusing on communication and meaning through the interactive journal doesn’t mean there won’t be any language work or development involved. Teachers can be very honest about the parts in the student journal entries that they couldn’t understand clearly, but this can be explored through genuine questions (for example: “when you wrote …, did you mean …?). Also, depending on their personality and learning preferences, students may actually ask the teacher for some more explicit corrections. This can be fine so long as it is a mutual agreement between student and teacher, and both parties know what they are in for! Interactive journals can be fun, and even the basis for a warmer and more insightful relationship between teacher and individual students. By focusing on meaning and genuine interaction, this kind of journal becomes a lot more satisfying and enjoyable for both parties, and thus has more chance of continuing in the longer term. 4.3. Learning/Skills Journal This kind of journal is more targeted and analytic than the other two journal options explored above. A “learning” or “skills” journal is for a learner to write about his or her learning experience with the foreign or second language. The student can use this to record new words learned, skills that were hard or easy to pick up, personal strategies (already tried or to try in future), or what he/she did or didn't like about particular classroom activities or learning materials. A learner can also use this sort of journal to engage in self-assessment activities – analyzing one’s own writing efforts and coming to decisions about the things he/she did or didn't do well. They could even use it to construct guesses about what might be on the term test, scores for tests and target scores for the next test. So long as these sorts of activities are done whenever possible in English, this sort of journal can be really beneficial. However, getting started with it can be a little difficult – giving students initial prompts to respond to and/or example entries or categories is recommended until students can begin to handle entries on their own. If it is clear from the start that a teacher will view the journal entries, it can take on a form similar to the interactive diary described above, but with more explicit focus on learning experiences, strategies and goals. In addition to creating more awareness and critical thinking from the students themselves, teachers can use these journals to get a unique insight into the learners’ feelings and perceptions about the classroom learning process, in turn improving relationships in the classroom and the sorts of activities a teacher thinks about implementing. Do you have any journal writing ideas or methods of your own to share? Please do feel free to comment and tell other teachers about them below! :-)
