ELTWeekly Vol. 4 Issue#16 | April 16, 2012 | ISSN 0975-3036
This paper is submitted by Fatemeh Hemmati of Payam Noor University, School of Humanity SciencesEnglish Department, Tehran, Iran, and Hamideh Absari Haghighi of Payam Noor University (Dubai Branch), Dubai, UAE.
Abstract
Learning writing in ESL and EFL classes is usually associated with teaching grammar, writing paragraphs, essays, etc. Although acquiring these skills help students develop their formal writing abilities, these activities are assumed dull and meaningless for many of them. Introducing more modern, meaningful, communicative activities to EFL contexts such as Iranian schools may yield multi –purpose results, among those, motivating students particularly the reluctant ones to write without having the fear to be judged or punished and developing students’ positive attitudes toward writing, can be mentioned as the most important aims. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of Dialogue Journals Writing (DJW) as an informal, communicative activity on writing proficiency of intermediate Iranian high school students and their attitudes toward writing .The participants were 42 Iranian female students. The students in the experimental group wrote dialogue journals daily in a period of two months while the students in the control group wrote weekly compositions. An attitudinal questionnaire was administered twice, before and at the end of the project and both groups took pre- and post-tests. The results revealed that DJW improved students’ writing although the amount of improvement was not very significant and they hold positive attitudes toward DJW as students believed that journals enhanced their motivation to write and increased their fluency.
Key Terms: Alternative assessments, Dialogue journals writing, Intermediate students
****************************************************************************************
ADVERTISEMENT:
We are entering the second year of publishing ELT Voices – India international journal. Subscribe to the journal for just Rs. 500 per you and get access to high quality ELT / ESL / EFL articles. Also you can get your works published with us.
Click here to subscribe to ELT Voices – India international electronic journal.
****************************************************************************************
1. Introduction
Writing in a second or foreign language is a complex and difficult process and is usually considered by most students to be a real chore.It may seem very challenging both for students and teachers to the extent that teachers simply avoid this area and concentrate on reading, grammar, etc. instead and students perform their writing homework without any motivation or pleasure.In many EFL and ESL classes, writing has traditionally been used as a tool for practicing other skills, in other words instead of learning how to write, students have been conducted to use writing for learning and practicing other skills.
Although new approaches for teaching writing have introduced some techniques that not only motivate students to write but also help them communicate freely and easily with their teachers or other partners, the trend of teaching writing has not changed so much in the Iranian curriculum. A quick review of the system of teaching English in schools and universities of Iran can probably illuminate the problems of teaching writing. Modifications done in high school books in the last two decades show the efforts Ministry of Education officials and material designers have made to create more communicative syllabi and improve the conditions of learning English in Iranian schools (Allami et al.2009).Low levels of English proficiency of most of students who graduate from high schools indicate that the ultimate goal of the syllabi designers has not satisfactorily been achieved. Obtaining a total change in this regard needs adoption of more modern, authentic approaches i.e. approaches which may help students learn the real functional feature of the language and be more autonomous and help them acquire communicative competence.
Considering the options open to the language teachers in assessing and responding to student writing after the advent of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and as one form of alternative assessment, Dialogue Journals Writing (DJW) has been applied in the last two decades by many teachers and in various educational settings. “Dialogue journals” which are written conversations exchanged between students and their teacher on a regular basis ,“were developed over many years by a sixth-grade teacher, Leslie Reed, in Los Angeles, to meet several needs- to get to know her students better, to get feedback on lessons, to improve classroom discipline, and to involve each student in meaningful reading and writing(Staton,1987,p.1).It is documented that dialogue journals have been used afterwards with many other students from elementary to university level, with ESL and EFL learners, in teacher training programs, with students in various content areas and even with special education populations.
Although many researchers and pedagogy experts have discussed the benefits DJW has for any learner of language from primary school students to reluctant adults, few studies have tried to investigate its benefits in the Iranian schools context. It has been observed that, Iranian high school students generally do not have enough practice on writing to get prepared for their collegial needs because the main focus of the curriculum goes on grammar, reading and vocabulary despite the claim that material developers and book designers have for dividing the wealth equally between the four skills. Meaningful, real-life-like and creative activities such as writing in dialogue journals may motivate and prepare students to do more autonomous and independent learning and change their attitudes toward writing. The main focus of the present study was to determine the effect of DJ writing on EFL students’ writing ability and on their attitudes towards writing in comparison with the traditional methods of teaching writing.
2. Review of the related literature
There has been a growing interest in the realm of ESL in the recent decade in the application of some assessment procedures more popularly known as authentic or alternative assessment.These procedures are said to be totally different from traditional assessment techniques or standardized forms of assessment because they ask students to show what they are really able to do. “Students are evaluated on what they integrate and produce rather than on what they are able to recall and reproduce’’ (Huerta-Macias,1995,p.339).The main goal of alternative assessment, in Garcia and Pearson’s belief (1994) is “to gather evidence about how students are approaching, processing and completing ‘real –life’ tasks in a particular domain” (p.357). From the list of instruments most popularly known as forms of nontraditional or alternative assessments, Penaflorida (2002) suggests, portfolio assessment, protocol analysis, learning logs, journal entries and dialogue journals more suitable and applicable in writing classes.Payton and Reed (1990) state that:
A dialogue journal, put very simply, is a conversation between a teacher and an individual student. However, this conversation differs from all other they may have, in or out of the classroom; it is written, it is completely private, and it takes place regularly and continually throughout an entire school year or semester.(p.3)
The use of dialogue journals differs according to the strategies that teachers adopt and different uses get different labels (Remiasova 2009).Although the first research project conducted in 1979-1980 described the creation and use of dialogue journals by a teacher in California, with native and nonnative English speaking students (Staton, Shuy, Peyton & Reed, 1988), the area of its application has expanded into many educational levels and settings in the recent years.”Dialogue journals are widely used today in all levels of English as a second language (ESL) and foreign language instruction, deaf education, and in college and graduate courses, particularly for teacher training “(Peyton & Staton, 1996, p.2).Many advantages have so far been mentioned for the use of DJW and it has received considerable attention in various academic contexts from researchers, educators and teachers because it is believed that “various forms of dialogue journals could be useful or beneficial at various stages” (Francis, 2009, p.43).Among the aspects counted for DJW, its reflective and communicative nature has been extensively and highly valued. DJW has become popular as a learner-centered interactive technique which is applicable in many contexts and many studies have attempted to illuminateits numerous benefits.Peyton and Seyoum’s research (1988), referred to as one of the pioneer studies in this field in many other studies afterwards, examined the strategies that the teacher used for promoting student writing in the dialogue journals and the role the teacher plays in the success of the dialogue journal interaction. This case study focused on the strategies which the teacher used for journal writing and the types of interaction between the teacher and students.The researchers came to the conclusion that teacher’s strategy can affect student’s response to some degree, although it is not the only determining factor. Moreover, they found that DJW resulted in a collaborative writing effortand the teacher and students mutually developed topics of interest to them and students wrote more freely and openly and far more than the minimum required and the length of their writing increased whenever the topics were of their interest.In another study Peyton (1990) examined dialogue journals writing of five sixth-graders from Leslee Reed’s class, a language teacher in CaliforniaThe questions in this study were mainly on the acquisition of language during the time of DJ writing, the acquisition patterns and whether these patterns were similar between students or not. In this study, she focused on the acquisition of English grammatical morphemes, specifically six verb-related and four noun-related morphemes by students. Peyton came to the conclusion that dialogue journals writing reflected improvement in the students’ English proficiency of the said morphemes and students could write and express themselves in written English long before they completely learned the forms and structures in meaningful texts and through journal writing they gradually developed in these areas.
In a classroom-based research, Reyes (1991) conducted a study that used a process approach in literacy. In this study the ability of the students to construct meaning in dialogue journals and literature logs in first and second language was examined.Based on her findings, Reyes made some general conclusions, mainly, she suggests that limited English speakers can and try to write in English before they have mastered the oral and written system of the L2.
Wells (1993) alsoin a class-based research tried to explore how dialogue journals contributed to students’ reading development. She found that by writing in the journals students became aware of themselves and their different responses revealed how they responded differently to different audiences. Song (1997) in a study, investigated the effect of dialogue journals writing on writing quality, reading comprehension and writing apprehension of EFL (Korean) college students and came to the conclusion that writing dialogue journals improved the quality of students’ writing more than answering comprehension questions and the journal writing groups progressed better although not always to a degree that was statistically significant. Holmes and Moulton (1997) within the language program of an urban southwestern US university, conducted a multiple case study in an intermediate composition class which included writing of formal rhetorical patterns andweekly dialogue journals to investigate what perspectives second language university students have on dialogue journals writing as a strategy for learning Englishand they reported that , the students’ reflections on their writing throughout the semester showed a gradual growth of writing fluency and motivation and this change was believed by the students to be attributed to the dialogue journals process.The effect of dialogue journals writing on different skills has also been the subject of research for many researchers and educators. El-Koumy (1998) as an MA thesis research has worked on the effect of DJW on the speaking skill ofEFL students in an Egyptian university.He came to the conclusion that DJW was beneficial to the students and counted some possible explanations for the beneficial effects of DJW in his study including establishment of a student-teacher rapport which motivated students to learn more about communication; creation of an opportunity through DJs for the students to express themselves openly and freely and without getting embarrassed about their shortcomings; being better thinkers through the elaboration of their own thoughts; having more opportunities for interaction between the students and the teacher; individualization of language learning through DJs that may help low-ability students more successfully and finally the possibility of occurring a number of discourse types as it may happen in face-to-face spoken interaction.
In another study, Iles (2001) in a class-based study kept dialogue journals writing with 8 of her students who were very low beginning ESL students but literate in their own languagesand concluded that DJW developed a personal bond between her and the students.
In many teacher education programs across the world, different forms of journals are commonly used as a means of promoting reflection among prospective teachers as it is believed that they can be effective to promote reflective thinking. Garmon(2001), in his university-based research investigated what a group of prospective teachers saw as the benefits and drawbacks of dialogue journals in a multicultural teacher education course anda wide variety of benefits associated with dialogue journals had been identified by the students .Some researchers have investigated the influence of DJW on students with special needs.Regan (2003),a special education teacher, used dialogue journals writing with students who had emotional disturbance. Based on her findings, she encourages the use of dialogue journals for all students with disabilities and believes that it is a beneficial tool in meeting the needs of students with emotional disturbance, especially when a child desires to have relationship with adults.Darhower (2004) tries to show that dialogue journals can functionas mediators, or “the instrument of cognitive change” (Donata & McCormick, 1994 cited in Darhower p.325) in L2 learning. She concluded that ” an advantage of dialogue journals over classroom communication is that the journal format allows teachers to interact with learners on an individualized level and placing the learner at the center of L2 instruction”(p.333).Connolly (2006) inspired by Green and Green (1993) andWorthington’s (1997) work, administered “secret dialogue journals” with one group of EFL students and another group of EFL students from two Japanese public junior high schools, as the subjects of his doctoral dissertation.The purpose of this study was exploring the pedagogical efficacy of peer-to-peer dialogue journals.
Influence of dialogue journals writing on students’ length, clarity and interest on writing has been investigated in an MA thesis research by Baldzhyan (2004).According to her observations, students were motivated and looked forward to writing in their dialogue journals.Voit (2009) in her study intended to see whether dialogue journaling with recast could affect writing accuracy of adult students and a certain level of literacy was needed prior to journaling for improvements in writing accuracy or not. Although she did not observe any clear improvement in the given morphemes, she believed that there had been many positive findings which were not measurable including students’ interest in writing the journals because students believed that DJW increased their confidence.
Rapid development of electronic communication devices and technologies such as word processors, cell phones, internet, note-pads, etc. in he last two decades has brought up a lot of changes in our daily and academic life.Many people around the world prefer to use the electronic form of writing, e-mails, for their correspondence. Online teacher-student and peer-to-peer communication and exchange of homework among them at college and university level has facilitated studying and even more fascinating and motivating. E-mail dialogue journals have been used as an ESL and EFL tool in many classes around the world and many researchers (e.g.Wang1998; Meel1999; Gonzales-Bueno 1998; Stapa & Al-Bakri 2001; Razak & Asmawi 2004; Shang 2005; Othman et al. 2007 and Erikson 2009) have located their studies on the use of dialogue journals through e-mail.Erickson (2009) has taken one step further and in his doctoral dissertation has tried to explore the effects of ‘blogs’versus dialogue journals on students’ writing and attitude.
A few studies (Mirhosseini 2003; Ghahremani-Ghajar& Mirhosseini 2005) have investigated the issues related to the use of dialogue journals in Iran. Ghahermani-Ghajar & Mirhosseini (2005) in a class-based study investigated how DJW may provide an opportunity to bring critical pedagogy and foreign language education in a productive way in the context of a critical literacy practice. And they concluded that writing DJs provided students with the valuable and generative opportunity to move beyond descriptive uncritical writing and towards creative and innovative modes of writing.
Nassaji and Cumming’s (2000) research was a case study of a 6-year-old Iranian child who had moved to Canada and was learning English there and the researchers aimed at providing an account of the features of ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) in language teaching and learning by exchanging interactive dialogue journals between him and his Canadian teacher. They found that his early journal entries tended to be restricted to reporting about general or personal facts but as the journals progressed he began to ask questions and report his opinions. A few studies (Oladi 2008; Ghasemi & Hashemi 2010; Namwar & Rastgo 2008) also have recently attempted to investigate the benefits of using e-mails and weblogs as educational tools for improving Iranian students’ writing skill and language proficiency. Although writing through e-mails and weblogs could be referred to as new or modern version of journaling, the said studies have independently discussed e-mail and weblog issues without referring to journal writing activities.
The review of literature reveals that dialogue journals writing, though, welcomed in many educational settings before 1980s and used as a successful tool in many ESL and EFL classes, has not found its right place in Iranian context yet. With the positive outcomes related to dialogue journals writing, further research should be done in this area in Iran and more investigations need to be done by researchers because it seems that this area is still unknown to many language teachers and instructors. Definitely, more research into DJW and its usage in Iranian contexts will deepen our understanding of the effects of this technique and prove that whether it is equally effective in this EFL setting or not. This study was intended to show the lack of research in this area in Iran and explore the effectiveness of dialogue journal writing in an EFL Iranian high school.
3. The Present Study
3.1. Methodology
The present study aimed at investigating the effect of dialogue journals writing on Iranian intermediate students’ writing proficiency and their attitudes toward writing, as an informal modern technique of teaching writing in comparison with the traditional methods of teaching writing.
3.2. Participants
This research was conducted in an Iranian high school in Dubai, UAE. The subjects of the study were 42 last-grade (pre-university) female students in two different majors. From the two selected classes, the science group with 20 students was chosen as the experimental group and the math group with 22 students as the control group. The participants were between 17 and 19 years old. Both groups had English classes 4 hours a week with the same teacher using the same syllabus and instructional method. The pre-test revealed no significant difference between the means of scores obtained by the two groups in their writing skills and they could be considered as homogenous groups. Two different activities were assigned for these two classes: dialogue journals writing for the experimental group and writing compositions for the control group. Based on the teacher’s decision, none of the groups were told that they were participating in a research but they were told that both dialogue journals writing and composition writing were class projects designed by the teacher to help the students improve their writing skill and language proficiency. The journaling group wrote daily in notebooks which were collected at the end of each week .The entries were responded without being corrected or marked while the students continued to write in their second notebooks. The students in the control group wrote one composition each week. Their compositions were corrected based on some assigned criteria and were marked.
3.3. Instruments
Both groups received a questionnaire in Farsi that consisted of two parts one week before starting the project. The first part of the questionnaire included 7 personal (demographic) questions and the second part included 21 attitudinal questions. Then, they wrote a composition which was assumed as the pre-test (it also functioned as a homogeneity test).Later, the students in the experimental group started dialogue journaling and the control group students wrote one composition each week for a period of two months. Both groups were asked to write another composition at the end of the term which was assumed as the post-test. Data collection ended by administrating an open-ended questionnaire (written interview) which sought students’ opinions about the writing activities they had done along with the attitudinal questionnaire which was administered for the second time.
The first part of the questionnaire included 7 questions in a multiple choice format about students’ age, grade, hours of studying English at school and their language learning background and the second part of the questionnaire, or in other words the main part, included 21 questions about students’ interest in English learning and writing activities and was prepared in a 5-point Likert scale format (based on Gardner & Lambert 1972).Due to the changes to the original sample the validity and reliability of the questionnaire had to be checked.To check the content and face validity of the questionnaire, it was consulted with the thesis supervisor and some more language teachers and to check the reliability a test-retest, with an interval of 3 weeks was administered on 40 female EFL students from another Iranian high school who represented a population similar to that of the main study sample but they were not included in the main study. The first version of the questionnaire included 25 items. After running the factor analysis, 4 items which had loading below 0.3 were excluded .The final version was therefore, prepared with 21 items. Chronbach’s Alpha was used to check the reliability of the questionnaire .The result was found to be ~.87 which was rather high. The questionnaire was then translated into Farsi, to prevent any misunderstanding and confusion for the students.The questionnaire was administered twice, at the beginning of the study and at the end to compare any possible changes in students’ attitudes toward English learning in general and writing activities in particular.
The pre-test was decided to be a composition task in order to check different features usually needed to take into consideration in writing a text such as mechanics, vocabulary, content, etc. It was also decided to choose a general title for the composition (pre-test) to give the weakest students the chance to write. Accordingly, the post-test was also decided to be a composition to see how students’ writing behavior might have changed after performing the dialogue journals and composition writing tasks.The second questionnaire was actually a written interview which sought students’ attitudes toward writing tasks they had done. It was prepared in Farsi and included 4 open- ended questions.
3.4. Procedure
As the first stage of the research, the first questionnaire which consisted of two parts was administered on both groups. It took them almost 10 minutes to complete. One week later, a composition task was administrated for both groups which functioned both as the pre-test and the homogeneity test.Dialogue journal writing was explained for the students and some samples from the conversations exchanged between Leslie Reed (1988) and her students were shown to the students to clarify the idea and many points about “DJW” were explained particularly, it was explained that students were free to write about anything they liked. Then two notebooks were given to each student and they were asked to write about topics of their interest everyday. They were also asked to deliver their first notebooks to the teacher on the last day of each week and continue their writing in the second notebooks. Since the focus in dialogue journal writing is on meaning, it was emphasized that students need notworry about their spelling or grammatical mistakes but try to pay attention to the responses written to them as good English samples in order to improve their writing skill and language proficiency.
The students in the control group were asked to write one composition each week on the topics chosen by their teacher.Their papers were handed over to the researcher to be corrected and marked. The composition papers were corrected in red ink according to the traditional methods and the researcher tried to correct every single error while some short notes were also written at the bottom of the papers. Direct instruction or advice was also provided for the subjects in the control groupin form of general classroom instruction on global mistakes observed by the researcher in the compositions. They also had the opportunity to consult their problems with the teacher in form of individual teacher-student conferences. The students in the experimental group did not receive any direct instruction on their mistakes. Some general guidelines based on their global mistakes were provided by their teacher according to the notes prepared by the researcher. Dialogue journals writing and composition writing continued for two months and when the notebooks and the last composition papers were collected, the students in both groups were asked to write another composition on an identical topic which was decided to function as the post-test.The second questionnaire was also administered to seek students’ opinions about the writing activities. They were informed that they were not obliged to write their names if they did not want to do so as it was believed that this could encourage them to answer frankly and more honestly. The attitudinal questionnaire was administered for the second time as well.
4. Data analysis and discussion
The first part of the questionnaire which was a demographic questionnaire was analyzed. The analysis of this data plus with the pre-test results approved that students, randomly chosen as the control and target groups, were homogeneous. In order to check the validity of the scores for this composition which functioned also as the pre-test, the correlation coefficient of the two sets (obtained by two different scorers) was calculated by Spearman rho coefficient. The results obtained for the experimental group and the control group was 0.98 which indicated that the scores of the first and second scorers were highly related.
The second part of the questionnaire (based on Gardner and Lambert 1972) was analyzed to seek students’ learning preferences and their attitudes toward learning English.The percentage of answers given to each question by the students of both groups was calculated and comparison was made, accordingly.It was concluded that many students who liked to learn English preferred free and informal activities and they believed that they could maneuver better on subjects chosen by themselves or of their own interest. They were aware that they could communicate with more people if they learned English and considered learning English important because it helped them read more materials, communicate with others and manage their academic and collegial needs.
Table 1- Means of scores obtained by the subjects of the experimental and control groups
in pre-testing of writing skills
|
Group |
Number of subjects |
Mean |
Standard Deviation |
t-value |
| Experimental | 20 | 5 |
1.46 |
0.0832 |
| Control | 22 | 5.13 |
1.42 |
As it is shown in Table1, the close means and standard deviations of two groups and the value of (t) which is (0.0832) and is less than the critical value at. 01 0r .05 levels, indicate that the difference between the two groups is not significant.
Dialogue journals of the experimental group were counted for the number of the entries written. A total number of 1080 entries were written by 20 participants with an average of 54 each. They were analyzed to find the patterns used by the students as well as investigating any changes in their writing behaviors and the results were interpreted. Based on the language functions Shuy (1993) has developed for his study of dialogue journal interactions in an ESL teaching context, a number of functions were selected to investigate students’ writing behavior in this study. As students started writing, it was observed that most of them had started their texts in form of reports including reporting general or personal facts but after they received the responses for their first week entries, a change could be observed in many of their writings and many language functions gradually appeared in their entries.The frequencies of these functions were calculated and the ranks were determined.
The means of the compositions marks written by the participants in the control group were calculated to investigate any changes in their writing behaviors and the results were interpreted.Comparison of the means for the students’ marks showed that the means of some compositions were relatively higher than the rest. Investigation showed that these means belonged to the topics chosen by the students. It was concluded that when students wrote about topics of their interest, their writing behavior had been different in comparison with writing about other topics.
As the post-test, students in both groups wrote another composition on one identical topic.The correlation coefficients were calculated for the pre-test scores and a t-test was run.
Table 2- Means of scores obtained by the subjects of the experimental and control groups in post-testing of writing skills
| Group
|
Number of subjects |
Mean |
Standard Deviation |
t- value |
| Experimental
|
20 |
6.05 |
1.43 |
0.502 |
| Control
|
22 |
5.18 |
1.82 |
t-critical > t- observed 1.684>0.502
Since the t- value was less than critical value at 0.05 level, it was interpreted that there was no significant difference at this level for the means of experimental and control groups, but the comparison of the means and standard deviations of the pre-test and post -test of both groups showed that there was a change in the performance of experimental group and they high performed in the post-test.
Later, the first questionnaire was administered again and the percentage of answers to each question was calculated. Paired t-test was also performed to estimate the changes occurred in students’ attitudes toward learning English and writing.
Table 3. The paired sample t-test for the control group
|
M |
SD |
Md |
t |
df |
p |
|
| 1st administration
2nd administration |
49.0455
52.6818 |
13.56984
14.11985 |
3.63636 |
6.62 |
21 |
0.08 |
As the results indicated, there was no significant difference in the means of the students’ attitudes toward writing, before doing the writing task (writing compositions) and after that (p.0.05).
Table 4. The paired sample t-test for the experimental group
|
M |
SD |
Md |
t |
df |
p |
|
| 1st administration
2nd administration |
46.05 55.5 |
9.73585 10.47051 |
9.45 |
9 |
19 |
0.00 |
The results showed a meaningful difference in the means of the students’ attitudes toward writing before doing the dialogue journal writing and after that (p<0.05).
Investigating students’ dialogue journal entries also showed significant changes in their attitudes toward learning English and writing activities which could be interpreted as the influence of dialogue journals writing activity.
The changes occurred in the experimental students’ attitudes can be deemed as the result of the free and informal activity the students did. As they had pointed out in their journals, the meaningful risk-free interaction they experienced through dialogue journals writing, had motivated them to do other writing activities such as corresponding through internet and sending e-mails.
Finally, the open-ended questionnaires, which generally aimed at students’ reflections on their writing and the amount of improvement they felt they had achieved, were analyzed and some conclusions were made. Noteworthy changes could be seen in experimental students responses to the open –ended questionnaire which meant that 1) most of the students did not consider writing very difficult any more; 2) they had become more interested in corresponding and communicating with others; 3) they welcomed recommendations to improve their English and 4) they thought that they could express themselves better through writing. Meanwhile the percent of students who thought they could write or talk better on subjects of their interest had also increased Although this written interview was administered for both groups, the main aim was to map the feelings of the target group and their attitudes toward the performed activity.Students in the target group answered positively to the questions and showed eagerness to continue the activity particularly when sending e-mails was suggested as an option whereas the students in the control group mentioned that they might have liked to send e-mails to their teacher but they didnot want to continue writing compositions .This indicated that students in both groups preferred to have free and meaningful activities.
5. Conclusions
This study investigated the effect dialogue journal writing may have on writing skill of intermediate Iranian high school students and their attitudes toward writing. Analysis was done on pre-test, post-test, questionnaires, journal entries and compositions. The results showed that dialogue journals made a contribution to the writing proficiency of the intermediate Iranian students; however, the difference was not significant enough to reject the first null hypothesis which was formed at the beginning of the study. The analysis of the second questionnaire (written interview) indicated the contribution of dialogue journals writing in promoting students’ positive attitudes toward writing and rejected the second null hypothesis. Based on the findings, conclusion was made that DJW had contributed to the improvement of writing skill, language proficiency and positive attitude of students toward writing. Although the statistical results did not show a very significant improvement in students’ writing, participants hold positive attitudes toward DJW. Most of the students stated that they enjoyed writing about different issues and reading the researcher’s responses as well. It seemed that the nature of responding to the journals made a difference in students’ writing and data showed that there was a little improvement in overall writing behavior of the target students after the study period. Additionally, it was clear from the students’ comments that dialogue journal was a success in that it improved students positive attitude toward writing. Most of the students in the target group had appreciated the opportunity given to them to establish and follow a dialogue in circumstances where their English classes’ time was very short and limited and their teacher could not divide time fairly to communicate with them individually.
The findings of this research affirm the contribution of DJW to the EFL high school students’ writing skill and their attitude toward writing. Analysis of journal entries revealed that students showed interest in writing journals as they had found the opportunity to speak out. DJW provided them a forum to express their satisfactions and dissatisfactions, share their ideas and opinions with others, ask questions frankly and write about things which they liked to talk about. It helped them move away from factual and descriptive view in writing towards more creative views. The analysis of journal entries revealed that DJW influenced students’ writing length and the participants, who wrote a few lines at the beginning, wrote one or more pages later and when students wrote about topics meaningful to them, they put more effort and time to write longer texts. Moreover findings show that DJW can create an environment of mutual trust between the learners and their teacher (or other partners). As it could be seen in the participants’ entries, they gradually started to talk about their secrets, consult about issues which had occupied their minds and ask for further friendship and communication.
With the positive outcomes related to dialogue journal writing, it is believed that further research should be done in this area, particularly in Iran and similar EFL contexts because it seems that this area is still unknown to many language teachers and instructors. It is hoped that future investigations pertinent to DJW provide more information in this area .DJW and similar techniques can be introduced into EFL educational systems as theoretically rich procedures with the positive perspective of yielding very practical and feasible results.
Bibliography
Allami, H., Jalilifar, A. , Hashemian. , Shooshtari, Z. (2009).Are Iranian school students ‘language needs taken into consideration? Iranian Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), v.3 (1)2009pp.125-142.Retrieved 20/2/2011 from www.ijls.net
Alirezaee A. & Oladi ,s. (2009) .The effect of Blogging on Language Learners’ Improvement in Social Interactions and writing Proficiency .Iranian Journal of language Studies .2(1),P.73
Baldzhyan, M. (2009) .Influence of dialogue journals on students’ length, clarity and Interest on writing, MA dissertation
Connolly, S.K.(2006).Peer-to-Peer Dialogue Journal Writing by Japanese Junior High School EFL Students. Doctoral Dissertation.
Darhower, M.(2004) . Dialogue Journals as Mediators of L2 Learning: A Socio-Cultural Account American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Hispania: v.8 (2).pp.324-335,From http://www.jstor.org
Donata, R. & Mc Cormic, D.(1994) .A Sociocultural Perspective on language Learning Strategies: The role of Mediation.” In Darhower, M. (2004).Dialogue Journals As mediators of the L2 Learning: A Sociocultural Account. American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Hispania.v.87 (2).pp.324-335
Erikson, D.(2009).The effects of blogs vs. dialogue journals on open-response writing scores and attitudes of grade-eight science students. Doctoral Dissertation, Retrieved 20/1/2011 from http://www.docstoc.com
El–Koumy, A. S. A. (1998). Effect of dialogue journal writing on EFL students’ speaking skill. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED.424772
Francis, P.(2009).Inspiring Writing in Art and Design: Taking a line for a write .Intellect Books.p.42-43
Garcia, G.E. & Pearson, P.D.(1994).Assessment and Diversity. Review of research in
Gardner, R. & Lambert, W. (1972). Attitudes and Motivations in Second Language Learning Rowley, Ma : Newbury House
Garmon, A. M.(2001) .The benefit of dialogue journal : What prospective teachers say. Teacher Education Quarterly .28(4)37-50
Ghahremani – Ghajar, S. & Mirhosseini, S.A. (2005).English class or speaking about everything class? Dialogue journal writing as a critical EFL literacy practice on Iranian high school .Language, Culture& Curriculum 18(3) 286-299
Ghasemi, B. & Hashemi ,M. (2010).Achievement of Male Female Students using E-Dialogue journal writing .Retrieved 2/20/2011 from http://www.ijar/pdf education, v.20.pp. 337-391
Green, C. &Green, J.M. (1993).Secret Friend Journal .TESOL Journal, 2(3), 20-23
Gonzales-Bueno, M. (1998) .The effects of electronic mail on Spanish L2 Discourse.Language Learning &Technology.v.1 (2) pp.55-70
Heurta –Macias, A. (1995). Alternative assessment: Response to commonly asked Questions. TESOL JOURNAL, 5,p.8-10
Holmes, V. L. &Moulton, M.R. (1997). Dialogue Journals as an ESL Learning Strategy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy: 40(8).p. 616-620
Iles, L. (2001) .Dialogue Journaling with beginning-level ESL students: Staff Handbook. Bureau of Adult Basic & literacy Education . ABLE. Pennsylvania Department of Education
Meel , D.E. (1999) .E-mail Dialogue Journal in a Collage Calculus Classroom: A look at the Implementation and Benefits .The Journal of Computers in Mathematics and ScienceTeaching.v.18(4).pp. 387-413
Mirhosseini, S.A.(2003).For Our Learn of English: Dialogue journal writing in EFL education. Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL.v.24 (1), p.40-48
Namwar, Y. & Rastgo, A. (2008). Weblog As a Learning Tool in Higher Education Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. TOJDE .July 2008 ISSN 1302-6488 v.:9 Nov.:3 Article 14 Retrieved 2/2/2011 from http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr
Nassaji, H. &Cumming, A. (2000).A case study of a young ESL student and teacher Interacting through dialogue journals .Language Teaching Research 4(2)pp. 95-121
Othman, M. (2007) .Problems Encountered in Dialogue Journal Writing via E-mail: A Malaysian Case Study. ASIATIC, v.1 (1).pp.1-13
Penaflorida, A.H. (2002). Nontraditional Forms of Assessment and Response to Student Writing: a step toward learner autonomy. In “Methodology in Language teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice.” by J.C. Richards & W.A. Renandya, pp. 344-353
Peyton, J.K.(1990).Students and Teachers Writing Together: Perspective on Journal Writing. Alexandra VA: TESOL, Inc.
Peyton, J. K. & Reed, L. (1990).”Dialogue Journal writing with nonnative English Speakers: A handbook for teachers” .Alexandria. VA: TESOL
Peyton, J. K. & Seyoum, M. (1996).The Effect of Teachers Strategies on Students’ Interactive Writing: The Case of Dialogue Journals. Research in the Teaching ofEnglish.v.23 (3).pp.310-334
Peyton, J.K. & Staton, J.(1996).Dialogue Journals in the Multilingual Classroom: Building Language Fluency and Writing Skills through Written Interaction. AMAZON
Razak. R.A. & Asmavi, A. (2004) .The Use of Dialogue Journal Through E-mail Technology in Developing writing interests and Skills. Malaysian Online Journal of Instructional Technology (MOJIT).v.1 (2). pp. 14-23.Retrieved 2/1/2011/from http://www.pppjj.us.my/mojit/articles
Reed, L. (1988). “Dialogue journal make my whole year flow: the teacher’s Perspective” in J. Staton, R Shuy, J. Peyton & L. Reed.(Eds.) Dialogue Journal Communication: Classroom ,linguistic ,social & cognitive view .pp.56-72.NJ. Ablex. Pub.
Regan, K.S.(2003).Using Dialogue Journals in the Classroom. Teaching ExceptionalChildren.v.36 (2).Retrieved 4/6/2010 from The Questia online Libraryhttp://www.quetia.com
Remiasova, BC.S. (2008) .Using Dialogue Journals in Basic School to Enhance English Language learning . Diploma Thesis. Retrieved 5/10/2010from http://is.muni.cz
Reyes, Maria, de la Luz. (1991). “A process Approach to Literacy Using Dialogue Journals and Literature Logs with Second Language Learners.” Research in the Teaching of English; v. 25 n. 3, p291-313
Shang, H.F. (2005) .E-mail Dialogue Journaling: Attitudes and Impact on L2 Reading Performance Educational Studies.v.31 (2).pp. 197-212
Stapa .S. H. & Al-Bakri, I.S. (2001).Achievement of Male and Female Students Writing E-Dialogue Journal Writing .Journal of Technology.v.35, pp.33-44 Retrieved 2/1/2011 from http://www.penerbit.utm
Staton, J. (1987a). “Dialogue Journals” .ERIC Digest. Retrieved 2009/12/13 from http://www.findarticle.com
Staton, J., Shuy, R.W., Peyton, J.K., and Reed, L. (1988). Dialogue journal communication: Classroom, linguistic, social, and cognitive views. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Song, M. (1997).The Effect of Dialogue Journal Writing on Writing Quality, Reading Comprehension and Writing Apprehension of EFL College students.MA Dissertation, South Korea
Shuy, R. W. (1993) .Using language functions to discover a teacher’s implicit theory of communicating with students. In Peyton. K. and Staton. (ed. ) Dialogue Journals in the multi lingual classroom: building language fluency and writing skills through written interaction. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 127-154
Voit, M. H. (2009).Do dialogue journals with recasts improve the writing skills for adult learners with limited literacy skills?.MA dissertation, Minnesota, .Saint Paul.
Wang.Y.(1998) .E-mail Dialogue Journaling in an ESL reading and Writing Classroom. Educational Telecommunications. 4(2).pp.263-287. Retrieved 2/1/2011 from http://www.editlib.org
Wells, M.C. (1993) .At The Junction of Reading and Writing: How dialogue journals Contribute to students’ reading development. Journal of Reading, v. 36 (4). pp. 294-302. Retrieved 28/12/2010 from http://www.jstor.org
Worthington, L. (1997) .Let’s not show the teacher: EFL students’ secret exchange journals. Forum, 35(3), pp.2-7
1 comment