Dialogue Journals: How to Assess Errors and How to Deepen A Conversation

Dialogue Journals can provide valuable information to you about your learner's skills as well as the nature of your learner's errors. Here are tips on how to use dialogue journals to do both.

You can start a session by asking your learner (if, say, they are Russian) the dialogue journal question: "What do you like about the American schooling system, and what makes it different from a Russian one?"

Let's say your learner writes something like this:

The teachers in the U.S. is very nice. In Russia the teachers are very strict. Here the teachers are like friends, in Russia the teacher are as gods. In Russia students follow rules. In the America there is less discipline, students move during the lesson. There is less learning.

From the response you can see that your learner has a pretty good command of English. The learner uses the present simple tense easily, and knows the rules of capital letters for first words of sentences, country names and the names of continents.

There are some errors around noun-verb agreement:

The teachers in the U.S is very nice

mixing a plural noun (teachers) with a singular verb (is).

Finally, in the last sentence, your learner reveals a typical Russian-speaker's misuse of the definite and indefinite articles a, and, the. (Russian doesn't use articles). Your learner writes

In the America there is less discipline, students move during the lesson...

Which is an interesting error when you consider how many times the learner uses the article the correctly:

The teachers in the U.S. is very nice.In Russia the teachers are very strict. 

You would need to think about this error and involve your learner in conversation, asking why the learner decided to use America with the definite article. Probably your learner has thought that the U.S. and America are used with the same article, as these words often represent the same country. Actually, America is a continent, which does not require an article. The U.S. stands for an adjective phrase which requires the usage of a definite article.

You can also see the misusage of the conjunction "as" in the second sentence.

Here the teachers are like friends (teachers are similar to friends)

in Russia the teacher are as gods (teachers are viewed as gods)

Maybe the student is not making a mistake in the second comparison between Russian teachers and gods but, rather, is trying to convey the cultural norm that Russian students view their teachers as gods.

To find out whether your student is making a grammar error or has a subtle distinction in mind (not unusual for a well-educated Russian), you will need to ask what the student means. You can then decide whether to teach the phrase "teachers are viewed as gods in Russia" or provide the correction" Russian teachers are like gods."

A conscious analysis of your learner's mistakes allows you to create an objective picture of your learner's strong and weak points and the nature of their language weaknesses. 

You should not generalize and stereotype the sources of the mistakes, but, rather, consider individual reasons which may have cuased them. The reasons can be the transference of particular patterns from the native language, an absence of subject matter, the generalization of a certain rule, or just a writing slip. 

Understanding of the nature of your learner's mistakes will help you bette aim your written modeled corrections and treatment in the right direction.

Happy tutoring!

Tatyana Pavlova

Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics/ Bashkir State University

MA Education/ESL 2014, Cambridge College

ENGLISH AT LARGE
Literacy and Learning for Life
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