Dialogue Journals are not just a Tool for Communication, but an Effective Way of Teaching Writing

A dialogue journal can provide valuable information for you about your learner's writing skills as well as the nature of your learner's writing errors. Here are tips on how to create a dialogue journal.

If you've had tutor training with English at Large you're familiar with dialogue journals and how they work. If you haven't been in any of the sessions, here you'll find out more about this type of  journal, and the steps of creating one. 

A dialogue journal is composed of two words: dialogue and journal. It means that you and your learner will have a chance to be involved in a dialogue in a written form. Dialogue journals be written in a journal or a notebook similar to the one you see below: 

  

In this notebook your learner will have an opportunity to express their personal views on different topics.

You can elicit learners' responses by using prompts (pictures or questions, for example) like this

Do you like to travel by bus? 

or

What is your favourite holiday?

It is important that you choose a simple topic for discussion, one that your learner has knowledge of but may or may not be able to write well about. 

Your learners normally will write on the left side of the page. You should encourage your learners to write as  much as they want, and not to be afraid of making mistakes or of being self conscious of how well they can or can't write English.

The next step for you will be to respond to your learner's writing. It is important for you not to immediately correct your learners' mistakes but to try to understand their nature. Do not make any marks on the student's writing. Your corrections will come by way of how you respond on the right-hand side of the notebook.

You should stick to the same topic your learners have written, try to adapt your language level to your learner's, and be personal in your writing. In this way you and your learners will start building a friendly relationship.

Here is an example of  a possible question and a learner's possible response.

Do you like fall in the U.S.? 

Your learner's  response might look like this (note the spelling and grammar errors): 

I like fall in the U.S. It is bright and colourfull. The trees have orange leafs. In my country fall does not last long, because winter come very fast. I can enjoy fall longer in this country. I can go hiking, make different pictures, and have picknics in the nature.

After reading your learner's response, your task will be to examine it carefully, outlining strong and weak points. In this response you can see that your learner has a good command of English. Your learner, being the speaker of a different language,  does not confuse the articles even though in his or her native language, Russian, there are no articles at all. Your learner knows the rules of punctuation quite well, or probably transfers them into English. You can assume that the learner is literate enough in his or her native language.

However, there are some weak points in your learner's response. Your learner has made some spelling mistakes in the words colourfull, picknics, leafes, and has omitted "s"  while writing about winter

because winter come very fast

In the above example winter is the third person singular, and requires the verb with the ending "s" in present simple tense. You should keep these mistakes in mind, but not correct them immediately.

The next step for you will be to write your response on the right page of the journal, where you express personal views on the same or related topic assigned to the learner. Your response should demonstrate the correct usage of those  English forms with which your learner had problems. In this particular case these are spelling problems, and the confusion of forms in the present tense.

Here is an example of your possible response:

I don't like fall in the U.S. It rains a lot, and gets cold. Summer and spring are more colorful. There are lots of leaves in fall, they create a mess. After fall winter comes , which makes me more sad. I can't wait for summer to come. In summer I can go camping, and go on different picnics anywhere I want.

We see that the tutor expresses his point of view about fall season in the U.S, sticking to the initial topic. All learner's mistakes are addressed in this response. The tutor demonstrates the correct writing  of the words colorful, leaves, and picnic, but uses them  in a different context. What is more, the tutor includes different examples of verbs with ending "s"  while writing in present simple tense: it rains,  winter comes, which makes me.

The next step for your learner will be to read your response, to  find and highlight differences between their writing and yours, and point to the right variant. If your learner fails to do that, you can direct them to find the right forms.

After such analysis, the next task for your learner will be to write the correct response to the same question, on the opposite side of the next page. The learner can periodically return to previous responses while thinking about the right choice.

Dialogue journals are a useful activity for your learner. Your learner can improve their writing skills, express their points of view in an easy and relaxing way, and build a closer relationship with you. 

You can read more about the effectiveness of dialogue journals in comparison with other types of writing in our next post titled "What Makes the Dialogue Journal an Efficient Teaching Tool in Comparison with Other Types of Writing"

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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