Debbie's Weblog

Traditionally, writing in the foreign language classroom is not conceived as interactive.  Much academic writing, in fact, takes place in a social vacuum, with the students expected to write on a topic selected by the teacher.  Dialogue journals, however, constitute an interactive form of writing which places writing within the social context of the classroom.  Dialogue journals can provide the learners with a communicative forum in which to carry out a wide range of language functions, including questions, challenges and discussion of feelings.  In fact, I read a study by Bacon (1995), in another class, where he demonstrated how learners transformed their dialogue journals into a forum in which to express their observations, feelings and opinions about the foreign culture.

In most foreign language classrooms, group size severely limits the teacher?s ability to focus on individual learners.  Dialogue journals provide the students an environment free of pressure as they produce the language for peers not for the teacher.  The students can think about what they want to write before they write it, but most importantly, they have the other students critique their writing.  This form of writing is interactive and provides a unique context where joint construction of meaning takes place between the students and the teacher.  An advantage of dialogue journals over classroom communication is that the journal allows the teacher to interact with the students outside of the classroom in a more individualized fashion.  This individual focus is especially important given the fact that not all the students in the same class are at the same developmental level.  Each one has a unique developing foreign language linguistic system and vocabulary repertoire, as well as interests, motivations and goals.