Advantages of Dialogue Journals

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3. Advantages of Dialogue Journals

According to Garmon 2001: 41, there are several advantages of teaching writing through as follows: a. Facilitating students’ learning of the course material. Dialogue Journals seemed to facilitate students’ learning of the course material. Students identified several ways in which they believed that the journal served to enhance their learning. b. Promoting Self-reflection and Self-understanding. Many students reported that they greatly valued the opportunity that the journal gave them to reflect on the course material. They felt that, without the journal, they would not have thought about the course material as much as they did outside of class. Being required to think more deeply about the material led them to better understanding and often to new insights. Furthermore, the opportunity that the journal provided for making connections between the course material and their own beliefs and experiences was also important to some students. They reported that doing so often helped to make the course content more real and more understandable. c. Procedural Conveniences and Benefits The third major subcategory of benefits reflects primarily how students felt about the way in which the journal assignment was structured more, so than how they felt about actually doing the journals; therefore, I will discuss this subcategory only briefly. Many of the students appreciated the commit to user 30 fact that the journal writing was informal; they considered it advantageous that they did not have to be concerned about grammar, spelling, punctuation, or sentence structure. In addition, a few students perceived the length requirement of the journal as appropriate and beneficial. Other aspects of the journal assignment that students appreciated were having two journals due each week, having considerable freedom in the topics that they could write about, and having the option of writing by hand, typing, or emailing their journals. d. Opportunity to Express Ideas The fourth benefit was that dialogue journals provided a regular opportunity for students to express their ideas about the issues being dealt with in the course. Students differed, however, in how they perceived this benefit. Some explained that, because there was never enough time during class for everyone to say all that they wanted to, the journal provided a place where they could say what they did not have the chance to say during class. Others who were less outspoken in class saw the journal as their opportunity to express ideas that they were reluctant to express orally in class. e. Getting Feedback on Ideas and Questions Being able to ask questions through their journal was especially helpful to studentswho were shy and less inclined to raise a question before the entire class. The journal also facilitate students a place where they can ask any questions they have about the material being covered. commit to user 31 f. Improving the Teacher-Student Relationship A few students regarded improved student-teacher relationships as another important benefit of keeping dialogue journals. Another assumption about advantages of dialogue journal delivered by Godev 1994:10 cited in Valigurora 2010: 15 students can write their dialogue journals in a class. There are several reasons why it is beneficial to write the dialogue journal in a class: a. When students write the dialogue journal during the last minutes of the lesson, they “still have fresh in their minds the vocabulary, structures and content that came up in class” and they can use them in their entry. It helps them with remembering new expressions or grammar and they can easily practice them. b. When writing the dialogue journals students can concentrate on writing better ina class than at home, because “they do not feel this activity is taking away timethey could use in leisure activities.” For this reason they could also be moreenthusiastic about dialogue journal writing. It motivates them more. c. Writing the dialogue journals in a class enables students to use more sources ofinformation for their entry. They can cooperate with their classmates, they canask their teacher for advice or use dictionary if they need it, of course. d. There is the last but not least important benefit. If dialogue journal writing is practiced during the class period, time is limited and every student has commit to user 32 the sameamount of time. That is why we can observe students progress in writing bycomparing their first entries to the last ones as well as to compare progressacross students.” According to Harmer 2004:126 there are even more reasons why teachers and their students have found journal writing to be useful, they are: a. Reflecting upon learning Journals are highly useful resources for everybody to have a chance to go back and compare what we were thinking about something that happened a few weeks ago with what we are thinking now about it. It is a chance for us to stop for a while and take a little time to think about our feelings or attitudes. The most positive aspect is that students are pushed to think more deeply about the lesson material. “When we try to put our thoughts into words we have to work out what those thought are. This, in turn, makes us reflect on what has happened, what we think orhow we feel. And when we reflect on things we often reach conclusions that wemight not have thought of when an event was taking place or when, as learners, wewere engaged in the learning process itself.“ Harmer 2004: 126 b. The opportunities for freedom of expression The dialogue journals offer to students to express feelings in a freer way than they might do in front of their classmates. This is the most pleasant tool to help especially those students who are shy to speak in front of their classmates or with the teacher face to face. Harmer 2004:126 “Journal writing is a genre in its own right. The authors can commit to user 33 decide what and how much they want to include, and they can write at their own speed.” c. The impact of journal writing on writing ability in general The opportunity they provide for teachers and their students to enter into a new anddifferent kind of dialogue. Peregoy and Boyle 1997: 207 state that dialogue journal develop fluency because they are meaningful, because there are responded to, and because they give writers the freedom to concentrate on what they are saying, rather than on how they are saying it.

4. Disadvantages of Dialogue Journals