Diary Writing as a Tool for Students’ Self-reflection and Teacher's Feedback in the Course of Academic Writing

Abstract

Diary writing is a very effective and natural tool for both students and teachers since this informal writing enables students to reflect on what they have learned, how they have learned it, what kind of difficulties they have when they have to write in formal English or what helps them to overcome these and other difficulties in the process of learning English. In addition, teachers can learn from students’ diaries about their constraints in writing and help them to remove them. They can also discover what teaching strategies students appreciate most and implement them in their teaching. The purpose of this article is thus to discuss diary writing used in the Course of Academic Writing at the Faculty of Informatics and Management of the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, and analyse some of students’ entries with respect to teaching approaches and strategies, students’ learning preferences and their constraints in writing.