The Effect of Dialogue Journal Writing on EFL Learners' Descriptive Writing Performance: A Quantitative Study

Ali Dabbagh

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.3p.71

Abstract

This study sought to evaluate the effect of dialogue journal writing on writing performance as well as its different sub-components, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics (Following Polio, 2013). Participants were 84 EFL intermediate learners who were selected based on their performance on Oxford Quick Placement Test (2004) and divided randomly into experimental and control groups. While the participants in the control group took part in descriptive writing pre and post-tests only, their counterparts in experimental group were asked to write 3 journals a week for about 6 months in the period between the pre- and post-tests. The instructor of the experimental group provided feedback to each journal entry mostly on its content and message to which the participants replied in a dialogic manner. Results of independent sample t-test located a significant difference between the experimental and control group regarding the overall writing performance, as well as the sub-components of content, organization, and vocabulary in the post-test. However, the obtained results did not reveal a significant effect of dialogue journal writing on language use and mechanics of writing performance. The results which promise implications for writing instructors, curriculum developers, and material designers are fully discussed.

Highlights

This study sought to evaluate the effect of dialogue journal writing on writing performance as well as its different subcomponents, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics (Following Polio, 2013)
Jacobs, Zinkgraf, Wormuth, Hartfiel, and Hugley's (1981) rating scale was selected to score the descriptive writing essays of the participants. This scale is based on the five fundamental components of writing performance, including organization, content, language use, vocabulary and mechanics and has been reported as “one of the best known and most widely used analytic scales used in ESL” (Weigle, 2002, p. 115)
As indicated earlier, to make sure about the homogeneity of the participants with respect to their writing performance, they were subject to a pretest on writing prior to any kind of treatment to be applied to the experimental group

Summary

Introduction

This study sought to evaluate the effect of dialogue journal writing on writing performance as well as its different subcomponents, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics (Following Polio, 2013). Dialogue journal writing is a research instrument to find about teachers' ideas on teacher education (Baily, 1990), learners' responsibility for their learning (Porter, Goldstein, Leatherman, & Conrad, 1990), learners' strategies (Halbach, 2000), learners' thoughts and ideas toward EFL learning (Myers, 2001), and to impact learners' reflection (Hashemi & Mirzaei, 2015). Despite such various lines of research on dialogue journal writing, very few researchers have investigated its effect on the EFL overall writing performance in general and the writing components in particular. This study aims to bridge this gap via investigating the effect of writing dialogue journals, as an outside classroom activity, both on the EFL learners' overall descriptive writing performance and its constituent components

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion