Journal of Applied Linguistics (Feb 2008)
The Effect of Dialogue Journal Writing on EFL Students' Writing Skill
Abstract
Despite the role writing plays in learning a foreign language, many students do not show much interest in taking an active part in writing classes (Myint, 1997). Thus different activities have been proposed to motivate students to write one of which is dialogue journal writing, and the present work tries to investigate the possible effect(s) of such activity on writing ability of a group of English students at Islamic Azad University- Hamedan branch. To do this, 50 students obtaining 1 and 2 on the TWE scale on the structure section of a TOEFL test were selected and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. After some introductory sessions, the students were asked to write paragraphs on a weekly schedule and hand them in to be corrected. In the experimental group the students were, furthermore, asked to keep journals and hand them in. After 4 months, the students in both groups took part in a writing exam in which they had to write two paragraphs on the topics given. The comparison of the means at p
