“Taking written conversations into the language class”

[extracted from English Teaching Forum, volume 51, number 2, 2013, p.3]

[…] The goal of a dialogue journal “varies dramatically depending on whether the focus is on language structure, language for communication or language for empowerment” (Orem 2001, 73). Journals can function as a window into the learner’s mind if the teacher reads them, but they are mainly a place for students to keep an enduring record of what they have learned. Often it is in the act of writing a response that actual learning takes place, and ideally, this is how critical thinking develops. In a reading curriculum, journal writing gives students a way to engage with texts in a meaningful way that then can lead to critical literacy (Miller 2007).