Information collection & exchange

Learning to Write While Learning to Communicate 
In 
wri
form of interactive writing between the teacher and the student. The beauty of the technique is that you can 
use it with students of any degree of language proficiency, even with beginners. This is the way it works. 
Each student has a composition book which he or she uses as a diary or journal. On a regular basis, 
referably every day, students write in their journals as much or as little as they want to write, on whatever 
he dialogue aspect of dialogue journals results from the way the teacher responds to the students' entries. 
aura: 
Ms. Reed, I like dis room and I like you Bekes you are a good teshir and teach my 
Te
book? We will read every day. 
pi
g efforts in the following way. In the earliest stages o
increase the length of the compositions. D
on the prewriting activities and on helping the students to get their ideas
writing proficiency increases, you can gradually lead them into tec
iting assignments so that they have time to produce one or m
sented. In a later section of this chapter you will find some specific suggestions on ways to respond to 
dents' written work. 
 
 Expanded writing skills and reinforcement of reading 
If you are teaching very young students, or absolute beginners of any age, most of the writing assignments 
which you give will be under careful control. Students may do copying exercises to learn letter formation, 
spelling, and punctuation. Written grammar exercises and written a
a
c
T
your students. Of course, controlled writing also has its limitations. It doesn't allow your students to be 
creative or to go very far in expressing their own thoughts. Controlled writing has even more serious 
limitations if you rely on it for teaching essay writing skills. Students don't get the independent practice they 
need in selecting a topic to write about, finding suppor
o
, while controlled writing assignments are useful for som
b
couraged to be more independent. 
recent years, many language teachers have tried an interesting technique for encouraging students to 
te more, and to communicate more through their writing. The technique, called dialogue journals, is a 
p
subject interests them at the moment. They can return to the same topic in a later entry if they like, or they 
can treat a new topic each time. They can ask the teacher questions about features of language or culture, 
or about personal matters if they need to. They can express opinions and make requests. 
T
As frequently as possible, depending on the size of the class, the teacher asks to read the students' journals 
and writes an answering entry in each one. In effect, the teacher and the students carry on a conversation 
via the journal. Here are examples of two exchanges. The first example shows the third daily entry from the 
journal of Laura, a sixth grade student from Italy who has had no prior English language training. 
L
English. I like evryBety. 
acher: 
Everybody likes you, too, Laura. Did you read the 
The second example is from the journal of Kazutomi, an adult Japanese student studying English in an 
intensive summer program in the United States. 

---

Ka
om. 
Teacher: 
Good. Let's go to the bookstore on Friday at 4:00. I will meet you there. I can't go 
I said, we'll have several lessons about prepositions. There are some rules we 
can study hut often you just have to memorize them. 
No
to be corrected. At the same time, the teacher's re
ro
greater mutual understanding with their students. On the 
ploring their own ideas and interests, they are building up a store of topical material 
h
Ma
As 
writing, the links between reading and writing become 
inc
tho
wri
features of discourse in reading a
iting activities which employ the 
sam
complete the circle, when students have tried to incorpor
become more aware of those features when they 
in subsequent reading assignments. Thus reading 
an
In Chapter Five of this manual, among the 
mic
es. Such exercises are an aid 
r
operly used, they can help 
der, once the tale has been told the 
comparison, 
st be matched to the writing patterns which we conventionally use for presenting it.