The Effect of Dialogue Journals on an ELL

Student’s Writing Skills

Davina ChuDr. Kristen Stephens

EDUC11030 April 2009

Case Study

• Annie is a third grade, Spanish-speaking ELL student from El Salvador.

• She struggles most with reading and writing comprehension and scored low on the benchmark tests.

• According to her teacher, Annie has a tendency to skip details or abruptly switch topics without elaboration or transitions and also struggles with sentence structure in her writing.

• From her quarterly portfolio assessments and general observation, Annie is clearly a hard worker and desires to improve all areas of knowledge.

Research Question

• To what extent will the integration of dialogue journals between teacher and an ELL student affect the student’s writing skills?

• This study aimed to apply the effective intervention strategy of dialogue journals to this specific population of ELL students in hopes to increase their motivation and capabilities in writing.

Methodology

• Baseline Data (5 days)• Five samples of Annie’s writing from Morning Pages, Writer’s Workshop,

and Research were collected and scored on a scale from 1-4 based on the number of errors made.

• Teacher observations tallied how many times Annie asked for help with grammar or elaboration and reasoning, and how many times Annie was asked to refocus on her writing assignment.

• The cooperating teacher was interviewed for a progress report on Annie’s writing since the beginning of the year.

• Dialogue Journal Intervention (10 days)• Ten dialogue journal entries were collected between teacher and Annie and

scored using the same scale as the writing samples.• Five more samples of Annie’s writing from Morning Pages, Writer’s

Workshop, and Research were collected and scored. • Teacher observations tallied how many times Annie asked for help with

grammar or elaboration and reasoning, and how many times Annie was asked to refocus on her writing assignment.

• The cooperating teacher was interviewed again for an updated progress report on Annie’s writing since the beginning of the year.

ResultsAnnie behaviorally improved in her responses. With the intervention, Annie asked for less help and stayed focused and motivated.

Annie also made less errors in her writing in comparison to her baseline scores prior to the intervention.

Dialogue Journal

Other Work

Baseline Intervention

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

Writing Sample Scores

Writing Sample

Avera

ge W

riti

ng S

am

ple

Score

Gram

mar

Reaso

ning

and

Ela

bora

tion

Motiv

atio

n0

1.5

3

4.5

Observations of Student Behavior

Baseline (5 days) Intervention (10 days)

Behavior Response

Avera

ge N

um

ber

of

Tally M

akrs

(per

day)

Conclusion

• The dialogue journal intervention in this study was effective in increasing Annie’s writing abilities such as grammar and motivation to write.

• However, there was little evidence to support that Annie is writing with more details and elaborating on an already existing idea.

• Future implications:• Work with a larger sample size• Continue the study for more than ten days