November 1998

Journal Writing in the Classroom
Critical Techniques for Implementation
November 1998

This is the first part of a two-part article about using journals in teaching. It grows out of a workshop hosted last spring by the Center for Teaching and Learning. This first installment is an adaptation of the opening comments by Roberta B. Boyd, Assistant Dean for Fiscal Affairs, College of Liberal Arts. In addition to her responsibilities in the COLA, Roberta occasionally teaches freshman composition and has long been a proponent of using journals as a means of enhancing learning. Her presentation provides some background about journals and some general guidelines for their use. The next issue of the WAC newsletter will include information from the other panelists, who discussed their experience using journals in their own teaching and the benefits their students gained from it.

While journals have always found a place in the private lives of individuals and in so-called public memoirs, other uses of journal writing have long been recognized as well. As early as 1965, Dr. Ira Progoff's At a Journal Workshop included a discussion of how he required his patients to keep a journal, for he saw how it could be used as a "transpsychological approach to what has been thought of as psychological problems" (9).

Though psychoanalysis is not the focus of this presentation, the fact that journaling was used in counseling sessions to "enable an individual to draw upon inherent resources for becoming a whole person" (9) has powerful implications for any instructor. Because more recent studies also indicate that maintaining journals may increase the metacognitive, social, psychological, and holistic well-being of individuals, the journal is a tool that instructors can use to enhance a student's cognitive and creative skills. In the mid-seventies, when I began to incorporate journals in my high school English classes, that was the general purpose and value of those "rap sheets." Today, whether I incorporate journaling in a classroom environment, such as freshman English, or in private tutoring and workshops, participants learn about the relevancy and the significance of reflection through the journal.

Recently I surveyed seventy-five other higher education administrators and faculty who had been part of the 1997 Bryn Mawr Summer Institute cohort with me, asking them the following questions:

(1) Do you require students to maintain a course-related journal? If so, what are your objectives?
(2) What have been the benefits to requiring a journal? What have been the drawbacks?
(3) Do you select the topic for your journal assignments? Why or why not?
(4) Do you grade the journal assignments? Why or why not?
(5) If graded, what percent impacts the final course grade?
(6) Do you find that the journal is essential to developing or strengthening students' critical thinking skills? Explain.
(7) Do you define the journal for your students? Why or why not?
(8) How do you define the journal?

Nearly a third of those who replied noted that they often require students to keep journals in their undergraduate or graduate courses. The journals were used in a variety of areas, such as social work practica, graduate and undergraduate seminars, freshman English courses, medical and psychological field experiences, physical education, and many others.

Overwhelmingly, the respondents stressed the importance of structure and focus on the part of the instructor in order to receive a solid reflection from students. Meaningful, clearly stated objectives enable instructors to organize and prioritize their behavioral (performance) and organization (content) objectives. The content of classroom journals may deal with broad concepts or principles ranging from integrity, truthfulness, and caring, to exploration through hypotheses and hypothetical scenarios.

Tangential to structure and focus is the need for the instructor to respond briefly to most journal entries with positive, constructive, and supportive feedback. This step is critical in minimizing inhibitions about writing in general, as well as in developing and enhancing student critical and creative thinking.

A rather commonly accepted definition of journal which I use is as follows: an informal piece of writing done by an individual in order to record events, attitudes, observations, and personal experiences. What ensures that student responses will indeed be relevant, reflective, coherent, and critical? Perhaps a partial answer is for the instructor to allow some of the students' early journal responses to be personal narratives.

The personal, first person narrative establishes a comfortable degree of ownership, particularly for the timid journal writer who is not quite ready for or capable of detailed, more analytical, critical reflections.

The personal narrative does not mean a "tell all" account to which most people would not want to be privy. The personal, first person narrative establishes a comfortable degree of ownership, particularly for the timid journal writer who is not quite ready for or capable of detailed, more analytical, critical reflections.

For the student whose reflections are hindered by mechanical or grammatical weakness, an instructor's comments should not focus on those problems. While weak writers may commit numerous errors, I focus more on providing a discernible thesis and thought pattern, vis-a-vis organization and relationships. Moreover, I have found that simply raising a question (such as, "Can you review the use of the semicolon and the position of quotation marks?") may help the student realize how such errors weaken her writing and hinder her intentions.

As students' writing improves, the definition of journal may even be broadened: a piece of writing which records the events, attitudes, observations, personal experiences, or experiences of others. As the nature of topics expands to become more concept-oriented, the option to focus either on self (experience) or someone else (observation) still provides the students with the comfort of ownership by

(1) dealing directly with the first person experience,
(2) distancing through observation of someone else, or
(3) by combining both features of this more extended definition of the journal. Any of these approaches can find its place in the discourse of reflection.

Tackling these differentials allows students to think and probe deeper into the thoughts and actions of writers and characters. Tracking a character's actions and thoughts, for instance, may lead them to find incongruous or flawed reasoning; or, on the other hand, the character may find the kernels that lead to a certain outcome.

How can journal writing in this instance improve a student's critical eye or writing in general? For the instructor who has clearly defined objectives for the assignment, the tracing and observing exercises show the students what is essential to developing logical and coherent organizational patterns in their own writing. They may also discover their own writing needs more or less attention to details, relevancy, relationships, and symmetry. This is the multiple correlation even between reading, written reflection, and critical thinking.

While the experience side of students' writing stakes a claim in ownership, an instructor should also note that experiential writing is confined, to some degree, to the biases of writers. The observation side of their writing attempts to put some distance between them and subjects so that more objective and critical reflection can develop.

This is not to say that the observations will lack bias and flaws in judgment. However, when the focus and purpose of the observational reflections are clearly discernible, students can be challenged to be more deliberative and exact in their observations. Generally, the observations are less emotional and the student is less likely to resort to personal disclosure. Students must continue to hear that even observation can have weaknesses or threats to validity as well as clear strengths.

The journal reflections may be iterative or simply topic foci. The scope of the reflection will depend on how well an instructor knows her students' writing abilities and how well students know the topics.

Even as students adhere to the fundamental rules of grammar and mechanics and as their writing strengthens with the complexity of assignments, the focus of the journal should remain constant and basic. This, however, does not mean that the concepts and principles students address should be trivialized or broken into shallow, uncritical responses.

Instead, the journal should be a means through which ideas are linked to other thoughts and studies and are further developed or clarified. In addition, brainstorming, drafting, and experimentation can occur. Because journals allow for thinking, planning, and problem solving, the operationalization of the journal framework is limitless.

Instructors should keep in mind the following key points if the journal is to be meaningful and exciting to the students:

(1) Provide a basic or broad-based definition of the journal. Carefully select the definition based on the strength of the students' writing skills and expected potential.

(2) Establish clear ground rules if there are certain terms, experiences, observations, discussions, or self-disclosures you will not allow in your students' journals.

(7) Allow the journal to examine old ideas and see how they compare or contrast to current thought.

(8) Allow the journal to serve as a dialogue with an author or a specific character. This could mean constructing questions that the students might ask the author or a character.

(9) Periodically allow a series of focused journal entries to develop into a more expanded research paper or essay.

The intrinsic value of journals in the classroom may be more apparent than the outcome of measurable skills. However, with a deliberate focus on generalized topics or concept development, instructors may well observe that students' overall writing, critical thinking, creativity, and ease with written communication are greatly strengthened when journals supplement course assignments.

Moreover, it is essential that instructors provide more than just a cursory response to students' journals. Carefully directed journal writing, reflective in nature, need not result into an unstructured, overly reactive response to an issue. The journal allows students to challenge their own understanding or lack of understanding. Equally important, it encourages and strengthens their critical eye so that they may probe, engage in additional research, or re-examine past points and perhaps determine how they are linked to the present or the future.

References
Progoff, I. (1975). At a journal workshop: The basic text and guide for using the "intensive journal" process. New York: Dialogue House Library.

Timmins, L. (1972). Understanding through communication: Structured experiments in selfexploration. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Warner, J. S. (1998). Visions across the Americas: Short essays for composition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.

Working with ESL Writers
Notes from the University of Hawaii at Manoa
November 1998

Students for whom English is a second language (ESL) often have difficulty writing in English. In some cases the difficulty is compounded by differences in the way their first language works. In a number of languages, for example, the verb has a single form that does not change to indicate tense; likewise, some languages lack articles. At times differences in cultural expectations create difficulty as well. And, to be fair, English is confusingly inconsistent in the way it operates.

Most teachers have no training in dealing with these issues and feel unprepared when they encounter such problems in their students' writing. However, the summer 1998 issue of Writing Matters, the newsletter of the University of Hawai'i at M noa Writing Program, contains some suggestions that may provide a helpful starting point. The newsletter addresses three questions that have troubled many instructors. The following lengthy excerpt is reprinted with permission. The full text is available at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~uhmwrite/wi/writmat6.htm.

ESL students have a wide range of language abilities that complement their learning. For many, English is one of several languages in which they communicate. Their multilingual background provides a rich landscape of cultural experiences as well as an "ear" for grammar and syntax, though never automatic "correctness." Because ESL students have had extensive English grammar study (often with much more intensity than native English speakers), additional workbook drills won't be effective. It's better to focus first on content and then approach grammar problems in the context of their writing.

Often it's difficult to distinguish content problems from grammar problems: content and language are so inextricably layered that we can be "tricked" into seeing only grammar errors.

Consider the excerpts below. In one, the student could handle the writing problems quite readily; in the other, problems require the student to do a considerable amount of rethinking and clarifying. In which excerpt do writing errors significantly and consistently interfere with understanding and thus reflect more than superficial problems? For which excerpt could you readily offer content feedback?

Excerpt A:
The overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy an interaction between United States and Hawaii political economy. The reciprocity treaty an incentives making the sugar industry to expand. And Hawaii sugar planters making an investment. The treaty change to Hawaii internal politics build the wealth of Caucasian owners in sugar plantations. The U.S. opportunism respect trade treaty caution the wealth if planters, therefore a critical role in overthrow in Hawaiian monarchy.

Excerpt B:
When interest rates expecting to fall, three reasons would cause to raise in stock prices. Firstly, the expansion in the economy causes corporation to have excellent earnings. Secondly, investors search for higher return to protect their wealth which are deposited in banks. Lastly, corporations would have opportunities to borrow at the lower interest rates for expansions.

Meaning seems far more difficult to determine in Excerpt A where missing parts of speech and a lack of connection between words and ideas result in a very perplexing paragraph. In Excerpt B, however, verb form errors and missing articles do not impede understanding; the paragraph provides three reasons for rising stock prices when interest rates fall.

When the writing interferes with understanding (Excerpt A)—Tell the student that the content is unclear or unfocused. Say "I can't understand what you've written. Could you tell me what you are trying to say?" Such garbled writing might suggest that the writer is overshooting her abilities to write academically and needs to use language appropriate to her level. Or, the student may not have understood the topic or concept, in which case some re-teaching may be necessary. Once the student can explain what she is trying to say in each sentence, ask her to rewrite the draft.

When the writing does not significantly interfere with understanding (Excerpt B)—Ask the student to find a native English speaker who can proofread the draft before the student submits it. A more experienced writer and speaker will be able to point out grammar errors, and the student can make necessary corrections before you read the draft.

Even though you may have good intentions, your correcting of errors doesn't promote learning. In fact, focusing mostly on grammar errors, which seems easier to do than focusing on organization or logical development, conveys to students that correctness supercedes meaning. However, if you want to help your ESL students fix grammar errors, here are helpful ways to respond to errors in drafts.

Ways to respond to grammar errors:
Highlight one or two types of errors that seem to occur frequently in a student's paper. Explain the "correct" usage and give a few examples if you can.

Often it's best to point out the problem and let the students do the fixing. If you correct the grammar, do so for only one paragraph so the students can see how to make corrections themselves.

Ask students to keep a log of errors to consult in order to avoid recurring errors on the next assignment.

Many ESL students come from cultural and educational systems where concepts of scholarship and individual ownership of ideas are very different from ours. Doing "critical analysis" involves "western" behaviors: we interrogate sources, make connections among them, and assert a stance. ESL students may have learned in their country that an established source is to be treated respectfully, not questioned or criticized by a neophyte. Sometimes students may be in such awe of the language in an original text or of an argument's powerful structure that they feel incapable of paraphrasing or summarizing. Plagiarism or a student's abundant use of quotations may reflect a cultural tradition of respect for authority, not a lack of critical thinking ability.

You can acknowledge your awareness of cultural differences regarding textual authority and help your students avoid plagiarism by providing explicit instruction on "doing critical analysis."

Ways to encourage critical analysis and help students avoid plagiarizing:
Discuss different cultural views on sources, texts, reference conventions, and plagiarism. Explain what is expected if students want to succeed in your course.

Explain how and why you ask questions about texts; encourage students to see question posing as an important academic skill.

When assigning course reading, require students to keep reading logs in which they summarize arguments, write about their thinking, make connections with other sources, describe difficulties with the reading, and ask questions.

Explain when to quote, when to paraphrase, when to reference, and when to summarize using examples from your own writing or that of previous students. Then assign practice summarizing and paraphrasing in the context of your writing assignment. In addition, most popular handbooks give a thorough explanation of how to deal with documentation.

This summer I taught a section of English 102, and my students once again confirmed something I've seen repeatedly in 20 years of teaching college-level composition: students often don't connect the writing they do in English classes with the writing they do in other classes. That was especially clear this summer in the essays that accompanied the final portfolios. Almost a third of the writers told me (unintentionally, I'm sure) that they didn't regard what they did in other classes as writing. "I haven't written anything in college except in English 101," they would comment, and then add as an afterthought, as though it didn't really count, "except research papers in my major." Most of these students were juniors and seniors, not freshmen.

In addition to the obvious observation that their delaying the class precludes its having had any impact on the writing they have been doing for their other classes, another conclusion is worth considering. The view that "writing" is something done principally in English classes may mean, among other things, that students believe multiple drafts and careful proofreading matter there but not elsewhere. That may, in turn, mean that what is submitted in other classes is pretty much a first draft.

Likewise, discussions of documentation may seem to belong to the realm of English, not other subject areas, an attitude already fostered by most students' experience in high school.

And the lesson to be drawn in this brief personal experience narrative? Those of us teaching composition need to emphasize the connection of our classes with the rest of the university; likewise, those teaching in other disciplines need to make explicit their expectations about the level of writing they want from their students. That won't solve the whole problem, of course, but it may make a start.