Six adult university Esl students\u27 perspectives of dialogue journal writing: A multiple case study

To provide insight into adult university ESL students\u27 perspectives of dialogue journal writing and of their changing views of themselves as writers, a fifteen-week multiple case study was conducted, with student interviews and dialogue journal entries providing the primary sources of data. Grounded in social interactionism and cognitivism, and viewed from the perspectives of the students, this study attempted to add to the growing body of research about dialogue journal writing with speakers of English as a second language; Six ESL students representing five different cultures and ranging in age from 18 to 33 participated in the study. Each participant wrote and exchanged journal entries with the teacher 11 times during the semester, and interviewed with the investigator four times. These dialogue journal entries and interview transcripts yielded five salient themes inductively derived from the data: (1) Interpersonal Perspectives, (2) Intrapersonal Perspectives, (3) Developmental Perspectives, (4) Self as Thinker, and (5) Self as Competent User of English; Data revealed that the six students in this study valued writing interactively with the teacher. First, the dialogue journal writing permitted students to exchange information and feelings with the teacher in a way that enhanced their relationship with her. Second, students valued writing expressively about their own topics, using this opportunity to examine issues and problems in their lives. Third, students experienced improvement in their writing products, which increased their motivation to write. Finally, students changed their views of themselves as writers through the process of interactive writing. As a result, they saw themselves as better thinkers and users of the English language; Questions raised as a result of this study suggest the need for further research to (1) explore the perspectives of larger samples of similar populations; (2) investigate the relationship that gender, ethnicity, and learning style has to dialogue journal writing; (3) examine the role of error correction in interactive writing; and (4) discover the point in writing development that dialogue journal writing is most efficacious