The effect of dialogue journal writing on reading comprehension, writing quality and writing apprehension of Lebanese third intermediate students

النوع : Mémoire

Dialogue journals are written conversations between the teacher and an individual student. The students write about any topic they choose, and the teacher writes back responding to the content of the students' entries without grading or correcting the form of these entries. Dialogue journal writing has been recognized as a versatile and effective activity in improving reading comprehension and writing quality, and in decreasing writing apprehension. However, these effects may not be generalized into various curricular or cultural contexts. None of the studies examined this effect in ESL classrooms in the Lebanese context. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of dialogue journal writing on reading comprehension, writing quality, and writing apprehension of EFL third intermediate students in the Lebanese context.--A Quasi experimental design was used. Two intact classes: experimental and control were used. The experimental class applied dialogue journal writing on their reading content, while control class students wrote brief answers to comprehension questions on the same reading content. The procedures continued throughout two months Three pretest and posttest measures were administered. These included: a reading comprehension test of TOEFL, a writing task, and the Writing Apprehension Scale. When the scoring of these measures was completed, whole class data for each kind was averaged for the whole class scores and the scores were subjected to statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics, means, and Multivariate Analysis of Covariates (MANCOVA) were used. The independent variable (treatment) had two levels: experimental and control groups. The dependent variables were reading comprehension, writing quality, and writing apprehension. The pretest scores on these variables were used as covariates.--Limitations of the study were discussed and recommendations for future research were Made.