earticle

영어

The value of dialogue journal use for literacy development has been empirically substantiated from both first and second language studies. This experimental study investigated the effect of dialogue journal writing on the writing quality and reading comprehension ability of EFL college students in Korea. Subjects were 207 freshmen in four reading sections of a freshman English course. For a 10-week period, subjects in two experimental groups wrote dialogue journals, and their progress was compared with the progress of subjects in two control groups who answered comprehension questions in a pretest/posttest format. Writing quality was assessed holistically in two essays. Reading achievement was evaluated with two reading comprehension subtests of TOEFL. Results indicated that the journal-writing groups progressed better in the two areas, although not always to a degree that was statistically significant. Some limitation was also noted. It was concluded that the use of dialogue journals could be an effective technique in EFL instruction, as in L1 and ESL instruction, with general and particularly with reading courses.