Peer-to-peer dialogue journal writing by Japanese junior high school EFL students.

摘要

A peer-to-peer "secret" dialogue journal project, emulating projects by Green and Green (1993) and Worthington (1997), was instituted between 30 Japanese junior high school students at one public school, and 15 students each at two other Tokyo public schools. The project spanned five terms during which the students exchanged journals weekly in English with partners, who changed each term. Using names and school names was forbidden. The supervising teachers did not correct or respond to the entries; they occasionally scanned them to check for sole use of the L2 and for appropriateness of content.; The purpose of the study was to investigate the pedagogical efficacy of peer-to-peer dialogue journals. In addition to the journals themselves, three sets of data were collected and analyzed: a free-writing quiz, a free-speaking quiz, and surveys. The journals and quizzes were transcribed using the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) software system (MacWhinney, 2000).; After the project, the journals were analyzed, using ANOVAs, for trends over the five terms in measures of total words and word types per entry, mean length of utterance (MLU), and for common errors. As might be expected in a study with no teacher intervention, the trends did not indicate any statistically significant linguistic improvement over the life of the study.; However, in the third term, 290 eighth graders at all three schools took a ten-minute free-writing quiz. A one-way MANOVA showed that the journal participants significantly outperformed the non-participants on measures of fluency, accuracy, and syntactic complexity.; In the fourth term, 96 eighth graders at one school took a recorded three-minute free-speaking quiz. A one-way ANOVA showed that the journal participants outperformed the non-participants on the measure of fluency.; After each of the first four terms, the participants completed written surveys to gauge their attitudes toward their partners, the activity, and their feelings about their linguistic improvement.; I concluded that the secret journal may contribute to linguistic improvement and is valuable in providing an authentic and motivating vehicle for communicating in English, and for providing the interlocutors a forum through which to express their interests and anxieties.