1. The Effect of Dialogue Journals on an ELL Student’s Writing Skills Davina Chu Dr. Kristen Stephens EDUC110 30 April 2009

2. Case Study Annie is a third grade, Spanish-speaking ELL student from El Salvador. She struggles most with reading and writing comprehension and scored low on the benchmark tests. According to her teacher, Annie has a tendency to skip details or abruptly switch topics without elaboration or transitions and also struggles with sentence structure in her writing. From her quarterly portfolio assessments and general observation, Annie is clearly a hard worker and desires to improve all areas of knowledge.

3. Research Question To what extent will the integration of dialogue journals between teacher and an ELL student affect the student’s writing skills? This study aimed to apply the effective intervention strategy of dialogue journals to this specific population of ELL students in hopes to increase their motivation and capabilities in writing.

4. Methodology Baseline Data (5 days) Five samples of Annie’s writing from Morning Pages, Writer’s Workshop, and Research were collected and scored on a scale from 1-4 based on the number of errors made. Teacher observations tallied how many times Annie asked for help with grammar or elaboration and reasoning, and how many times Annie was asked to refocus on her writing assignment. The cooperating teacher was interviewed for a progress report on Annie’s writing since the beginning of the year. Dialogue Journal Intervention (10 days) Ten dialogue journal entries were collected between teacher and Annie and scored using the same scale as the writing samples. Five more samples of Annie’s writing from Morning Pages, Writer’s Workshop, and Research were collected and scored. Teacher observations tallied how many times Annie asked for help with grammar or elaboration and reasoning, and how many times Annie was asked to refocus on her writing assignment. The cooperating teacher was interviewed again for an updated progress report on Annie’s writing since the beginning of the year.

5. Results Annie behaviorally improved in her responses. With the intervention, Annie asked for less help and stayed focused and motivated. Annie also made less errors in her writing in comparison to her baseline scores prior to the intervention.

6. Conclusion The dialogue journal intervention in this study was effective in increasing Annie’s writing abilities such as grammar and motivation to write. However, there was little evidence to support that Annie is writing with more details and elaborating on an already existing idea. Future implications: Work with a larger sample size Continue the study for more than ten days