Dialogue journal writing via e-mail and its effects on ESL students writing skills

This study aims to find out the effectiveness of dialogue journal writing via e-mail on students’ English writing development. The evaluation was done by looking at the writing qualities that include overall effectiveness, the development of topic selection, the ability to control the sentence structure and grammar and the use of vocabulary. This study was conducted for five weeks and a total of 60 e-mail dialogue journal entries were gathered. Besides that, a questionnaires session was conducted after the e-mail dialogue journal writing session. The findings revealed that dialogue journal writing via e-mail activity helps to develop students’ writing skills in relation to writing quality and quantity. The study also revealed that e-mail dialogue journal writing activity encourages students to write as they are free to choose their own topics. In addition to that, they can also express and develop their ideas as their writings are not being evaluated by the teacher. The subjects also found that e-mail dialogue journal writing activity a very enjoyable activity as they were able to interact with a member of their age group.