1. Chapter 8
Diaries and Diary Studies

2. I. INTRODUCTION
A. Diary Data
B. The Nature of Data
C. Analyzing Diary Data
D. Diaries and Diaries Studies
II. DIARIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
AND LANGUAGE TEACHING
A. Language Learner Diaries
B. Expert Diaries
I. KEEPING A DIARY
Methodology

3. I. INTRODUCTION
• Diary is:
– a daily record,
– usually private,
– especially of the writer's own
– experiences,
– observations,
– feelings,
– attitudes, etc.

4. Diary contains:
• Anecdotes,
• Accounts (a description of facts, conditions), or
events of conversations,
• Introspective accounts of one’s feelings,
• Attitudes,
• Motives,
• Understanding in relation to things, events,
circumstances,
• Should be kept on a continuous basis
(Elliot’s)

5. Diary Study
• A first-person account of language
learning or teaching experience,
• Documented through regular, candid
entries
• In personal journal
• (and then analyzed for recurring patterns
or salient events)
(Balley, 1990)

6. Distinction between Logs,
Journals and Diaries
• Logs:
– A record of factual information
• Diaries:
– The kind of subjective text
• Journals:
– An amalgam of the two, containing both
subjective and objective data
Amalgam: a combination or mixture of different things

7. Example

8. Example

9. The Nature of data
• Four features of diary-generated text:
1. Textual material for example - descriptive
observation
2. Self-evidently subjective and introspective
a. The perspective of I dominates
b. Includes filtering the assumed and reported
attitudes of others
3. Necessarily written retrospectively

10. The Nature of data
4. Possibly records
a. What happened
b. What the writer felt about it
c. What might/should have happened
d. What could change
e. Opinions,
f. Anticipation and immediate
reactions
g. a more reflective tone

11. Analyzing Diary Data
• Studying one teacher’s diary could lead to:
– A set of interviews with that teacher
– Observation of his or her classes
– The distribution of a larger-scale
questionnaire
– The collection of comparative diary data

12. Three Features to be Taken into
Account: (Allright and Bailey)
1. Frequency of mention
2. Distribution of mention
(across writers, when several diaries are being
examined)
3. Saliency
(the strength of the expression with which a
topic is recorded)
Note: Mention of frequency and distribution implies that
Content analysis is likely to be quantitative

13. Diaries and Diary Studies
• Diaries:
– Private space
– A forum for reflection
• Diary studies
– Going public
– Contributing to a growing body of different
insights
– Into the largely unobservable processes of
second language learning

14. Five Steps of the Production of
a Diary Study
1. Account (mental record) of diarist’s
professional background
2. Confidential diary
3. Revision of entries for public version
4. Analysis
5. Interpretation and discussion
(Bailey, 1990)

15. II. DIARIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
AND LANGUAGE TEACHING
• Because of the growth of interest in
naturalistic enquiry
• Diaries are used to investigate variety of
aspects of teaching and learning

16. Language Learner Diaries
• The usual procedure: The Diary is
– Confidential between teacher and individual
learner
– Written in the target language
– Not normally used as a vehicle for error
correction
– Requires permission and a reading of the
research report by writers of any diary cited
substantially

17. The Characteristic of Pedagogic
Diaries
• Students are given guidelines before they
start writing:
– Lessons followed
– What you found most/least useful and
enjoyable
– What you found easiest/hardest
– Reactions to your teacher
– Reactions to other learners
– Comments on specific lessons

18. Expert Diaries
• Kept by language specialists: teachers,
applied linguists, second language
acquisition researchers
• Using a detailed set of prompts, inviting
successful language learners to write
about their learning experience in diary-
letter format (Pickett, 1987)
• The data was clearly very retrospective
• Revealing about language learning
strategies and processes

19. Teachers’ Diaries
• Contains:
– Planning the lesson and selecting material
– Dealing with different types of learner : mother
tongue, learning styles, attitudes, pacing,
proficiency)
– Whether the plan matched the reality
– Coping with the unexpected
– Using available resources and technology
– Speculation (about learning, behavior)

20. Teacher Training
• Diaries kept by trainee teachers have
several parallels with pedagogic learners’
diaries (Bailey, 1990)
• Encourages students :
– to go beyond learning course content in
isolation
– to strive to link this information to theories and
knowledge beyond the particular assignment
and particular course

21. Teacher Training
• The diary is used for trainee self assessment:
– Perception of self
– Subject matter
– Tasks and learners/learning
– The development of self knowledge
(Thornbury (1991)

22. III. KEEPING A DIARY
• Writing under the guidance of a
researcher:
– Type of notebook
– Model entry
– Standardization of the time period allocated to
particular pages,
– Checklist of items to jog the writer’s memory

23. Standard Advice
• Set aside a time each day to write the diary
• Tape recording is an option
• Allot roughly the same amount of time to the
diary
• Concentrate on recording data, not on style,
grammar or organization
• Record facts and events as well as
reflections.
• (Allwright and Bailly (1991)