The Use of Dialogue Journals with University EFL Students: A Sociocultural Perspective

Abstract

This paper reports on a study about two teachers’ use of dialogue journals with university EFL students in China and Hong Kong. A dialogue journal is a regular, ongoing written exchange between a teacher and a student. The dialogue journal communications are reciprocal and typically continue for a period of time (e.g., the length of a semester-long course).The article first examines three key concepts from sociocultural theory: the zone of proximal development, scaffolding, and affordances. The data from the students’ dialogue journal entries and the two teachers’ responses to those entries were analyzed using a sociocultural theory framework proposed by Walqui and van Lier (2010). The framework describes six features of pedagogical scaffolding: continuity and coherence, supportive environment, intersubjectivity, flow, contingency, and the handover/takeover principle, each of which is briefly explained. The two university courses from which the data were derived are described in some detail, and examples of the students’ dialogue journal entries and the teachers’ responses are provided. The research question we posed was this: Are the six features of pedagogical scaffolding present in the students’ dialogue journal entries and the teachers’ responses? That is, this research examined whether these six elements were present in written exchanges between teachers and language learners, since previous research on pedagogical scaffolding had focused largely on spoken interactions. The data analysis revealed that continuity and coherence, supportive environment, intersubjectivity, flow and contingency are evident throughout the dialogue journal entries. Some evidence of the handover/takeover principle appeared as the students’ independent ideas emerged over time.