Dian Ciptaningrum (132084086)

Paper Writing D class

The use of learning diaries as an effective way to teach writing to the eight graders.
Writing is considered as means of communication. In addition, it tends to involve a
thinking process from human being. Writing is one of language skills of which students should
have good control. Meyer (2005) says, You cannot see and hear your readers, so you must think
about their reactions. You must choose a subject that will interest them and try to present it in an
interesting way. Writing has always formed part of the syllabus in the teaching of English
(Harmer, 2004). In activity of writing, students are expected to be able to compose wellorganized pieces of writing in English as their foreign language. Recently, teaching writing to the
eighth graders was not easy. Unfortunately, most Indonesian students think that writing is
generally difficult. The reasons are that it takes a lot of time to think about the topic that they are
going to write, they have view ideas and inspirations, and they only have little knowledge about
technique of writing. Moreover, teacher are usually only relies on textbook which contains
simple exercises e.g. completing text, arranging sentences into paragraph, answering questions
about the text given. Furthermore, students have no practice on writing. Students are not asked to
write their own writing product. Thus, students get difficulties on writing because they are not
accustomed to.
One of the effective media that can be used in teaching writing is by using learning diary.
As a theory from Meyer (2005) stated that Writing comes from working through a process of
writing. Thus, writing needs some steps such as exploring ideas, pre-writing, organizing, writing,
and revising the first draft, editing and proofreading that cannot be done immediately. In the
writing areas, exercising writing everyday will help write English text appropriately. Habit of
writing diary and they are all very up to date, every single day, what they do, fun or things they
find funny, interesting, they put it on their diaries is good to improve students writing ability.
Therefore, learning diaries, which are written continuously along with the feedback from the
teacher, can be the effective way to teach writing. Some studies have been conducted and they
showed that the use of learning diaries is one of effective ways to teach writing. Indeed, the aim
of this paper is to argue that learning diaries can help students solve their writing problems,

improve their writing ability, increase their interest on the learning material, and gain selfconfidence so that they will be encouraged to do more writing.
Students may face some problems during the writing process such as lack of ideas,
organization of writing, sentence structures, etc. Those problems can be covered by doing
continuously writing so that students will be accustomed to write and having their writing better
by the day. Such a study conducted by Hidayat (2012) showed that by accustoming on writing
learning diaries, students difficulties on writing can be solved easily by them. Their difficulty on
writing has been decreased, as they are easier to write. A study conducted by Kurnianingsih
(2009) also resulted that writing learning diaries improves students writing ability. Her study
showed that there is significance difference on students achievement on writing before and after
the treatment by using learning diaries. Thus, the implementation of learning diaries brings ease
for the students to write and makes their ability of writing improved.
Another profit of using learning diaries is that learning diaries can increase students
interests in and engagement with the learning material. Since the students are putting more
interests on the learning materials, they tend to understand more, learn more, remember more,
enjoy it more and be more able to appreciate the relevance of what they have learned, than
students who passively receive what we teach them. Since learning diaries is a simple media and
students are sometimes writing diary by themselves unconsciously, it will be easier for the
students to accept diary as a media for their teaching learning process. Students will put interests
in the diary as a media along with the learning materials. A study conducted qualitatively by
PARK (2003) proven that the use of learning diaries brings big impact on increasing students
interests on the learning materials. It showed that the learning journal has good potential to
increase student interest in and engagement with course material, to encourage and empower
students to take more responsibility for their own learning, to be more reflective in their study,
and to allow them to have a voice and provide valuable feedback to the teacher. In short, learning
diaries can make students put more interests on the learning materials as the students will be
easily on learning writing and enjoy the teaching learning process of writing.
Learning diary also has another benefit when it is implemented in the teaching of writing.
By having students writing learning diaries continuously, students will be accustomed to write
about their feeling, expressions, ideas and thought without having fear of being evaluated or

blamed because of just little mistake they make in their writing. As diary known as a personal
record, students will feel secure while writing diaries. Therefore, writing learning diaries will
help students to get their self-confident on writing. As a study conducted by (Barjesteh, Vaseghi,
& Gholami, 2011) also showed that writing learning diaries help students gain self-confidence,
encourage more writing, and help them find writing interesting. The more students feel confident
on their writing, they will be encouraged to write more, and slowly they will find that writing is
an interesting activity to be done. When they found that writing is interesting, they will find
themselves feeling happy to be put inside writing activity. Thus, they will be interested to do
more exercises on writing.
In conclusion, learning diary can be an effective way to teach writing to the
students since writing is considered as difficult skill to be learnt. It has been proven that learning
diary gives some positive effects to the students. Learning diary can help students to solve their
writing problems such as difficulties on finding ideas and structured of the sentences. It is also
proven that by writing learning diary, students writing ability will be improved. By writing
learning diary can also make students to be more interested to the learning materials and gain self
confident so that they will be encouraged to write more writing.

References

Barjesteh, Hamed, Vaseghi, Reza, & Gholami, Reza. (2011). The Effect of Diary Writing on EFL
College Students Writing Improvement and Attitudes. International Conference on
Languages, Literature and Linguistics, 26, 5.
Harmer, Jeremy. (2004). How to Teach Writing. New York: Addison Wesley Publishing
Company.
Hidayat, Taufiq. (2012). The Use of Diary Writing Method to Improve Students Writing Recount
Text Ability. (Undergraduate), Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang.

Kurnianingsih, Asti. (2009). WRITING DIARY AS AN ALTERNATIVE TECHNIQUE IN

TEACHING WRITTEN RECOUNT TEXT. (Undergraduate), SEMARANG STATE
UNIVERSITY, Semarang.
Meyer, A. (2005). Writing with Confidence: Writing effective sentences and Paragraphs. New
York: Longman Addison Wesley.
PARK, CHRIS. (2003). Engaging Students in the Learning Process: the learning journal. Journal
of Geography in Higher Education, 27(2), 18.