The Effect of Reflective Diaries on the Students’ Writing Skill

Abstract

Writing skill is a major skill whose development is essential for language mastery; however, it is deemed to be a major struggle for many EFL learners. In response to this, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research has advocated the use of extracurricular activities to approach writing acquisition. The present research work has explored the students; writing skills development using reflective diary-writing as an extracurricular act. Theoretically, it was hypothesized that reflective diary-writing supports writing skills development. Subsequently, the present inquiry aims at investigating the writing elements enhanced when writing reflective diaries along with exploring the latter’s impact on learners writing style. Practically, the study has adopted experimental design based on one experimental and one controlled group of twenty second year students at Mohamed Seddik Ben Yahia University (ten students in each group). Having said that, second year EFL students of English were administered a similar diagnostic and post- assessment to test the writing elements enhancement. The findings revealed that reflective diary-writing is relatively effective in developing students; writing skills. Precisely, it is effective in enhancing most students’ writing elements. Given the findings of this study, it is suggested for EFL teachers to implement reflective diary-writing as a strategy for developing students; writing skills.