Reading Journal
Vin Katilius-Boystun
Description: This is "just" a journal assignment, which anybody can use. But the journal is the workhorse of WAC, and it's worth thinking about.
READING JOURNAL: There’s nothing terribly complicated about this. Every time I assign reading, I also assign an informal response in writing. The only requirement is that students should write for at least ten minutes or so. It can be hand-written or word processed. Students aren’t to worry about "proper" form or "mistakes." Sometimes these journals can be built on questions I ask about the readings. I teach some courses that are structured by a sequence of such "directed journals." But simple "response journals" can be just as good. And as long as I’m throwing journal jargon around, all my assigned journals are "dialogue journals,"as I’ll explain below.
You might think the writing would be disorderly or hard to read. But that’s not the way it works. In fact, it tends to be much more interesting, and usually more coherent than writing done for formal assignments. Most students find themselves following a train of thought, rather than a formula, such as the "five-paragraph theme," usually numbingly boring even when well-executed, which they’re usually not. Because students are writing quickly in their journals, they write in their "natural voices," which means the writing "flows" better. Besides helping students learn to write and think better in general, the assignment serves several other purposes. In the first place, it’s a way of making sure the reading is done, and on time, without resorting to quizzes, which in my experience lead students to focus too narrowly on the sorts of information they think they need to remember for the quiz. If I tell them all they have to do is write down whatever is on their minds when they finish reading, they tend to focus on what especially interests or confuses them, which makes a good start for discussion. Also, unpressured writing leads to putting one’s reading into larger contexts, maybe no more than links to memories from relevant experience, or maybe to other reading, or even to things learned in other courses.
There are disadvantages to grading journals, but for students who aren’t used to doing "homework" that isn’t graded, I assign marks of "excellent," means the student was seriously involved in her response; "good," shows evidence of having read and understood the material; or "okay," gives benefit of the doubt that student read the material; and on rare occasions, "unacceptable," looks like it came off the internet or otherwise faked. The grade matters, but not nearly as much as my written responses to what the student writes. Over the years I’ve trained myself to respond in the margins and between the lines in students’ journals, and I always return them the next class period after they were assigned. This is somewhat time-consuming, but it’s crucial. When students believe their professors are listening to what they have to say, and might even be interested, they become much more involved in learning what you have to teach than they would be otherwise. A dialogue develops. Over the semester this dialogue between each student and the professor facilitates learning by helping to create an atmosphere of mutual trust and real communication. Believe me, it works. It’s worth the hour or two it takes, once you’ve gotten yourself trained to respond quickly and meaningfully.
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