Implementing Reading Reaction Journals

By Author: emaly su
Total Articles: 229
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Students need guidance in how to keep the R R J, especially at the beginning, and guidelines can help.

Examples of previous students' journal work provide a valuable opportunity to observe the range of strategies that can be employed. Without such exposure, students are less likely to explore other learner styles, tending to produce paragraph-level notes as opposed to outlines, colour coding, abbreviations, and so on.

Students are encouraged to experiment until they find a style that they feel comfortable with, and they may also require guidance in making outlines of a text. Exposure to example RRJs quickly enables students to identify some of the basic functions of the journals.

Students are informed that ...
... each time a reading is set, they are to use their RRJs, and that they need to bring the journals to each class as a basis for peer group discussion. How well students are noting the ideas in a text can be determined in-class by content questions where students are only allowed access to their RRJ.

Student reactions to the ideas and arguments presented in a text are extremely important. Students need to give reasons and examples to support their reactions, and one way to encourage this is to have at least one session a week where students exchange journals so that they read, react, and respond to each other in writing (this can be done in class or as a take-home exercise).

Peer review is not only motivating for most students, but also less threatening than if the teacher reads and reacts. Changing partners regularly exposes students to a variety of views through the term, and students can simultaneously witness other ways peers are keeping the RRJ.

As discussed earlier, the dichotomy between referential and display questions is important, and students are encouraged from the start to record referential questions in the RRJ.

To help distinguish between the two, I present a number of referential and display questions and ask the students to decide which they find more 'interesting'. Students invariably choose the referential questions and I tell them that it is these types of questions that I would like to see in their journals, and which they should be asking each other during their in-class discussions.

To investigate the effectiveness of RRJs, I surveyed students who used them during a course of study. The 24 students in this survey (16 female, 8 male) were streamed by the E L P into a high intermediate/advanced group, with five classes per week in a ten-week term. Students were informed that their responses might be used as part of my ongoing research, and were asked to sign a consent form.

In total, 22 students participated anonymously (names and identification numbers were not on the questionnaire). Students were asked two open-ended questions regarding their use and perception of the RRJs. (See Tables 2 and 3.)

With questionnaires, students may report what they believe the instructor wants to hear. In addition, responses may have been 'primed' by the rationale provided in the RR J guidelines given at the start of term. (See Appendix.) However, before answering the questions, it was stressed that genuine responses were sought and that these might well influence future classes.

For example, if the responses were overwhelmingly negative towards RRJs, then I would reconsider using them in future. The range of theresponses goes well beyond the rationale provided in the RRJ guidelines, suggesting that the guidelines had a limited influence.