10 

 

 ELT FORUM 3 (1) (2014) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 
 

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 

 

THE BENEFITS OF USING DIALOGUE JOURNAL WRITING FOR 

IMROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING OF PERSONAL LETTER 

 

Nur Aininna   
 

English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Semarang, Indonesia 

 

Article Info 

________________ 
Article  History: 

Received in April 2014 

Approved in Mei 2014 

Published in Juni 2014 

________________ 
Keywords: 

Dialogue Journal, Personal 

Letter, Genre, Writing 

____________________ 

Abstract
 

___________________________________________________________________ 

This study aims at investigating how dialogue journal writing benefits students’ writing of personal 

letter and how significance the resulted improvement is. Personal letter is important for it is used by 

people in their daily lives in diverse forms. Meanwhile, dialogue journal is chosen as the method for 

it is powerful to bridge learners’ needs of supplementary learning times and a private student’-

teacher’s interaction. The research design of the study is mainly qualitative. However, quantitative 

analysis is still used to reveal students’ overall writing proficiency and the significance of students’ 

improvement. The five writing aspects mentioned by Brown (2004) are used as the basis of both 

analyses. The qualitative analysis attempts to describe how the students perform the aspects in their 

writing. Meanwhile, the quantitative analysis tries to assess students’ performance of the aspects by 

giving each aspect a score realization according to the criteria outlined in Brown’s rubric of writing 

assessment. The results of the analysis show that students’ writing improves all the aspects quite well. 

The biggest improvement lies in the content aspect. Majority of students’ earlier writing fails to 

address the topic of writing. Nonetheless, all of their final writing has already addressed the topic 

correctly. Meanwhile, the aspect of style and quality of expressions seems to undergo the least 

improvement. Some vocabularies are still found to be incorrectly used. However, students’ later 

writings exhibit a better sentence variety realized through the use of various cohesive devices. The 

improvement unfolded in the qualitative analysis is supported by the findings of the quantitative 

analysis of which all of the twenty students improve their writing scores in the final test. Some scores 

are even elevated quite significantly. The improvement of the five aspects presented in students’ later 

writing has turned the writing to be more communicative. Therefore, the mastery of the aspects is 

very beneficial. Since all the five aspects belong to the micro and macro-skills of writing, the teaching 

of these skills is then imperative to be given. 

© 2014 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Correspondent Address:  

   B3 Building FBS Unnes   

   Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 

   E-mail: Nuraininna90.na@gmail.com 

ISSN 2252-6706 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

11 

INTRODUCTION 

 

Writing is a language skill which remains 

problematic for many students. When are faced 

to the task of writing, students, especially non-

native students, find it hard to not only decide 

what to write, but also how to write it in the target 

language. The students’ confusion of writing is 

due to several reasons. Firstly, it may deal with 

various aspects of writing which need to be 

considered by writers, such as the system of genre 

which requires writers to employ different 

structures and features according to the purpose 

of their writing and other systems of language 

which demand writers to perform the proper 

grammar, linking words, vocabulary usage, and 

many other systems according to the necessity. 

Secondly, writing is not an easy task for it brings 

along some vexatious characteristics, which 

include permanence, production time, distance, 

orthography, complexity, vocabulary, and 

formality (Brown, 2001: 341).  

However, the time allotment provided for 

the teaching and learning process is very limited 

at schools. This limited time results in the limited 

knowledge of writing internalized by students. 

Besides, the problem of writing is also caused by 

some student-related factors, such as confidence, 

laziness, motivation, and consciousness. Some 

students are not confident to express their ideas 

to others, moreover when they have to tell it in 

English. They are often too afraid and ashamed 

of making mistakes and therefore assume that 

saying nothing is way much better. Some others 

are too lazy to practice writing and review the 

materials they have learnt at school. This laziness 

can be caused by the students’ lack of motivation 

or their unconsciousness of the importance of 

writing.  

All the boundaries of learning mentioned 

before lead to the students’ low performance of 

writing. The research done by Beh (1997) who 

examined  English Language Instruction 

provided to 1265 third year students in four 

provinces reported that 80% of the Indonesian 

students involved in the research promoted a less 

than good writing ability. Similar findings were 

also seen in the students’ writing product 

gathered by the researcher in the writing pretest 

activity in 2013 which took place in a junior high 

school in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. 

Almost all of the students she taught at the school 

failed to properly perform some basic tenses, 

which are the simple present and the simple past 

tense. Some common mistakes the students 

presented in their writing are the incomplete 

structure of text, the incorrect use of verb form, 

the overuse of verb of which they used both 

operator and full verb in a sentence at once (‘I am 

go to in grand mother house’, ‘I’m can play with 

you’), the improper use of vocabularies, and the 

lack of sentence variety that most of them began 

their sentence using ‘I’ and that the use of 

transitional words and other conjunctions are still 

poor.  

The presence of numerous writing 

mistakes makes students’ writings hard to 

understand. The message the writer encoded in 

their writing is then not successfully conveyed. 

When a piece of writing fails to transfer the 

intended information, it is then not 

communicative. If it is not communicative, it 

then fails to achieve its ultimate goal as a mode of 

communication. Therefore, it is obvious that the 

students’ low performance of writing needs to be 

improved. To realize this improvement, the 

researcher used dialogue journal writing to aid 

the teaching and learning of writing she 

conducted. Peyton (2000) defines dialogue 

journal as written conversations in which a 

learner and a teacher (or other writing partners) 

communicate regularly (daily, weekly, or on a 

schedule that fits the education setting) over a 

semester, school year, or course. This journaling 

method was chosen because it was seen as a 

powerful means to bridge the students’ needs of 

extended learning time and space; private, safe 

and nonthreatening learning atmosphere; also 

informal, relaxing, and intimate student-teacher’s 

interaction. 

Dialogue journal can be carried out by 

using both offline and online media. Jones (1991) 

suggests that dialogue journal writing can be done 

in a bound notebook or on a computer disks or 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

12 

files. In the research, the researcher preferred to 

use the online media by using the message service 

of a popular social network namely facebook. 

The students were demanded to make a piece of 

writing over a certain topic and then send it to the 

researcher’s facebook account. The researcher 

will send back a feedback to their account 

afterwards which included some necessary 

corrections and encouragement for the students. 

This kind of activity is maintained for as long as 

two weeks in which they had to submit two 

journals in each week. The progress of students’ 

writing made in each journal was noted in order 

to be able to meet the objectives of the research, 

which were to investigate in what ways dialogue 

journal benefit students’ writing of personal letter 

and how significant the improvement of the 

writing is.  

Personal letter is “a letter directed to one 

person and contains so many specific personal 

references and so much personal information…” 

(Levinson, 2007). It belongs to the genre of 

personal writing and comes in many different 

forms in people’s daily lives. In the research, this 

type of writing was chosen because it was 

included as one of the obligatory genres which 

needed to be learnt by the eighth grade students. 

Hence, a better mastery of the letter would help 

students answer and solve any related question, 

task, or test. Therefore, it would further help 

students improve their academic achievement at 

school. 

This research needs to be done to find out 

how the use of dialogue journal writing affects 

each aspect in students’ writing and whether or 

not it is effective to improve students’ overall 

writing. Secondly, it is necessary to be done in 

order to know how significant the students’ 

writing improvement is. The findings of the 

research can be beneficial for teachers and 

researchers in general as a source of consideration 

in order to conduct a better teaching and research 

of dialogue journal in the future.   

 

METHODS OF INVESTIGATION 

 

In the process of gathering the data, this study uses one group pretest-posttest design. The 

diagram is shown as follows: 

Figure 1. One Group Pretest-Posttest Design 

Linguistics and Educational Research (Campbell and Stanley cited in Saleh 2011: 150) 

 

This study consists of pre-observation 

(O1), treatment (X), and post-observation (O2). 

Pre-observation is the earlier stage aims at 

measuring students’ initial personal letter writing 

ability and finding out several students’ related 

factors which may influence their products of 

writing. This stage consists of two activities, 

which are pre-test and the pre-interview.  

The second stage is the treatment which 

also consists of two activities, which are the 

explicit teaching and the dialogue journal writing 

activities. The explicit teaching is the ordinary 

teaching conducted in four meetings inside the 

classroom, within the school hours. The material 

taught in each meeting differs one from another 

and covers several theories of personal letter, the 

simple past tense, cohesive devices, and recount 

text. Just as the explicit teaching, the dialogue 

journal activities also last for four submitted 

journal entries in which each journal entry is 

assigned to the students in the end of every 

explicit teaching. However, the assignment is 

supposed to be done outside the school hours. 

The topic of the writing tasks also varies but is still 

related to the material taught earlier in the explicit 

teaching.  

The last stage is the post-observation which 

is accomplished in two major instructions. The 

first is the posttest and the second is the post 

interview. Posttest is done to measure students’ 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

13 

later ability in writing personal letter, while post 

interview is conducted to find out students’ later 

perspective of English and dialogue journal 

writing, their problems when attending the 

journal writing activities, the benefits they get 

from the dialogue journal activities, and their 

suggestion regarding the task.    

The participants of the research are eighth 

grade students of SMPN 8 Semarang studying in 

class VIIIB in the academic year of 2013/2014. 

There are totally 36 students inside the classroom. 

However, 20 of them are chosen randomly as the 

main participants of the research.   

In collecting the data, the research uses 

tests, field notes, and interview. The collected 

data are then analyzed in two ways. The students’ 

writing in the pretest, posttest, and dialogue 

journal writing activities as well as their answers 

in the pre and post interview are analyzed 

qualitatively. The qualitative analysis of students’ 

writing is done by describing how the writing 

performs some aspects of writing included in 

Brown’s rubric of assessment, which are 

organization, content, grammar, 

punctuation/spelling/mechanics, and 

style/quality of expressions (Brown, 2004). This 

description is then used as a basis to classify 

students’ writing proficiency and to draw a 

conclusion of the students’ achievement of 

discourse competence as well as their mastery of 

the micro and macro-skills of writing. The 

qualitative analysis is also used to analyze 

students’ answers in the pre and post interview. 

Students’ answers to the same question are listed 

and then grouped based on its similarity. The 

findings of the grouping are used to draw a 

conclusion over the interview.  

Secondly, to support the qualitative 

analysis, quantitative analysis is also done to 

students’ writings in both tests. The description 

made in the qualitative analysis is used as a 

consideration to determine students’ score 

realization of each writing aspect. To aid the 

scoring, the researcher uses Brown’s rubric of 

writing assessment (2004). After getting the score 

for each aspect, the researcher then sum up the 

scores to obtain the total scores which are further 

used to calculate the average score. The mean 

scores of the students’ writing in the pre and 

posttest are then compared to one another to see 

whether or not there is an improvement. 

Furthermore, the mean scores of students’ writing 

in the two tests are used to measure the 

significance of the improvement by using t-test 

formula.  

 

RESULTS OF THE STUDY 

 

3.1 Findings of the Qualitative Analysis  

The first qualitatively analyzed data was 

students’ writing in the pretest, posttest, and in 

the dialogue journal writing activities. As the 

writer described the students’ performance of the 

five writing criteria by using Brown’s rubric of 

writing assessment (2004), she found that the 

students occupied three levels of proficiency, 

which were good, adequate, and fair. Each of 

these proficiency levels are further explained as 

follows:  

 Good proficiency refers to the developed 

ability of the five criteria. In the aspect of 

organization, students could be labeled as good if 

they were able to present all the needed structure 

of personal letter, a varied use of cohesive 

devices, and a good coherence in their writings. 

Meanwhile, the content aspect looked for the 

ability to address the topic of writing and develop 

the ideas put in the writing. Thirdly, the aspect of 

grammar required students to present the correct 

system of the simple past tense, in their writing 

which included the correct use of verb form, word 

order pattern, and other tense sequences. 

Furthermore, the fourth aspect of punctuation, 

spelling, and mechanics of writing could be 

labeled as good if students could present all the 

needed punctuation properly, all the spelling of 

words correctly, and obey kinds of writing 

convention, such as the use of indentation, 

capitals, etc. Finally, the aspect of style and 

quality of expressions was said to be good when 

students could show the appropriate vocabulary 

usage and a good register.  

1. Good Writing in the Pretest 

In the pretest, no students’ writing could be 

labeled as good. However, there were 2 students 

showed a good performance of organization in 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

14 

which they presented almost all of the needed 

structure of personal letter and only missed out 

the part of heading in their writing. The other 4 

students did well in the aspect of content for they 

could address the topic of writing appropriately 

although some of their ideas still needed to be 

more developed. Additionally, there was also 1 

student presented a good performance of 

punctuation, spelling, and mechanics of writing. 

Unlike the majority, this student had made all her 

paragraphs indented. She had also presented all 

the needed capitals and full stops in her sentences.  

2. Good Writing in the Dialogue Journal 

Activities  

Students’ writing performance during the 

journal writing activities fluctuated in each task. 

In the first journal writing assignment, no writing 

could meet the classification of a good writing. 

However, in the second assignment, 4 students’ 

writings could be labeled as good. These four 

students showed a complete and well-structured 

writing. In the aspect of grammar, three of the 

students successfully avoided the occurrence of 

grammatical errors in their writings, but one of 

them still presented a few mistakes of grammar, 

such as the absence of a needed preposition and 

grammar.  

The number of good writings decreased in 

the third journal writing assignment in that only 

one writing was labeled as good. This good 

student presented no mistake of grammar in her 

third journal writing assignment. She also 

included all the needed structures of personal 

letter and showed a varied use of cohesive 

devices. Regarding the content, the topic of 

writing was quite well addressed but the ideas 

were not fully developed. Few mistakes of 

punctuation and spelling were also still presented 

by the student.  

In the fourth journal writing assignment, 

five students’ writings were labeled as good. 

These students did well in all the five writing 

aspects even though some grammar and 

punctuation problems still appeared. The 

students’ clearest improvement was seen in the 

aspect of organization, particularly in the area of 

generic structure, in which they exhibited a 

complete heading containing city, zip code, and 

full address which were mostly absent in their 

previous journal assignments.   

3. Good Writing in the Posttest 

As many as 11 students presented a good 

writing in the posttest. Considering that no 

student was good in the posttest, such a number 

represented a quite great improvement of 

students’ writing proficiency. 6 from these 

students even elevated their proficiency from fair 

to good, while the rest moved from adequate to 

good. The students’ improvement in the posttest 

took place in all the five assessed writing aspects. 

In the aspect of organization, all of the writings 

presented a complete and well structured letter. 

Majority of the students had also made use of 

various cohesive devices, such as the use of 

temporal conjunction, references, etc. In the 

content, most of the students’ writings in the 

posttest already mentioned the statement of the 

topic and the conclusions which were absent in 

all the pretest writings.  

Grammar was the worst aspect performed 

in the pretest. However, it turned to be the second 

best performed aspect in the posttest. There was 

even one student who did not show any single 

mistake of grammar in her posttest writing. The 

rests might still present some grammar mistakes 

but it was getting fewer in number. In the aspect 

of punctuation, spelling and mechanics of 

writing, students improved their writings through 

the presence of indentation, a needed comma in 

the closure and salutation, as well as the correct 

spelling of some words which were used to be 

misspelled in the students’ earlier writings. The 

students’ style and quality of expressions also 

improved quite because unlike their pretest 

writings, the students’ posttest writings already 

attempted variety which was realized through the 

use of various cohesive devices.    

Adequate level of proficiency refers to 

students’ enough ability of the five aspects. 

Adequate organization means students are able 

to present an acceptable introduction, body, and 

conclusion. As an instance, they may not clearly 

state the topic sentence, but if their introducing 

sentence is still topic-related then it is still 

acceptable. This adequate proficiency is also 

represented by the misuse or the absence of 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

15 

transitional expressions, and omission of one or 

two parts of the letter structure. In the content, a 

piece of writing is said to be adequate if it appears 

several criteria, which are first, the essay 

addresses the issues but misuses some points. 

Second, the presence of not-fully developed ideas, 

and the last is the presence of extraneous material 

in the writing. Meanwhile, adequate proficiency 

of grammar allows the occurrence of some 

grammatical problems as long as those do not 

harm the communication of the ideas. On the 

other hand, the fourth aspect is adequate if 

students present some problems of writing 

conventions, punctuations, and occasional 

spelling errors. In the last aspect of style and 

quality of expressions, students’ writing is 

adequate if it shows some misused vocabularies. 

However, it does not accept writings from being 

too wordy.   

1. Adequate Writing in the Pretest  

In the pretest, 11 students’ writings were 

labeled as adequate. Among all the aspects, 

almost all of the students were adequate in the 

aspect of style and quality of expressions. 

Students’ writings in the posttest already 

attempted variety unlike theirs in the pretest. This 

was realized through the use of many references 

in the beginning of their sentences which made it 

less monotonous. However, they still showed 

some inappropriate uses of vocabulary, such as 

preposition ‘in’ in the reference in there, ‘such’ in 

the sentence such letter from me, and ‘much’ used 

in so much letter from me.  Aside of style and 

quality of expressions, many students were also 

adequate in the aspect of punctuation, spelling, or 

mechanics of writing, organization, and content. 

However, in the aspect of grammar, no student 

was labeled as adequate because all of their 

grammar were fair in the pretest.   

2. Adequate Writing in the Dialogue Journal 

Writing Activities 

Adequate writings could be found in all the 

four journal writing assignments. In the first 

journal assignment, 19 students’ writings were 

labeled as adequate. In the organization, students 

failed to present the complete structure of 

personal letter for most of them omitted the part 

of heading, while some others excluded the 

salutation part of the letter. Besides, half of the 

students missed out the statement of the topic in 

their writing. Nevertheless, several uses of 

cohesive devices already appeared in the 

students’ first journal writing assignment. In the 

content, all of the students’ writings addressed the 

topic quite well but their ideas could be more 

developed. 

Students’ grammar in the first journal 

assignment was also almost good for the system 

of the simple past tense was already presented 

quite properly in most of the sentences. The form 

of the full verbs and the sequence of words were 

correct. However, the form of operator verb was 

still incorrect in some of the students’ writing. In 

the aspect of spelling, punctuation, and 

mechanics of writing, students exhibited some 

common mistakes, such as the absence of comma 

in the salutation and closing, the omission of 

indentation, misspelling of words, and the 

absence of needed capitals. These many mistakes 

caused this aspect to be labeled as fair. Regarding 

the style and quality of the expressions, the 

students’ first journal writing assignment had 

attempted variety which was seen from the 

various uses of cohesive devices.  

Students’ writing proficiency in the second 

journal writing assignment generally improved. 

The number of adequate writing in the second 

task was fewer than that in the first task and it 

resulted in the greater number of good writings 

presented in the second journal writing 

assignment. The best performed aspect was 

grammar which was the worst performed aspect 

in the first journal writing assignment. In this 

second assignment, most of the verbs used were 

in the correct form. This excellent performance 

might be resulted from students’ fresh memories 

and understanding of past tense which had just 

been taught in the second explicit teaching. 

Besides, students’ grammar might be good 

because they did not really apply it to create a 

whole text but simply sentence per sentence 

which did not seem to be related to one another.  

However, the students’ overall writing 

performance in the third journal writing 

assignment was worse than that in the second 

assignment.  



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

16 

3. Adequate Writing in the Posttest 

The number of students who obtained the 

adequate scores in the posttest was smaller than 

that in the pretest. The minimum writing score 

given to the adequate students in the posttest was 

also higher. Among all the analyzed writing 

aspects, majority of the students were adequate in 

the aspect of style and quality of expressions. 

Students’ register in the posttest was actually 

quite good for all the students’ writings already 

attempted variety. Aside of the reference, they 

had also begun their sentence by using some 

adverbs of time. However, some misuses of 

vocabulary still appeared in many of the students’ 

writings. Those frequently misused vocabularies 

include preposition in and pronoun your.  

The insufficient ability in performing the 

aspects of writing leads students to the fair level 

of proficiency. In the organization aspect, 

students’ writings are said to be fair if they present 

a minimally recognizable introduction and 

conclusion in their writings, also when they 

demonstrated many problems of word order 

pattern, less developed ideas, few or even no uses 

of cohesive devices, and when they omitted some 

parts of the generic structure. In the content fair 

proficiency refers to the incomplete development 

of ideas and an off the topic essay. Meanwhile, 

students’ grammar ability is fair if they appear 

many problems of grammar which give a 

negative effect on the communication of the 

ideas. In the aspect of punctuation, spelling, and 

mechanics, fair level of proficiency refers to the 

presence of error uses of general writing 

conventions and punctuation which interfere 

with the writing ideas and the problems of 

spelling which distract readers.  Lastly, fair ability 

of the style and quality of expressions means that 

the students misuse many vocabularies and 

present a lack awareness of register, poor 

expressions of the ideas, and a too-wordy writing.  

1. Fair Writing in the Pretest 

Almost half of the students’ writings in the 

pretest were labeled as fair. The students’ worst 

performance lied in the aspect of grammar in 

which 19 of the 20 students were labeled as fair in 

this third aspect. They showed numerous 

problems such as the incorrect uses of verb form, 

the problems of sentence structure in which the 

students failed to create a proper sentence 

because they missed some elements needed in the 

sentences, such as subject, verb, etc., the misuse 

of pronoun, and plurality, modality, preposition, 

ownership, and the mistakes of making correct 

noun phrases. Secondly, fair proficiency in the 

pretest was also demonstrated in the aspect of 

organization by 5 students. In this first aspect, no 

student could present a complete and well-

structured letter for all of them omitted some 

parts of the letter, such as heading and closure. 

Besides, they also failed to create a good 

coherence because their ideas were incomplete 

and not fully developed. The use of cohesive 

devices was also poor that they frequently used 

adding ‘and’ and causal ‘because’ only.  

In the content, 9 students were labeled as 

fair because the ideas they included in the writing 

were very limited, did not fully developed, and 

even off the topic for they filled their letters with 

greeting and questions related to the addressee’s 

life instead of retelling their holiday experience. 

Meanwhile, in the aspect of punctuation, 

spelling, and mechanics of writing, 3 students 

were labeled as fair. These students presented 

many mistakes in their writings, such as 

misspelling of words, problems of indentation, 

capitalization, as well as commas and full stops 

usage. Smaller number of fair performances was 

shown in the aspect of style and quality of 

expressions in which only 2 students were labeled 

as fair in this fifth aspect. One of the students was 

even labeled as fairly unacceptable because he 

only wrote an introducing sentence in his writing 

and did not include any ideas nor he provided any 

conclusion or closing to finish his letter.    

2. Fair Writing in Dialogue Journal Writing 

Activities 

There was only one piece of writing fairly 

performed in the dialogue journal activities. This 

writing was submitted by S-3 in the first journal 

writing assignment. In the aspect of organization, 

this student omitted three parts of the generic 

structure, which were heading, closure, and the 

signature. The statement of the topic and the 

conclusion were also absent in her writing. 

Additionally, the flow of the ideas was not good 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

17 

for each idea seemed to stand alone. Hence, the 

coherence of the writing still needed to be 

improved. The use of cohesive devices was also 

still poor because the only devices found in the 

writing were only adding conjunction ‘and’ and 

causal ‘because’. Another aspect which was fairly 

performed by the student was the aspect of 

grammar. The verbs used were mostly mistaken 

and some needed subject, verb, and prepositions 

were absent in the writing. It made the writing 

difficult to understand. A fair performance was 

also shown in the aspect of punctuation, spelling, 

and mechanics of writing in which the student 

presented many mistakes, such as the omission 

the full stop in the final sentence, the absence of 

indentation and needed capitals, some misuses of 

comma, as well as the incorrect spelling of word 

vacation which was spelled vocation. However, 

the student’s performances of the content and 

style or quality of expressions were not fair but 

adequate.   

3. Fair Writing in the Posttest 

In the posttest, no writing could be labeled 

as fair because the lowest score obtained by the 

students was 73 which belonged to the adequate 

range of scores. 

The findings of the qualitative analysis 

showed that students’ initial writing proficiency 

was still low. It was shown from the various 

mistakes presented in their earlier writings. These 

mistakes appeared in all the 5 writing aspects and 

led to the great number of fair writings in the 

pretest. This was such an irony considering the 

findings of the interview which revealed that the 

students had actually learnt the language for 

many years. This might be caused by the negative 

perspective of English they held ever since. In the 

pre-interview, it was found that more than half of 

the students thought that English was important 

yet difficult, boring, scary, and confusing. These 

perspectives might have discouraged students to 

pay attention to the language and attend more of 

its learning. Their low ability of writing might 

also be caused by the limited time they got to 

learn the language. 85% of the students admitted 

that they did not take any English course outside 

the school and so their learning of English only 

depended on the learning given at school which 

was very limited due to the time and the great 

number of materials required by government.  

Nevertheless, their writing performance 

improved in the later writing as seen from the 

increasing number of students whose writings 

were labeled as good. A better perspective of 

English and the presence of Dialogue journal 

writing activities might have something to do 

with it. Students’ answers in the post interview 

uncovered that 90% of the students held a positive 

perspective about English and Dialogue Journal 

by saying that the two were fun and easier to 

understand. This positive perspective might have 

motivated the students more to learn English, 

especially writing. Besides, they also claimed that 

Dialogue Journal really had helped them 

absorbed more knowledge of English writing, 

allowed them to interact with the teacher easily 

within a private ambience, so that they could ask 

everything more comfortably, and let them 

experience a new interesting way of learning. 

 

3.2 Findings of the Quantitative Analysis  

Just as the findings of the qualitative 

analysis in the pretest, the findings of the 

quantitative analysis of students’ pretest writings 

showed that their proficiency in this first test was 

only in between fair or adequate. None of their 

scores could successfully reach the minimum 

score of good writings that was 81. The highest 

score the students got in the pretest was 73, while 

the lowest was 9. In order to find out the overall 

students’ writing proficiency, the students’ pretest 

scores were all summed up to be divided by the 

total number of students and so the average score 

could be obtained. Based on the formula, the 

mean score of students’ writings in the pretest was 

62,75.  

The students’ writing scores improved 

quite greatly in the posttest. The highest score 

obtained by the students in this final test was 91, 

while the lowest was 73. It was then clear to see 

that the students’ highest score in the pretest 

became the lowest in the posttest. This score 

improvement resulted in the increasing students’ 

posttest mean score. In the posttest, the students’ 

average score was 82,35 and it was 19,6 higher 

than the mean score obtained in the pretest. The 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

18 

significance of the improvement was also proven 

in the calculation of t-test. T-test was done by 

comparing t-value with the critical value of the t-

table. If the value of t-value was higher than the t-

table, it could be concluded that the improvement 

was significant and vice versa. The calculation of 

the t-value is shown as follows: 

t − value =
19.60

√
 6427

20(20 − 1)

=  4,769 

After obtaining the t-value, the next step 

was to gain the critical value of the t-table. Firstly, 

the writer calculated the degree of freedom by 

using the formula (df) = N – 1. N represents the 

number of the research participants and since 

there were 20 students in the research, then the 

(df) was 19. By using the (df) 19 and the level of 

critical value of the t-table which was 1, 73 and it 

was 3,03 smaller than the value of the t-value. 

Hence, the really was a significant difference 

between the pre and posttests which indicated 

that there was also a significant improvement of 

the writing products.  

The improvement of students’ writing 

products took place in all the five writing criteria. 

The greatest improvement lied in the aspect of 

content, while the smallest improvement was in 

the style and quality of expressions. This was seen 

from the comparison of the mean score of each 

aspect obtained in the pre and posttests. The 

comparison of the mean is shown in the following 

table: 

 

Table 3.2.1 Improvement of Each Writing Aspect 

Writing Aspect 
Mean of scores of the aspect 

Improvement 
Percentage of the 

improvement Pretest Posttest 

Organization 13,65 17,90 4,25 21,25% 

Content 13,05 18,55 5,5 27,5% 

Grammar 9,8 14,35 4,55 22,75% 

Punctuation, 

spelling, mechanics 13,45 16,65 3,2 16% 

Style and quality of 

expressions 12,8 14,9 2,1 10,5% 

 

3.3 Discussions of Findings 

Based on the findings, there is a connection 

between the students’ performance of 

organization and theirs of content. As that 

mentioned in chapter two, one of the area of 

organization aspect is coherence. This coherence 

refers to the logical connection between ideas. A 

logical connection between ideas can be seen if 

only students develop and divide their ideas 

clearly into opening or introduction, body which 

contained main and supporting ideas, and 

conclusion. Similarly, the aspect of content also 

assessed whether or not students fully develop 

their ideas. Therefore, both organization and 

content pay attention to the development of ideas 

in students’ writings.  

Students’ completion of the area of 

coherence in the organization then reflects their 

accomplishment of content in the area of ideas 

development. If their coherence was good, then 

their development of ideas was also good. 

However, it only works in the area-level and not 

in the aspect-level. A good completion of 

organization does not mean that the content is 

also good because both aspects cover some other 

different areas which need to be considered in 

doing the holistic analysis. Therefore, the 

performance of a particular area of an aspect 

cannot be used to draw a conclusion over the 

aspect as a whole. 

Another similar connection lies between 

the aspect of organization and the aspect of style 

and quality expressions. The later aspect assesses 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

19 

several areas, one of them is the register or 

sentence variety presented in students’ writing. 

One of the ways to see whether or not the 

students attempt variety in their writing is by 

observing how the sentences begin. If they are 

always begun with the same thing, for example it 

is always started with subject I, the writing tends 

to be monotonous and thus, the writing is lack of 

register. Meanwhile, if the sentence beginning 

varies from one to another, it shows that the 

writing attempts variety or may even be good at 

register.  

Some cohesive devices can be very useful 

for creating sentence variety. The simplest and 

most common devices to use include reference 

and temporal conjunction. Several references, 

such as we, they, it, this, that, he, she, etc can be 

used to refer to a subject mentioned in the earlier 

sentence and avoid repetition in the later 

sentences. Meanwhile, temporal conjunction can 

also be used to clarify the sequence of events and 

distinct the sentence beginning at once. The ones 

such as firstly, secondly, then, next, and after that 

are the ones frequently used by the students in 

their writing. In short, it can be seen that when 

the use of cohesive devices varies, then the 

sentence variety is likely well presented. On the 

other hand, when its use is poor, the register is 

then not so good or even absent. 

Aside of the relation between aspects, the 

findings are also useful for revealing students’ 

achievement of discourse competence because 

the areas of some writing aspects are also the 

areas on which discourse competence concerns. 

The three areas of organization are the areas of 

discourse competence. The areas of content are 

the areas of sociocultural competence. 

Meanwhile, the areas of grammar, spelling (in the 

aspect of spelling-punctuation-mechanics), and 

vocabulary usage (in the aspect of style and 

quality of expressions) are the areas of linguistic 

competence. Hence, students’ performance of the 

areas reflects their achievement of discourse, 

socicultural, and linguistic competence. 

According to the findings of students’ 

writing in the pretest, no student seems to have 

possessed a good discourse, sociocultural, or 

linguistic competence at first. It is shown from 

their performance in all the areas of the writing 

aspects which is initially both adequate and fair. 

The adequate proficiency presented in the aspect 

of organization shows that students’ achievement 

of discourse competence still needs to be 

developed. Besides, the adequate proficiency 

showed in the content indicates that their 

achievement of the sociocultural competence is 

still below the expectation. Meanwhile, the aspect 

of grammar, the area of spelling and vocabulary 

usage which are shown to be fair in students’ 

earlier writings reflects that students’ initial 

linguistic competence is still low. Linguistic 

competence is then the worst competence among 

all the competencies performed in students’ early 

writings. Nonetheless, students’ performance in 

their later writings shows a quite great 

improvement for they can successfully improve 

their achievement of discourse and sociocultural 

competence from adequate to good, and their 

performance of grammar from fair to adequate.  

Furthermore, the findings of the data 

analysis help the researcher figure out students’ 

mastery of micro and macroskills of writing. 

Based on the findings of the students’ earlier 

writings, the worst skill performed by the students 

is the fourth microskill of writing that is to use the 

acceptable grammatical systems. This is proven 

by the numerous problems of grammar presented 

in their initial writings. However, the students’ 

grammar starts to improve from their second 

journal writing to the final writing.  

The second worst performed aspect is the 

third microskill of writing, which is to produce an 

acceptable core of words. This is seen from the 

presence of many misuses of vocabularies. The 

third problematic microskill is the first microskill 

of writing which deals with the production of 

grahemes and orthographic patterns of English or 

spelling. Many students frequently misspelled 

several words, such as the word regards which is 

spelled regrads, reply which is spelled replay, and 

your which is spelled you’re or vice versa. An 

improvement is also seen in the students’ mastery 

of the first macroskill of writing of which is the 

use of rhetorical forms and conventions of written 

discourse. This macroskill relates to the use of 

punctuations and other writing conventions. In 



 

Nur Aininna / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014) 

20 

the early writings, students mostly omit the 

indent in their paragraphs. Many of them also 

leave out a needed comma in both closing and 

salutation. On the contrary, in their later writings, 

the students already make their paragraphs 

indented and they have also put a comma in the 

closing and salutation.  

The students’ improvement of 

organization aspect leads to the improvement of 

several micro and macroskills of writing. A varied 

use of cohesive devices presented in the students’ 

later writings shows that their mastery of the sixth 

microskill develops much. The complete 

completion of the generic structure in the later 

writings demonstrates that the students have a 

better mastery of the second macroskill of 

writing. Meanwhile, a better flow of ideas which 

indicates a better achievement of coherence 

shows that the students’ mastery of the third 

macroskill of writing is also better. 

 

CONCLUSIONS 

 

Based on the analysis of the research, two 

kinds of conclusion can be drawn as follows: 

1. Dialogue journal writing improves 

students’ writing of personal letter in several 

ways. Those are: 

a)  First, it improves the writing in terms of 

organization, particularly in the completion of 

generic structure and in the achievement of 

cohesion. Unlike what was found in the initial 

writing, after being involved in such activities, 

students’ later writings demonstrate all the five 

needed structures of personal letter. Besides, they 

also show a better cohesion in their writing which 

is realized through the various uses of cohesive 

devices, including temporal conjunction, listing 

and adding conjunction, consequence, reference, 

and synonyms. 

b)  Second, dialogue journal writing 

contributes to develop the content of students’ 

writing. The findings of the field notes and the 

post test show that students can address the topic 

of writing better as compared to their writing 

before accomplishing the activities. Furthermore, 

they also develop their ideas more fully by 

providing some supporting sentences and 

examples to support their main sentences in their 

later writing. 

c)  Third, dialogue journal writing 

improves students’ performance of grammar. The 

improvement is shown in the use of correct verb 

form and the presence of all the needed elements 

of a sentence (parts of speech, article, pronoun, 

etc) in students’ later writing.  

d) Fourth, dialogue journal writing helps 

improve students’ mastery of punctuation, 

spelling, and mechanics of writing. Commas and 

full stops that were mostly misused and absent in 

their earlier writings are already present and 

correctly used in their later writing. In addition, 

the beginning of the paragraphs has also been 

indented. Furthermore, the spaces in between 

clauses or sentences that were absent before has 

also been presented afterwards. 

e)  Finally, dialogue journal writing 

improves students’ writing of personal letter in 

terms of sentence variety and the quality of the 

expressions through the presence of fewer 

misused vocabularies and various uses of 

reference, temporal conjunction and other 

devices which improve the register of the writing.  

2. The improvement of students’ writing is 

quite significant as seen from the measurement of 

students’ writing scores in both pre and posttest 

which shows that the average score of the 

students’ writing in the post test is higher than 

that of the pretest. 

However, since there were two kinds of 

treatment given to the students in the research 

namely explicit teaching and dialogue journal 

writing itself, the writer cannot be so sure whether 

such a great improvement is merely resulted from 

the dialogue journaling. The explicit teaching 

might also have given some contribution to the 

improvement. Nonetheless, considering that 

language needs practice, dialogue journal writing 

which is also another form of language practice is 

believed as having a quite great influence to it.  

 

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Beh, Y. 1997. Current Research in Southeast Asia. 

RELC Journal, 28 (1), 175 – 179. In Beryl, 

Exley. 2005. Learner Characteristics of Asian 

EFL students: Exceptions to the ‘Norm’. In 



 

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Young, Janelle, Eds. Proceedings Pleasure 

Passion Provocation. Joint National 

Conference AATE & ALEA. 2005. Pages 1 – 

16, Gold Coast, Australia 

Brown, D. H. 2001. Teaching by Principles: An 

Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, 

Second Edition. New York: Longman 

Brown, D. H. 2004. Language Assessment: Principles 

and Classroom Practices. New York: Pearson 

Education 

Jones, Paul. 1991. What Are Dialogue Journals?. In 

Joy Kreeft Peyton and Jana Staton (Eds.), 

Writing Our Lives: Reflections on dialogue 

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Levinson, Jay Conrad. 2007. Guerilla Marketing. New 

York: Houghton Mifflin 

Peyton, Joy Kreeft. 2000. Dialogue Journals: 

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