volume 3, no. 2, 2018 Volume 3, No. 2, 2018 Lanoke Intan Paradita is a teaching staff at Faculty of Language Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. She earned her degree from Sanata Dharma University where she develops her interest in reading and technology. Recently, the focuses on her research are about extensive reading, extensive listening/viewing, and the use of technology to support teaching and learning Motivating Students in L2 Reading through Dialogue Journal: An Investigation on Students’ Perception Lanoke Intan Paradita Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta lanoke.ip@umy.ac.id DOI: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3233 Abstract Reading is one of the sources of input that plays a crucial role in foreign language learning, yet low reading motivation remains a challenge. While the premise to motivate reading is by reading itself, EFL students would require more attention. This study is to investigate students’ perspective on their practice of writing dialogue journal, which is intended as a tool for a teacher to develop students’ motivation in reading. Five interviews with freshman were analyzed to find out what aspects they perceived to be facilitated by the written commentary in the dialogue journal. The analysis revealed that both students’ cognitive and affective aspects were mostly reinforced, thus supporting the development of reading motivation. Keywords: dialogue journal, reading motivation, teacher’s commentary, students’ responses =========================================================================== mailto:lanoke.ip@umy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3233 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 106 Introduction Reading motivation is highly correlated with reader’s comprehension or ability to decode the message that the author tries to convey (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, & Doyle, 2013; Schiefele et al., 2012; Wigfield, Gladstone, & Turci, 2016). It has a significant contribution to the development of reading competence which is crucial not only to academic achievement but also to students’ basic competence to function in the society. In many cases, however, students’ interest and motivation to reading, especially L2 reading, does not necessarily reflect their positive belief toward reading (Chang & Renandya, 2017). The practice of L2 reading in class is possible to be attributable to their low reading motivation. In Indonesia, for example, reading has been heavily focused on intensive reading, where careful reading becomes the main objective (Cahyono & Widiati, 2006). Reading is most of the time emphasized on strategies and skills but less to encourage reading for pleasure. Students are then not accustomed to view reading as a joyous activity and are not trained to do a voluntary reading and be an independent reader. Reading is a matter of doing the set of strategies such as “skimming, scanning, predicting, activating prior knowledge, and guessing new words from textual and contextual clues” (Renandya, 2015) which does not necessarily give meaning to the process and activity of reading which lead to reading demotivation. Krashen (2011 in Renandya, 2015) mentioned that basic reading strategies are “innate,” so students naturally make use of the strategies for both readings in L1 and L2. The strategies, however, may encounter a temporary cognitive load that causes students unable using the strategies. It happens when students have too many unfamiliar words that make them busy to find the meaning of particular unknown vocabularies. It also means that L1 strategies are not directly transferable to L2 reading due to the unfamiliarity to the lexis and insufficient language proficiency (Renandya, 2015) especially when added by the foreign system of writing and culture the text brings that augment the anxiety to L2 reading (Saito, Garza, & Horwitz, 1999). Also, though strategy-based reading helps students’ comprehension, the effect is not “straightforward” to reading ability and comprehension (Renandya, 2015; Wigfield et al., 2016). It is considerably minimum, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 107 which makes it less determinant to improve students’ reading comprehension. If comprehension means “the process of making meaning from the text,” then reading aims to an overall understanding of the text instead of obtaining “meaning from isolated words or sentences” (Woolley, 2011:15). Davis (1989) also mentioned that to draw meaning, the students have to be able to interact with both the textual instructions of the text and students’ life experiences. Therefore, the construction of meaning involves both cognition and affect. As previously pointed, for students who have not acquired sufficient linguistic competence, recreating and reconstruction of the meaning of the text will not be easy since they may spend time to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words. For this reason, the text-based approach is the best option for students to train their reading skill. Text-based reading activities usually involve, for example, shared-book reading, interactive reading, extensive reading, repeated reading, and extensive reading (Renandya, 2015). Among the activities that focus on meaning, extensive reading has significantly been researched for its contribution to not only in improving comprehension but also in the development of other language and reading skills as well as reading motivation and attitude (for comprehensive research see the annotated bibliography on www.erfoundation.org). Despite the promising benefits of ER, its implementation is not without challenges. In the Asian context, free voluntary reading is mostly not embedded in the curricular so that “reading as its own reward” (Principle number 6 of the 10 Principles of extensive reading, Day & Bamford, 1998) is difficult to instill. Compared to learning, students mostly prioritize their “extracurricular activities such as part-time jobs, clubs and social life” so that “simple encouragement will not be effective with a large number, and perhaps the majority, of one's students” (Robb, 2002). Asian students also culturally do not see “free choice” (as in Principle number 3 where students choose what they want to read, Day & Bamford, 1998) as motivating as it does in Western culture. What motivating (intrinsically) for Asian students is choices given by “trusted authority figures or peers” (Ivengar & Lepper, 1999 in Mori, 2015). With these contexts and the attitude to L2 reading that has long been practiced by the students, encouraging them to read independently will require more than just giving a grade for any books they have learned. Though it may serve as a direct http://www.erfoundation.org/ Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 108 reward for doing what the teacher expects from the students, he/she will need to make sure that students are doing the reading and get their reading skill and comprehension improved. To do this, teachers may assist students’ in their process of creating meaning from the text. Dialogue journal which adapts primarily from reader-response theory serves as an instructional strategy to help students in meaning creation by encouraging and validating their meaningful conversation of the text. A dialogue journal mostly lies in a literary study where conversation such as literature circles, book clubs, and discussion groups are used (Werderich, 2006). A written dialogue journal, however, can also be used for a similar purpose but with a more limited participant in the conversation that is the student and the teacher. Using this dialogue journal, students do not only write their opinion, thought, and feeling which expresses their comprehension on text, but they also receive replies from teacher which function to guide the dialogue as meaning creation. This study, then, focuses on how the students perceived their practice of writing dialogue journal used as a means to improve their reading motivation. Literature Review Reading Motivation The discussion on reading motivation gained more attention when focusing cognition in reading was insufficient to foster (Wigfield et al., 2016) and encourage the development of lifelong reader (Afflerbach et al., 2013). The engagement and persistence of reading along with the understanding of the benefits and importance of reading in academic and non- academic success were contributed by students’ motivation to learn. To concern on motivation was then crucial since the high motivation to read correlated with positive self-concept and high-value assignment. On the other hand, low motivation to read associated with poor self- concept as a reader and low-value assignment (Ford, 1992; Henk & Melnick, 1995; Wigfield, 1994 in Gambrell, Palmer, Codling, & Mazzoni, 1996) Motivation in reading was in general seen as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation model by Ryan and Deci of which intrinsic motivation referred to “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence”; it is done for pleasure and with joy. While the later was defined as “whenever an activity is done to attain some separable outcome” (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Wigfield and Guthrie Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 109 (1995 in Mori, 2002) specified the motivation model for reading based on the expectancy-value theory from psychology and was similar to the motivation model from Ryan and Deci. The reading motivation had three categories, i.e. competence and reading efficacy, achievement values and goals, and social aspects of reading. These aspects, however, were constructed to study L1 reading motivation. Mori (2002) attempted to use the model Wigfield and Guthrie proposed to see L2 reading motivation and found out that there were eight aspects corresponded to the eleven aspects of the expectancy-value theory. The aspects identified were Reading Efficacy and the Importance of Reading. While the other aspects, namely Reading Challenge, Reading Curiosity, Reading Involvement, and Reading Avoidance, were clustered as Intrinsic Value of Reading. The other two that were Reading for Grades and Compliance were ones of Extrinsic Motivation. She also found the constructs of FL reading motivation was similar to the expectancy-value theory constructs. The Expectancy for Success was labeled as Reading Efficacy; Intrinsic Value was labeled as Value of Reading; Extrinsic Utility Value was labeled Extrinsic Utility Value of Reading, and Attainment Value was labeled as Importance of Reading. Reading efficacy was individual’s expectation to perform well on a reading task (Schiefele et al., 2012) and individual’s confidence in accomplishing different tasks (Protacio, 2012; Wigfield et al., 2016). Value of reading referred to valuing the task because it brings enjoyment and involvement (Mori, 2002; Schiefele et al., 2012). The extrinsic utility value of reading was the practical or instrumental significance that referred to the usefulness of doing the reading task (Schiefele et al., 2012; Wigfield et al., 2016). Importance of reading referred to the importance to be able to read well (Schiefele et al., 2012). Dialogue Journal for Reading The use of dialogue journal for reading was mainly based on the theory of reading responses used in the literary study where the readers connected to the text and construct the meaning to be able to interpret it (Hirvela, 1996). The interpretation did not have limitation in its sense of allowing students to express their responses however it was at the same time limited since the responses would be text-based. The meaning-making advocated in this theory was in line with the process of reading in foreign language (Davis, 1989) where he inserted that “the production of meaning requires an interaction between the textual instructions and the reader’s own life Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 110 experience.” Iser (1978, p. 152 in Davis, 1989) mentioned that the process of meaning creation occurred when “something happens to the reader.” Reading, therefore, was an active process where continuous reflection made throughout the practice, which involves both cognition by matching schemata and affective because each reader had different experiences used to make meaning of the text. Both of these aspects contributed to the general understanding of the text, meaning that, without one, the comprehension was incomplete or not developed. The problem of making meaning in reading in a foreign language, however, occurred when the reader was “not-yet- competent” to decode the language features (Renandya, 2015), the instructions implicitly embedded in the text (Davis, 1989), and anxiety (Saito et al., 1999). For these reasons, creating safe environment for students to read became essential in their reading development. While text-based reading could address the three challenges, dialogue journal could be used to support and “encourage students’ growth and motivation to read” (Werderich, 2006) because they owned individualized instruction guidance from the teacher. In a dialogue journal, the teacher could provide instructional and conversational responses. Instructional responses were given when teacher “called for direct scaffolding, focusing on developing students’ literacy understanding” and conversational responses were during teacher’s involvement in a discussion “as an equal”, in which both instructions were to give the students “more freedom to experience the literature” (Probst, 1984 in Werderich, 2006) and to invite the students to make meaning of the text continuously. Thus, not only did it dialogue journal help students in cognitive aspect but also affective aspects of which both were essential for students’ reading comprehension development. Werderich (2006) theorized that in the dialogue journal the facilitation given by teacher were classified into four subcategories of response facilitator that were 1) visual aids or teacher’s guide using the format of journaling to help scaffold the process of writing; 2) modelling where teacher gave his or her response to literature and focused on encouraging students’ personal experience with the literature; 3) questioning and requesting in which teacher encouraged students to reflect upon thinking by inviting them to discussion, clarifying their understanding, and redirecting and extending students’ thinking; and 4) feedback where teacher gave reciprocal conversation in order to Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 111 provide students with encouragement, to answer students questions, to offer recommendation and to give compliments. Studies on the use of dialogue journal or response journal showed a positive result on students’ motivation in reading (Fuhler, 1994; Lee, 2013; Neugebauer, 2013) and motivation in writing (Liao & Wong, 2010). Most of the studies, however, investigated students of primary schools and only few of them were conducted in higher education or young adolescence students. Fuhler (1994), for example, strongly evidenced that dialogue journal was successfully improved students’ motivation in reading because it aided the communication on literature between the students and the teacher. More, it enabled parents to also participate in the development of students’ reading. Neugebauer (2013) also examined the use of dialogue journal for primary students but focusing more on how it helped motivating students to read among different settings that were inside and outside class. The study involving higher education students was by Lee (2013) who specified the use of e-journal as a means to have activities on other dialogue journals. Her study also fell under EFL context and successfully achieved her goals and had the students motivated both in reading and writing. To add empirical evidence on the benefits of dialogue journal for motivating students’ reading in tertiary level, the study presented in this article investigated the use of dialogue journal to motivate students’ reading where feedback was highly used and how the students perceived the process of reading and writing the dialogue journal. Methodology The study was a descriptive qualitative study aimed at investigating students’ response to the use of dialog journal in their reading class and their perceived motivation development. In a sense, the study revealed the ways the teacher commented and the students’ views on the given comments. Research Design Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data from the interview to identify and report the themes. Using a thematic analysis, furthermore, the researcher implied that the study was not based on the specific theoretical framework (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Instead, it was a data-driven process done to explore the participants’ perspective through their narration. This way, themes emerged from the data itself. The steps of doing the thematic analysis were: familiarizing with the data, coding, searching, reviewing, defining Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 112 and naming the themes, and writing up (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Setting and Participants The participants of the study were 5 (five) Indonesian students of English as a Foreign Language Classroom. They were in the first semester of their undergraduate program in Arabic Education Department at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The students were not accustomed to doing a reading for pleasure, especially to read English texts. Most of the time, the reading practice was done as it was required by the curriculum and was to complete their assessment and evaluation. These respondents were purposely chosen to represent the students who read the most and the least number of books during the outside class reading program. In the study, students self-selected the stories after being introduced to the five-finger rules that was a method to select the reading text according to their English competence, especially vocabulary. Reading stories were encouraged because not only that they “provide abundant linguistic resources for students to learn foreign language” (Damayanti, 2017) but stories are more compelling and engaging students emotionally (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2004 as cited in Renandya, 2018). The stories that the students read were those available at www.er-central.com. The website was an open- access extensive reading material with leveled texts and also graded readers available in the department. The reading activity was a stand- alone reading course in which students read outside the class time, generally at a convenient time. Once in two weeks, the students were asked to write a short response in a diary book. The response included the story and its basic information such as author, title, page, and numbers of words read, length of reading time, and personal rating to the stories. Their response to the stories, however, was given more attention. It included a brief description of what the stories they read were about and their comments on how they felt about the stories. The teacher would then provide feedback in the journal prompting more conversation with the students, thus creating a dialog with the students. The journal was graded and contributed to the overall class score. The scoring system of the outside reading class was taken from the total number of words the students read throughout the semester. Data Collection Method(s) and Analysis The data were mainly collected from the interview as it allowed researchers to gain perspective which involves participants’ opinion, thoughts, feelings or experience on a particular issue (Cohen et al., 2011, p.411). The interview is also useful to generate data in research involving a small number of participants. It enables the researcher to obtain 'rich' data from them through the interaction with the interviewee by giving questions and http://www.er-central.com/ Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 113 receiving answers. Additionally, in a semi- structured interview, researchers may encourage the interviewees to have more leeway in exploring their response and elaborating more about their perspectives (Robson, 2011). Applying the semi- structured interview principles, the researchers had numbers of predetermined open-ended questions, and the interviewees’ report acted as prompts to go more in-depth on their perspective, opinion, or feeling. In this study, the interview was conducted to the 5 participants via telephone at their most convenient time. It was done in Indonesian (the interviewees’ national language) to encourage them to elaborate their answers quickly (Mann, 2016). Each interview lasted for about 10-15 minutes. The researcher recorded the interview, transcribed it for data analysis purpose, and translated some part of the conversation supporting the findings into English. Findings The teacher provided individualized instructional guidance via the dialog journal that the students submitted according to the schedule. The guidance and commentaries fluctuated between instructional and conversational responses which were given in the form of questioning and requesting, modeling, and giving feedback on what responses the students wrote in the journal. Also, the teacher wrote feedback which included praise for students’ reading progress, appreciation for shared ideas and experiences, suggestions for reading problems encountered by students, and recommendations for books. By giving comments, a written conversation between the teacher and the students occurred. In the interview, the teacher frequently asked students’ previous experiences such as ‘Have you ever encountered similar experience?’, ‘Do you have friends dealing with the same problems?’, students’ prediction and creative idea such as ‘What would you do if…?’, ‘What will you suggest to the main character?’, ‘What do you think will happen next/what may the character do next?’, students’ feeling and opinion about the stories such as ‘How do you feel about the story?’, ‘What do you learn from the story or particular character?’, and ‘Do you like certain character?’. The teacher also shared her own reading experiences and used that to develop conversation as well as to suggest books to students. The teacher also asked the students for simple detailed information on the story the students read such as “Was Karra (the main Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 114 character) alone in the room?” as a way to check if the students read. In general, the students responded to the outside class reading activity positively. They identified themselves to gain benefits from their reading practices, such as improved vocabulary and writing skill. Some of them asserted that they became more familiar with the English text so that they read more texts than the others. The students also mentioned that they enjoyed learning the moral values from the stories and tried to internalize it in their personal life. Concerning the focus of this study, all of the students were reported to give positive views on the feedback given by the teacher and the interaction they built through the dialog journal. It was indicated by their awareness of the benefits they received from the comments. The benefits had two categories, namely cognitive and affective aspect. The cognitive aspect was suggested by their awareness of their work, as shown in their comments. One of the students mentioned that the feedback was good for him to introspect his weakness. He became more careful in writing the summary. He asserted that: If it is unclear, the teacher will ask what I mean (with my review). So, it trains me to express my thoughts. I cannot be reckless in summarizing the stories. (HR) They were also reported to understand the text better and that the feedback helped them to involve the story deeper. The students stated: I think I can understand the story better now. I have more knowledge. (HR) I think it (the feedback) is good. By reading the feedback from the teacher, I can be more motivated. Sometimes, she asks me questions on the story that I don’t understand, so I reread the story to understand it better. (UR) There are many questions (given by the teacher), so I am trained to answer the questions. There are questions of ‘why’ too, so have I to understand why the sentences are written as so. (CR) My teacher asks me as if Karra (the character in the story) is real person, and it makes me feel, well, it is like I Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 115 have to really participate (in the story). (AZ) More, the comments also encouraged the students to express their ideas better, as asserted by the students: I can construct my sentences into, I mean, the way I respond it. I can use English better to respond it. (AZ) So after my teacher gave me the responses, I can apply it (the writing) based on the texts. (PR) The affective aspect was identified in that positive feedback such as praise that was well received by the students resulting to motivate them to read more stories. They mentioned: I feel I am appreciated, and it motivates me. There is an appreciation. (PR) I am happy. My teacher appreciates my work, though it is not a big project. It motivates me because few teachers are thanking us for doing the task. It is my first experience to get this appreciation from my teacher. And because of this appreciation, I become more enthusiast to add my vocabulary, to read. (HR) When she gives me those comments, I feel like, well, I have a special achievement from the task. (AZ) The feedback also accommodated the creation of a positive student-teacher relationship through the conversational-like feedback written in the diary. Two students were reported to get benefits from this conversation, as seen in the following excerpts: My teacher seems to understand the students, so I express the feeling to her. I tell her about my daily life. It is like talking to our friends. Sometimes I tell her my stories. She always gives responses. I am pleased because she gives me advice. If I have problems, she tells me to do this or that. So I feel close to her. (UR) When I read something difficult, and we have to write the report, right. She asks me to read easier stories. She gives me this advice. It is like when I read stories for level 2, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 116 and she advises me to read an easier one. (PR) She says “Hi.”, and I am enthusiastic to reply it. It makes me happy because she responds to it. (CR) Well, I am happy to get good responses … the books are also interesting to read, so I feel happier. (HR) Elaborated and specific feedback was also received positively by the students. One student mentioned that the elaboration of the feedback helped her to see how far she had progressed in her reading. This feedback motivated her to read more, and this student was the one who read many stories compared to the others. She also asserted that she felt glad when the teacher pointed out that she had even read more titles than the teacher did. Discussion According to the responses from the students, the dialogue journal had accommodated the teacher to provide individualized instruction guidelines of which instructional/conversational responses by the teacher developed positive responses and enhanced students’ motivation in L2 reading. The teacher utilized the journal to devise the communication with the students where she could facilitate the responses and lead the students to construct meaning from the story (Werderich, 2006). It affected not only to students’ improved motivation and attitude in L2 reading but also their comprehension of the story. During the meaning-making through dialogue journal, the teacher was eager to give praise, especially for students who struggled with reading due to the minimum language competence as well as those who had low motivation to read. The compliment was considered as motivating students to either to stop reading or to read more stories. Burnett & Mandel (2010) mentioned that feedback focusing on students’ effort was preferred and was reported to improve students’ positive perception to the teacher. Burnett (2003) further conceptualized the relationship between teacher’s feedback, specifically praise, to students’ self-talk and self-concept. In his study, positive statements by the teacher were indicated to be influential to students’ positive self-talk and self-concept. Acknowledging students’ efforts and achievements and praising on that, according to Dörnyei (2001:143-144), was motivating for students. The positive Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 117 feedback that was given by noticing and reacting on students’ progress and discussing with students what they could do to read better as part of the motivational teaching strategies. This positive perspective was also supported by the non-general praise and a contextualized feedback from the teacher (Burnett & Mandel, 2010; Hyland & Hyland, 2006 in Lee, 2008; Seker & Dincer, 2014). In praising and giving the feedback, the teacher had close attention to individual progress and individual responses written in the journal. Likewise, the praise and acknowledgment of achievement helped the students to build their reading efficacy since they were guided to see their accomplishment. The successful experiences would improve their self-concept as a successful reader. Other than acknowledging students’ effort in reading and their progress, dialogue journal also helped the teacher to model as an example of a reader who could also provide recommendation to the students. Teachers needed to make themselves an example of readers to their students (Day & Bamford, 2002) because students’ attitude and engagement in reading were highly correlated to teachers’ commitment and investment to their reading practice (Loh, 2009). Using the dialog journal the teacher could display that she was also a reader by discussing the books that the teacher was currently reading or books that were related to the stories read by the students. The discussion on the books read by the teacher was a proof of what Gambrell (1996) called as explicit reading model which was even more useful to work as a model compared to reading together during sustained silent reading that is “more passive model of reader.” By discussing the books and stories, teacher had the opportunity to share her reading experiences that made it more explicit to students. Having the teacher as a model reader, students would be more encouraged to sustain their reading practice (Werderich, 2006). They would see that the teacher walk the talk, which motivated them to have a similar attitude toward reading as their teacher had (Loh, 2009). The students, moreover, were also reported to get driven because the teacher helped them to realize that they could change the story whenever they found it too difficult to read due to the limited English proficiency. The suggestions taken as support to students help the motivation and eagerness to learn. Furthermore, the responses given to students had made reciprocal conversation possible to happen. This condition created a safe environment to the students to self- express and expanded their ideas, thoughts, questions, and concerns as adolescent Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 118 readers (Cole, 2002; Werderich, 2006) that was accommodating to the students for their writing skill. More, the conversation in the dialog journal built a positive student- teacher relationship that contributed to the engagement of reading. It allowed students to talk to their teacher who had high expectation on their success in reading of which expressed high expectancy would help to increase students’ reading motivation (Gambrell, 1996). Besides building motivation through feedback, the dialogue journal enabled the students to obtain questions from the teacher serving as guidance for students to create meaning in the story. The students were guided to “personalize” the stories they read by linking the events on the stories to ones of their own, inviting students to be more engaged with the stories. Not only did linking to students’ own experiences increase their reading engagement, but it also assisted the activation of their schemata that redirected and extended their thinking as part of the process of meaning-making. Through the dialog journal, students were guided to link the new information they got from the stories to ones they already had. Other than connecting to previous experiences and knowledge, schemata were also activated when students made predictions on the story. To enable and habituate the prediction, the teacher often commented on students’ responses and asked them to make a prediction related to the story. The prediction that students made helped themselves to activate their associated background knowledge and assisted their reading to be more efficient (Nuttall, 1996 in Xerri, 2015). It means that instead of becoming passive, the students continuously constructed new knowledge by building schemata which were not a fixed structure. Using teacher’s commentary students modified the meaning along with the process of reading (Nuttall, 2005). It denotes that the more practices of reading the students performed, the more opportunity they would integrate their schemata and the current stories they were reading, which in turns, built their reading more efficiently and helped them to gain improved understanding on the text. The process of text understanding was also assisted by the questions from the teacher that were used to clarify students’ understanding. Most questions were detailed questions and general information about the stories. It was perceived to be encouraging in the sense of reassuring the student to be more careful in writing the responses and answering the questions. This finding resonated to the reciprocal teaching strategy that was ‘teacher assisted students’ Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 119 comprehension’ to improve the students’ performance given through posing questions relevant to the stories (King & Johnson, 1999 in Todd & Tracey, 2006). The questions were mostly to encourage students to refer back to the story and to examine the story in detail. Detailed examination on the text was not what extensive reading promoted, nonetheless, the conversation with the teacher to create the sense of achievement and the sense of correctness in understanding the story was potential to motivate the students to reread the story and have a close look on it. Experiencing repeated success in comprehending the stories would have their reading enjoyment and motivation improved (Mori, 2015; Xerri, 2015) and had their perceived value of reading improved. In addition to better text understanding, some of the students also mentioned that they got more accustomed to writing in English as they practiced writing the responses in the journal and in having written communication with the teacher. It means that besides providing themselves with abundant input and having their vocabulary enriched from their reading, the students were also actively engaged in producing the language. The reciprocal conversation in the journal aided the students to co-construct their linguistic knowledge by taking part in the production task (Swain, 2006 in Birkner, 2016). Conclusion This study attempted to investigate students’ perception on the use of dialogue journal to improve students’ reading motivation. The researcher found out that the development reading motivation was supported through the facilitation of teacher’s responses that touched the affective and cognitive aspects of reading. The positive feedback through praise and acknowledgment of efforts and achievement had helped the students to build their self- efficacy that was essential in giving self- concept of reading. The students were led to believe that they would succeed in the reading task, thus motivating them to read. Through the dialogue journal, the teacher could exploit the conversation and provide instructional and conversational responses to scaffold students’ creation of meaning over the text they are reading. The success of meaning-making did not only boost their self-efficacy in reading but also helped the students to have better comprehension. Moreover, the students built their value of reading through the involvement of meaning-making by relating their past experiences to the events in the stories and by expressing their thoughts on them. They Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 120 would have a sense of ownership to the story improved, thus engage the students more to read. Another finding was to note that students also felt benefited from having their L2 writing enhanced through the practice of dialogue journal. 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