Daily journals and the writing skill

Abstract

Writing skill is considered as a difficult ability since it requires a lot of preparation. Consequently, students usually present problems and weaknesses. For that reason, one of many writing techniques is the use of daily journals. The main purpose of this research was to analyze the impact of daily journals and the writing skill in 33 students from third semester of Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros major at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. In addition, this research conducted a mixed approach to collect qualitative and quantitative data. To this end, the instruments applied were a pre-test and post-test as well as a survey. Also, it held a quasiexperimental design, so the participants were exposed to a treatment that consisted of six sessions carried out within three weeks and it helped to obtain the results using an adapted rubric from Cambridge Assessment Criteria. Subsequently, the statistical method to analyze was T-student for paired samples using SPSS program. Moreover, the results revealed that the use of daily journals have a positive impact on the students’ writing skill, which confirmed the established hypothesis for this investigation. Finally, it was concluded that daily journals emerged some benefits and effectiveness for the teaching and learning process since it showed improvements in students’ writing skill to communicate meaningfully.