Dialogue journals: Students' risk taking on content and form

Abstract

This research, based on Halliday's functional concepts, examined students language use in a communicative event, dialogue journals, in a Japanese as a foreign language setting. Holistic evaluation and precise analysis of Japanese particles were used to study the relationship between students' attempts to express content, their attempts to use linguistic forms, and the success of those attempts. The main finding is that increasing attempts, both qualitatively and quantitatively, on content and form, enhanced meaning-making ability in Japanese; however, overly high risk-taking on content at first inhibited success, leading to writer's block. More accomplished students were able to adjust their content to their linguistic ability at first, but to increase their risk-taking on both factors over time. Precise analysis further revealed students' hypotheses making in using Japanese particles. The findings suggest that both teachers' linguistic and strategic guidance in their responses and their attention to content are crucial.