WHEN teaching large classes of students year after year, it can become very difficult to see each student as an individual with individual needs and abilities. Nik Peachey, who works for The British Council, thinks that learner diaries are one method teachers can use to overcome this.
A learner diary should be a private dialogue between a student and a teacher. It doesn't only have to be about the learning process, but can be about almost anything that the learner would like to know or discuss. The most important thing is that it is real communication and that teachers respond to their students in an "authentic" way within this dialogue.
Learner diaries don't have to be traditional exercise books, although these do work fine. Some of the most successful ones Peachey's students have done were just a collection of pieces of paper that students and Peachey had written to each other on over the course of a term.
There are lots of good reasons for using learner diaries. Here are the reasons which Peachey have found most motivating.
First, learner diaries provide a "one to one" connection to students and allow teachers and students to develop an individual relationship. Second, learner diaries can become a form of authentic communication in English for students. This kind of real communication can be very hard to achieve within the classroom. Third, learner diaries provide teachers with really valuable insights into what students think of the lessons and what problems they are having. Finally, students can look back at early diary entries and see how much their English has developed.
Peachey has used a number of different ways of setting up learner diaries. The most important thing is to start a dialogue with the students and to provide something for them to respond to.
Peachey bought simple exercise books and wrote an introduction about himself in the beginning of the book. He asked the students to write something similar about themselves. He also wrote a few questions about the students for them to answer. The questions he asked were about school related things, like which lessons they preferred or which activities or texts in an English class they found most or least interesting.
