The effectiveness of dialogue journal writing in improving the writing skills of young deaf writers

Various claims have been made for the usefulness of dialogue journal writing for improving the writing of less proficient users of English such as deaf writers of English or speakers of English as a second language. However, the bulk of the research has focussed on either student attitudes towards writing or very limited samples of student writing. In a one year project involving the exchange of dialogue journals between 204 pairs of deaf and hearing students in 10 public school districts, the authors sought to evaluate the utility of dialogue journals for improving the writing skills of the deaf writers. The age of the correspondents ranged from 10 to 18 years old in grades 4 through 12. Among the deaf writers, the average hearing loss was 89 dB in the better ear with a range of from 45 dB to 120 dB. The journal entries of 153 of the deaf students were evaluated for both changes in content and syntactic complexity. When the pair of writers maintained a relationship over time, there was an improvement in the quality of the writing of the deaf student and a change in the nature of the contents of the deaf student's entries. Results suggest that for some young deaf writers an exchange of dialogue journals with hearing peers can both improve the writing skills of the deaf writer and develop a relationship between the correspondents. Suggestions for implementing such a program are included.