It is a common practice among many of us to maintain a journal for writing personal everyday accounts. It is supposed to be something confidential. But have you ever thought that journals can be kept for learning purposes as well? In fact, journaling has proven to be very effective in learning English. To start with it, you need to write down your personal learning goals first. Use the journal to track your progress regularly. This way you will learn about the challenges you are facing. Eventually, you will reach your goal. When you see that you are slowly moving towards your goal you will feel less stress and anxiety.

Benefits of a language learning journal

Journaling in learning is a natural way of writing your everyday progress. Noting your everyday activity with the language helps you to refocus on your goal and recap what you have learned. You will write what new things you have learned and the things you found confusing. You can write the list of vocabulary you have learned that day, comment on the learning style, and more. By maintaining a journal, you can write down all your achievements and goals you want to reach.

Ways to use Language Learning Journal

In your English learning journey, you can use the journal in many ways. Some of the ideas are presented here.

Keep track of your progress

At the beginning of your learning journey, set your goals. Then every day record your progress. When you will go back to this you will realize how much effort you have given to your learning and feel satisfied about it. You can also look back to identify reasons for not reaching goals sometimes.

Find gaps in vocabulary

Observe your writing every day and see if you are using proper words or repeating the same word. This way you can identify the gap in your vocabulary. Realizing that it's your personal space, you can criticize your writing and come up with ideas to improve it.

Language learning habits

When you read back your journal every day you will notice your language learning habit. See if you are spending more time on vocabulary or less time on grammar. You may discover that you learn better at a particular time of the day, especially memorizing vocabulary. By writing a journal you will become aware of your language learning habits and set your next goals accordingly.

Note down new words and phrases

The key to remembering new words and phrases is to look at them again and again. When you put the words down in your journal, you will have the opportunity to review them every day. So, the words will be eventually stored in your long-term memory.

How to create a journal

Creating a journal is very easy. All you need is a blank notebook, colorful Post-its, a pen, and a highlighter. You must divide your journal into many sections. One way to do so is to use different colored post-its to mark the sections. So, you can easily turn over to the section you want to refer to.

The first section of your journal must be writing down your goal. You can write specific goals about learning grammar rules or word groups, for example. You must set a timeframe too. You must create a daily schedule and stick to it to reach your goals.

Dedicate a section to new words and phrases. You must include synonyms and antonyms too. Place each new word in a sentence to help you remember the word. You should have a section for word building; that is, changing a word from noun to verb, adverb, and adjective. Use a table to build words, that is, have separate columns for nouns, verb, adjectives, and adverbs.

You must have a section for words and expressions based on themes, like travel, restaurants, meetings, hospitals, etc. Learning social norms through proper expression is an important part of your language learning.

Throughout the language learning process, you will be practicing past papers from the English proficiency exams. Write down about your performance in these tests in your journal. You will be able to reflect upon them and identify room for improvement.

Tips for keeping the journal

To make sure that you are successful in keeping the journal you should find a good time to write it. Maintain the same time every day so you can get into the habit. You are not expected to write an essay in your journal So, keep things short so that you don't lose the motivation to write. Don't try to focus on multiple aspects every day.

Just focus on one at a time. Read the previous pages of the journal regularly to see your progress. It will motivate you to continue writing the journal. Keep the journal in a safe place so that others can't see it. But if you have a language instructor or a friend who is a native-English speaker then you can show your journal to them. They can give you suggestions on how to improve your learning. You can also write down the feedback you get in your journal.

Writing a journal is a great way to discover yourself. You will get to know the things you have learned, problem areas, and ways to improve learning. The journal will help you to analyze your feelings about learning good English. Just spending 5 minutes a day to write down the tasks you have done to achieve your language learning goal will significantly improve your learning journey.