Diaries are a useful means of practicing English. Writing them encourages self-expression and allows students to practice writing things relevant to their own lives. Most importantly, however, writing diaries serves as a means of self-comprehension. After writing, the student can see exactly where he or she needs improvement.
Diaries can be an ongoing activity, or merely assigned once or twice.
Students may be assigned to keep a diary in English and write about a half page or one page per week. The teacher can collect the diaries at the end of the term and see how much has been written, and how the students have progressed.
The main goal of writing diaries should generally be to simply allow the students to practice personal English. It is up to the teacher whether or not to correct the grammar mistakes in the diaries. On the one hand it may be useful for students to see their mistakes corrected. On the other, however, correcting every mistake makes the diary less of a personal, free thought exercise and causes students to feel self-conscious about expressing themselves.
Perhaps the best solution is to periodically collect all the diaries and read through them, but do not correct any mistakes within the diaries themselves. Instead, note any grammatical problems that arise in relatively often. Then you can see where your students’ problems are and you can go over those grammar points again in a later class. You can check to see that they understand by noting whether or not you see those same types of mistakes again the next time you collect the diaries.
Introducing Diaries to students:
a) Talk about diaries (who writes one? When?, Why?)
b) Show them a model diary entry (make an example entry about the homeroom teacher, a famous person, etc.)
c) Teach them some structure and give them some leading questions. (e.g. What did you eat? Where did you sleep? Are you okay? What games do you play?)
d) Advise the students to write about a typical day in their life.
e) Creative Writing: Role play: Have the students write a fictional diary entry as if they were a person visiting Leshan, China. Or as if they were a famous baseball player in America.
f) Have some students read their diaries and discuss the differences in life style.