Writing a diary to help your English

How could writing a diary help you? Do you

need to practice tenses, linking words, using new vocabulary? How about

articles, prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, punctuation? Paragraphs? Of

course you do. Writing helps consolidate learning and with a diary, you can

choose to focus on specific areas you need. Also, I believe a diary can

provide a link between accuracy and fluency as you’re writing your

thoughts in spoken-English style, but you have time to think about the

language you’re using.

Look at this diary entry:

Diary entry Tuesday 11 November

Today, I got up early, so I’m absolutely exhausted. I had breakfast: two

slices of cold toast and a disgusting coffee, then I left the house at 8

o’clock still feeling half asleep. Honestly, London’s killing me!

It was raining on the way to school, so, as a result I got soaked and by

the time I reached school, I was sneezing. Anyway, I arrived at 8.45 and

looked over my homework before class. I’m still having problems with

using the present perfect accurately, but I learned 5 new body parts

yesterday including the names of all the fingers (thumb, index finger,

middle finger, ring finger and little finger), which I’m really happy

about.

Lessons were great as usual but it’s hard to concentrate

sometimes because of that really good-looking girl in my class.

After school, we went on the social programme trip. It was the pub and I

chatted to the good-looking girl. I think I’ll go on Saturday’s trip if she

goes too!

Does it use the language features mentioned above? Look, for example at

the tenses. Does it use past, present and future tenses?

Now look at the highlighted sections. Without them it would be a rather

boring description of the facts, but these phrases add value. They link

ideas, show cause and effect, comment, give structure and add interesting

detail.

So why not give it a try? Here are some of my top tips for approaching your

exciting new diary.

Imagine you have an audience; a friend, NOT a teacher!

Why am I telling you this?

Would the reader appreciate detail?

How did I feel?

Is the sequence of events clear?

Remember, a higher level writer or speaker adds value to the facts using

the above ideas.

 

.