the effects of dialogue journal writing on iranian efl learners’ attitudes toward writing and task motivation

Generally, writing and l2 writing cause a lot of challenges to efl learners. dialogue journal writing (djw) can be very useful for learners since it paves the way for their engagement in authentic writing, particularly, written dialogues. this can help them to form an intimate relationship with the instructor. accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of dialogue journal writing on iranian efl learners’ attitudes toward writing and task motivation. to this end, a total of forty intermediate iranian efl learners between 18- and 30-years range of age over a four-week period participated in this study. the students with the same level of proficiency were randomly divided into two groups, namely, experimental and control. then, both groups completed an attitude toward writing questionnaires (the instrument developed by rose,1984) and task motivation (the questionnaire developed by mozgalina,2015). after that, the experimental group participated in 8 sessions on how to write effectively. they were taught how to write using conventional teaching materials in combination with dialogue journal writing. as for the control group, all students were taught how to write using the conventional method. finally, both groups completed the task motivation questionnaire and attitude toward writing questionnaire. the analysis results revealed that djw had a positive effect on the participants’ attitudes toward writing and task motivation. the findings of this study have implications for efl learners and teachers. foreign language teachers should be willing to handle dialogue journal writing in their classrooms. this puts increased responsibilities on teacher trainers and teacher education systems.