Writing Diary, One of Learning Activities
Do you
know “Dear Diary”?. It is an activity that some people usually do to express
their feeling and note special events along the day. It used to be a habitual activity, but nowdays the teenagers
or many people tend to write about their feeling and what they do in social
media like facebook, twitter, etc. Anyway, many advantages can be got from
writing diary, such as:
1.
Reducing
the stress. People know that the stress which can not be expressed will be a risk for our body and soul and of course it will
impact to our health slowly. By writing,
we can express our fury, disillusion and sadness freely, so writing diary can reduce
the negative things that maybe occur and it will be one of the problem solvings.
2. Keeping the memory. The diary can be a
resource for historical note and some books have been published based on the
people’s diary like Kartini’s book “Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang”.
3.
An Inspiration
source. Sometimes, the inspiration comes and goes suddenly, so Diary can keep
it. When there is an idea passing by our mind, write it immediately. It usually can grow widely.
4.
A Life target. Some people like writing their
dream or what they want right now or for their future in the diary. It can be a
motivation to reach the dream when they read their writing.
5.
A Life
Lesson. Not only good experience the people wrote in their diary but also the
bad experience. One day, they can get a good lesson from each occurrence in
their life.
6.
A Brain
Exercise. Writing needs consentration and it train the brain to arrange every
sentences and words. Of course it is a good way for brain exercise.
Due to the benefits of writing diary, how
come the diary can support the students’ learning?
In this
case, by giving an assignment, the students were asked to make a review about their
previous lesson, especially English
subject everyday. It involved the material or topic they had learned at that day, the impressed activities
they had got, and also how their feeling were. This activity forced the
students to conclude the material, constrained them to get as much as new
vacabularies and as well as improved their writing skill. While they were
making summary, they were also learning
to understand more the lesson. And for the teacher itself, It helped to know
how far the lesson could be understood by the students. When the students realized
that they had not understood the lesson, they could ask their friends or their
teacher to explain more. It’s a useful activity.
Furthermore,
there were some factors impeded this activity.
The biggest factor was the students’ idleness or laziness. The students just wrote the headline of the material they
learned without any explanation. And there were some students prefered copying
their friends’. Despite some other students did as well as they could. To
handle this problem, giving reward and punishment became a good choice.
Another factor is the lack of writing skill.
Generally, writing is the hardest skill in learning language, so some students
felt difficult to express their idea. Step by step was given to guide the
students in writing by making the simple and short sentences. As a result, the
students who did this assignment well, they could make some improvement in
their English.
So far,
this is just a way that can be used to help the students to increase their English skills. The
significant way in this case is to make sure the students to write everything
whatever and wherever they are. At the beginning, it’s better not to focus on
the gramatical failures, just write, write and write. Day by day, they will
make their writing better.
