The journal and you...
A primer on the use of journals in composition.
I. Selecting the journal
* Choose your journal yourself. Do not trust someone else to select it for you. Consider its outward appearance, whether it has lined or unlined pages, whether it contains any illustrations or quotations, etc., its size, and the way that it feels in your hands.
* There is only one requirement as to the kind of journal you select: it must be permanently bound.
II. Rules for journal writing
* There is really only one rule, and it is this: Every time you write in the journal, record the date and place. (Time is optional.) Oh, and give the entry a title. (Yeah, so maybe that's two rules; I never claimed to be great at math.)
III. Evaluation of journals
* I will never read your journals.
* Near the end of the first quarter, I will ask you to fill in a journal evaluation sheet. This form will present questions about where and when and how often you have written, and will ask you to copy from your journal sample phrases, sentences, and entries that you select for me to see. This sheet, along with my observations during journal writing time in class, will form the basis for my assessment of your work.
IV. Other assessment procedures
* From time to time, I will ask that you expand upon some entry of your choice and submit it as a required assignment.
* At the end of the semester, you will be preparing a portfolio of your own writing. This will be a major assignment, comparable to a final exam, and will require that you include at least ten (10) typed pages of your best journal work. Still, I will only see what you choose for me to see. And there will be no other final exam or final paper for this course.
V. Some questions
·Why are we doing this?
Your journal should be a kind of box where you stick all sorts of little odds and ends, things that you come across in daily life, things that occur to you...bits and pieces of you. You keep them there so they won't get lost: trash and treasure all jumbled together. Then, from time to time, you go back and sort through the box, see what catches your attention and shines. Those bits that shine, you take out and examine. They become the basis for future writing.·Are there other reasons?
The simplest is the best: the more you write, the more you translate experience into language, the better you will be at it. I don't know why, but I know that it is true. So write. Write, write, write about anything and everything, in the morning, in the evening, in the afternoon, in class or at the dinner table, alone or in a crowd. But write. If you do it often enough, it becomes so natural and spontaneous that it will almost be a reflex. And it will also be surprisingly good.
·What do I write about?
Write about whatever is in your head. You can't stop the flow of language through your head; in your journals, try to catch pieces of that flow and hold them. Record them so that, later, you can examine them. When you write in your journal, start with whatever is in your head and see where it leads you; it will lead you somewhere if you have the patience to follow.
·What should my journal writing sound like?
It should sound like you thinking. It should sound like you talking.
It should be you.
These pages copyright Karen Kopriva 2005;
all rights are reserved