Author Profile
Kohei (Writer)
Started writing English diaries as a university sophomore and improved TOEIC scores from 650 to 860 points after one year of consistent practice. Later continued the practice while working in Canada and ultimately achieved a score of 955 points. Has real experience with comprehensive English improvement through English diary writing.
What Are the Specific Effects of Writing an English Diary?
Hello, I'm Kohei, a writer. I wrote English diaries almost daily for one year between my second and third year of university, and then continued while working in Canada (2017-2018). As a result, my TOEIC score improved from around 650 points in my second year to 860 in my third year, and eventually reached 955 points after returning from Canada.
Of course, this wasn't the only factor that helped improve my English, but writing English diaries undoubtedly made a significant contribution to this improvement. Today, I'll explain more specifically what effects it had and how I approached writing English diaries.
How I Started Writing English Diaries
I began writing English diaries during my second year of university. The trigger was that I was taking an English writing course but couldn't write at all. My instructor (a British teacher) introduced the method of "starting with simple diary writing" in class, which inspired me to begin.
Later, while living in Canada, I was looking for good ways to improve my speaking skills when I saw a video by Jun from Hapa Eikaiwa explaining the effectiveness of English diaries, which motivated me to restart.
Reference: Jun from Hapa Eikaiwa's English Diary Video
As you can see, diary writing is a method recommended by native speakers, and I highly recommend it for those who want to improve their English but don't know where to start.
From here, I'll explain the specific study methods step by step.
Information Gathering
First, it's important to gather information on how to write a diary properly. If you start writing a diary without any know-how, you probably won't continue for long. First, research how you should write a diary through the internet or books.
Nowadays, there are many introductions to diary writing available both online and in books. It's good to look at various approaches to see what method suits you best.
Actually Writing English Diaries
Once you have a general idea, start writing. Begin with short sentences - that's perfectly fine. English writing is very difficult, and if you try to write a lot from the beginning, you'll probably get frustrated. Focus on writing simple content with simple sentences. For example:
"Today, I went to a shopping mall with my friend."
"After spending two hours there, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant close to the mall."
"I didn't buy anything, but it was fun."
How about that? These are simple sentences, but can you quickly translate them into English? I recommend setting yourself a goal of writing at least three simple sentences like these.
When doing this, first reflect on your day and think about what you did in Japanese. In this case, it was "went to a shopping mall with a friend." Next, try to follow a flow of: describing the action, adding feelings or details about it, and then summarizing the day.
Once you establish this three-sentence flow, you'll be able to continue without spending too much time on it.
When You Get Used to It
Once you're comfortable with simple sentences, move to the next step. In my case, I made sure to incorporate content I had learned through input into my diary. I particularly referenced Hapa Eikaiwa's podcast.
By intentionally incorporating phrases I learned from the podcast into my diary, I was able to acquire natural conversational English phrases. Alternatively, when I wanted to learn academic expressions, I would read BBC news beforehand and use the expressions I had input. Academic expressions are difficult to write with just daily diary content. Once you're comfortable with everyday expressions, it's also good practice to choose specific themes and write simple opinions about them.
Review After Writing
Reading your diary aloud after writing multiplies the effectiveness. Make sure to read your written English sentences aloud at least 5-10 times. By reading aloud the English sentences you wrote yourself, they become established as usable phrases.
Also, if there are any words with unclear pronunciation, look them up and make sure you can pronounce them correctly. If you understand the meaning but don't know the pronunciation, you won't be able to use them in speaking. This is very wasteful, so always be conscious of correct pronunciation when reading aloud.
Also, make sure to review your written English sentences. For example, always include the previous day's sentences when doing your reading practice, or after writing for a week, read and practice all of that week's entries together. The effect increases through repeated practice.
What Were the Actual Effects?
As I mentioned at the beginning with the TOEIC score example, writing English diaries leads to overall English improvement and can be expected to have the following effects:
Speaking Skills
Writing English diaries directly connects to speaking ability because the work involved in writing English diaries is exactly the same as what happens in speaking.
Have you ever thought "How do I say this in English?" and later found out "Oh, it could be expressed so simply?" This is the key point of speaking - in speaking, it's most important to convey your message clearly using simple expressions. Most people who have studied English in Japan probably have the minimum vocabulary and grammar needed for conversation.
However, when it comes to conversation, words suddenly don't come out because the frequency of actually conveying messages is overwhelmingly low. Diary writing allows you to practice this alone. Writing about today's events in a simple way in your diary is the same as conveying them to someone in speaking. Phrases you write in your diary remain as usable phrases for your speaking, and your speaking ability will definitely improve.
Vocabulary
Next, regarding vocabulary, this also significantly improves through diary study. When writing English sentences, you'll start with simple sentences. Even so, you'll encounter situations where you think "How should I express this?"
For example, in the earlier example, you might not be able to come up with "shopping mall" easily. By writing diaries this way, you steadily increase your usable vocabulary.
Also, as you continue writing diaries, you'll notice words and sentence structures you use frequently. For example, you might realize you often use phrases like "it is very important~". This awareness is also essential for vocabulary improvement because rephrasing frequently used words and structures leads to further vocabulary expansion. For "important," there are several adjectives with similar meanings like significant, vital, essential, crucial.
By replacing your frequently used phrases with different words and structures, you'll dramatically improve your vocabulary. When making replacements, understanding the nuances of each word will help the knowledge stick.
Grammar
Regarding grammar, this will undoubtedly improve as well. The most effective way to check if your grammar is correct is to actually output and verify it. The difference from speaking is that with diaries, you can output with correct grammar while looking things up. So once you get used to outputting in diary form, grammatical mistakes in speaking will significantly decrease.
Spelling
One ability that develops from writing English diaries is spelling. With increasing digitization, there might not be many opportunities to memorize spelling nowadays. Also, TOEIC, a major English test in Japan, doesn't involve writing words, so some people might not see much necessity for it.
However, being able to spell correctly is definitely better. Most importantly, tests like Eiken, IELTS, and TOEFL have writing sections, making solid spelling a major advantage.
Pronunciation
You might wonder "English diaries improve pronunciation?" However, as mentioned earlier, English diaries can help improve pronunciation by incorporating reading aloud. Actually, by combining diary writing with reading aloud, my understanding of pronunciation became very clear.
This was because whenever I encountered words I couldn't pronounce well, I would always check the phonetic symbols in the dictionary and listen to the actual audio. In this way, English diaries can improve not just writing ability but also pronunciation, depending on how you practice.
Summary
The above is my method and experience of studying with English diaries. I hope you find it helpful!