This downloadable diary is intended for use with readers that are extended fiction – e.g. adaptations of novels and plays – although the vocabulary page can be used with any reader). For each student, photocopy the first and third pages of the diary once (pages A and C), and the second page (page B) as many times as is necessary to cover the number of chapters or parts in the reader. The vocabulary page (page D) could be copied two or three times. Go through the diary with students when you distribute it: explain what the questions mean, and stress that they are suggestions for what to write about, not test questions that must be answered. Indeed, sometimes the response will simply be a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or just one word. At the discretion of the teacher, lower level classes could fill in their reading diaries in the L1.
Regarding the vocabulary page, it is important that students should not see keeping a record of vocabulary as a punitive task, but as something useful for them. To this end, students themselves choose the new words to record (which may not be all the new words they come across). They can adopt any of the following strategies: they can fill in all the columns as they read (or at the end of each part/chapter of the book); they can just fill in columns 1 and 2 as they read, and complete the other columns when they have finished the book, as a moment of intensive vocabulary work; they can fill in columns 1-2 as they read, and fill in any of the other columns for a particular word if the idea comes spontaneously, or leave them out if they have to stop and think too much. They then complete all the remaining columns when they have finished the book.
Download diary
