LessonsKeeping a Journal
In a journal, you can write down your activities, observations, and thoughts.
You are about to go and study in another country. Of course, you're excited! You will experience many new things, and it will be very different from your day‐to‐day life now. You plan to take a lot of photographs to help you remember your time in a new country. But there is only so much that photographs can tell tell you about a place. How else can you remember what you see and do? Why not write about it in a journal?
In a journal, you can write down your activities, observations, and thoughts. You can make an entry each day to keep track of everything you see and do. Keeping a journal is a good way of learning to write better. It can also be a lot of fun to read your own journal later and remember what you were doing and thinking at that time.
Here are some tips, to help you get started with a journal.
- Write the day's date at the beginning of each entry.
A journal isn't very useful if you don't know exactly when you wrote every entry!
- Organize your ideas before you begin writing.
You can make a list of the events or observations you want to write about first. Or you can use a graphic organizer. (You may need to install Acrobat Reader to view this.) Write the event you want to describe in the inner circle. Then write some details about the event in the outer circles. If there is more than one event, you can make a second organizer. Write one paragraph about each of the events.
- Illustrate your entry.
You can make sketches in the notebook of your experiences. Or you can draw diagrams of new things you see, and label the parts to help you remember what you've learned about them.
Try This!
Create your own unique journal from a notebook by adding fabric, paper, or pictures to the cover. Write in it about your experiences at school or when you travel. Try either writing a little bit in your journal each day, or writing a few long entries when you have breaks in your study activities. Don't know what to write? This list of writing topics might give you some ideas.