Journaling for Improved Reflective Writing

Writing skills are essential for effective communication, critical thinking, and self-expression in academic and real-world contexts. These skills are particularly important in reflective writing, which requires students to analyze, evaluate, and articulate their thoughts effectively. However, many students struggle with reflective writing, as evidenced by low performance in writing assessments. This study investigates the impact of journaling as an instructional strategy to enhance students' reflective writing skills. Utilizing a quasi-experimental research design, the study employed pretest and posttest assessments to measure students' reflective writing proficiency in terms of reporting, responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing. A total of 60 Grade 8 learners from Dr. Maria D. Pastrana National High School participated, divided into experimental and control groups. The study revealed that students exposed to journaling showed significant improvements in their reflective writing skills across all five dimensions—reporting, responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing—with results significant at the 0.01 level within the experimental group. However, when comparing the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups, no statistically significant differences were found at the 0.01 level, although a slight advantage in relating experiences emerged at the 0.05 level. These findings suggest that while journaling is effective in enhancing students’ reflective writing skills over time, its superiority over traditional methods was not strongly established.