Creating a Learning Diary
A learning diary is a way of recording your works day by day so that you can keep on track with what you need to do.
You can simply use a notebook (or indeed a diary) or you can create something online (you can use the blog function in Member home or any other web tool that you want to keep a daily record of your study.
Here are the things that you should be recording:
If possible have a system that you repeat each day so that you can look back and see how you are progressing.
- Date the entry
- Include your study time too - how long an the start and end times. If you study more than once in a day then record this too
- What you did and your results
- Any comments about your performance or the exercises (for example if you couldn't access something - let me know!! or you couldn't read it well)
- Be honest about your performance
- Decide what you need to do to improve and then record this too (e.g. "I made a mistake with question x because I didn't spell the word yyy correctly - I should do some work on spelling)
- As well as being critical, praise yourself when you do well too (and announce this on the Gapfillers Forum - we want to hear about it!)
- If you do an exercise more than once then record how many times and what level of improvement you had each time
- If you are timing an exercise (e.g a reading) and you don't finish then record how far you got and then complete the exercise. This is what you want to beat next time. It is by such incremental improvements that you will improve overall.
- At the end of the week look over your diary and see how you got on (if you don't record things then you won't remember)
- When we measure things they improve because we can see where we are going and how we are doing
- Finally set targets for the next day or the next time you do a particular type of exercise and most important set targets for the next week - these could be things like making sure you do the lesson every day and not put it off, ,make sure you spend 10 minutes on practising grammar, learn 3 words every day etc... they are YOUR targets so YOU set them and try and keep to them and then evaluate again next week!
OK here is a very simple example of a learning diary that I did as a blog.
You'll find a learning diary template in the IELTS Champions Club Facebook Group
