Conversations of the mind: The uses of jounal writing for second language learners. Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. Pp. xiv & 215. ISBN 0-8058-2318-2.

Reviewed by Michael Carroll
Kyoto University of Education

In her closing remarks, Rebecca Mlynarczyk quotes from an anonymous email list posting which raised a fundamental question about the value of educational research: does it help practitioners, does it solve problems? The question is particularly acute when posed for the qualitative researcher. What, for example, can we learn from a case study? Does it reveal anything about reality beyond the particular situation in which it was carried out (pp. 176-177)? This volume is an elegant and persuasive answer to these questions.

For those who need one, it is a powerful argument for the value of qualitative research. Mlynarczyk has constructed a well-reasoned and balanced evaluation of the uses and limitations of journal writing in second language learning. Around the case studies of five ESL student writers, and of herself as a life-long developing teacher, she builds, in Eisner's words, her "own interpretive universe (p. 177)." Taking the words and experiences of these students, as they grapple with what it means to write in a foreign language and to come to be able to participate in a foreign culture, she fills in the background to show her readers how we might interpret their experiences in the light of writing and language learning theory.

One of the strengths of the book is found in the second chapter in which Mlynarczyk reviews the field and explicates the notion of `connected knowing' (pp. 26-30), showing how it underpins her rationale for reflective journal writing. Connected knowing, here described, is a rational alternative to the scientific objectivism that still dominates the way we think about and analyze most classrooms. (The scientific objectivist inheritance still accounts for a large part of professional academic discourse in both the West as well as Japan.) Connected knowing emphasizes personal meaning making and expression. It is the kind of knowing that recognises the presence of the knower in any kind of knowledge, and that validates personal meaning making as an inescapable part of learning. For Mlynarczyk this is precisely what happens in journal writing.

Another strength of this book is that — though there is no doubting Mlynarczyk's advocacy of journal writing as a way of learning and of articulating thoughts — she resists the temptation to showcase only the glossy side: those students who take to it with ease. Instead, two of the five case studies are of students who have feelings quite different from the author's about journal writing. One is a reluctant student writer who, Mlynarczyk eventually realises, is able to reflect personally. However, the student is unwilling to make public her private life, even in the limited sense of a journal shared only with her teacher. The other is a student, who, in the teacher's eyes, was an exemplary journal writer, but who herself felt it was unimportant. These are issues about journal writing that it is perhaps most important to reflect on at this stage, rather than simply describing how journals can help some students.

The sense of balance that is typical of the book also results in an intriguing concluding chapter in which the writer shows the limitations of some overly simplistic assumptions often made by writing teachers. These include: Personal writing isn't necessarily easier for women than men; native culture doesn't always determine how students respond to texts; freewriting is not necessarily the best technique for all students; and, despite the importance of connected knowing in Mlynarczyk's epistemology, journal writing may not necessarily elicit it from all students. The key to appreciating the book fully lies in this final section. The boundary between an enthusiastic teacher trying to lead her students in a particular direction, and at the same time describing that direction as "finding your own way" presents a dilemma. Mlynarczyk's answer to this dilemma is reflected in her answer to the questions that open this review. Perhaps neither we as readers, nor Mlynarczyk's students as writers, may find solutions to problems here; but our "sensitivity to and appreciation for the unexpected situations that occur in teaching " (p. 177) (or writing, studying, getting used to a new culture) may be heightened. It's a book that is well worth reading.