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To gain insights into the students’ reading experiences, I made use of diary studies (Bailey & Nunan, 1996; Bailey & Ochsner, 1983; Nunan, 1994). Over a period of three months, the students noted down their anticipations and responses to the literary texts in reading diaries which were later systematically analysed.

Since the 1980s, with the upsurge of reader response criticism, personal records which accompany the reading process gained in importance in literature classes, also in the EFL context in Germany (Anton, 2014; Bray, 2002; Hermes, 1997; Krück & Loeser, 1997; Mosner, 1997, 2000). They intend to put the reader in the centre of the reading process and focus on individual reading experiences; fostering both a reflective and creative way of dealing with literary texts. Increasingly they are also used as research instruments in various studies in foreign language didactics (see Fäcke, 2006; Krück & Loeser, 1997).

As Nunan (1994, p. 118) asserts, diaries “are important introspective tools in language research”. They give a first-person account of a learning experience which is documented through the personal entries in these records. The entries can then be “analyzed for recurring patterns or salient events” (Bailey, 1990, p. 215). Thus, they provide insights into the learning process of the record writer. They can be studied by the diarist her-/himself or by someone else, for example, by a researcher (Nunan & Bailey, 2009, p. 293).

Cohen and Hosenfeld (1981, p. 286) differentiate between three different types of introspective data collection: concurrent introspection, immediate retrospection and delayed retrospection. In diaries, all three types may be applied. McDonough and McDonough (1997, p. 122) note that a diary “is not only a re-creation of immediate experience but also a written record”. In reading diaries, readers at times react spontaneously to what they are reading but the writing process also retards the reading process and thus promotes reflection.

Im individuellen Leser-Tagebuch [sic] selbst stehen impulsive und reflexive Anteile nebeneinander. In schnellen spontanen Einträgen kann der Leser Eindrücke gelegentlich so festhalten, wie er sie während der Lektüre wahrgenommen hat. Durch die Versprachlichung ist er in der Regel jedoch gezwungen, über den zu formulierenden Gedanken zu reflektieren, wodurch zusätzliche kognitive Prozesse in Gang kommen. [In the individual reader diary itself, impulsive and reflective parts stand side by side. In fast, spontaneous entries the reader can occasionally capture impressions in the same way s/he perceived them during the reading process. By putting it into language, s/he is, however, forced to reflect upon the thoughts which are formulated, through which additional cognitive processes are triggered.] (Mosner, 2000, p. 85; my translation)

Diary studies in general exhibit a low degree of monitoring by the researcher. They “leave it to the informants to decide what, how much, when and how they provide introspective reports” (Færch & Kasper, 1987, p. 16). Nevertheless, varying degrees of structuring can be discerned in such studies. Some forgo any type of guidelines whereas others give guiding questions the record writers can tackle in their responses.

In this research project, I opted for a reading diary with facultative guiding questions and a pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading section. Guiding questions and prompts offer students support in formulating written responses to the text and they also encourage students to take the endeavour seriously (Mosner, 2000, p. 82). Nevertheless, it has to be acknowledged that they can restrict students in their responses. The pilot phase of this research project showed that the majority of the students who were not provided any guiding questions and only asked to note down their responses to the text in the form of an open-ended narrative, wrote very short and shallow reading diary entries. The students who received prompts and questions, on the other hand, wrote more detailed entries in their diaries. Thus, I decided to provide the students with guiding questions and prompts in my study. However, to keep the level of external influence low, only open questions were formulated. Besides, the students were informed that the questions should be understood as stimuli and that they were not required to answer them all. Instead, they could also go beyond the questions and write about other reading experiences they encountered. Therefore, they served as guidelines but the students were still free to decide what to write in their reading diaries.

The students made their reading diary entries in German. The decision to choose this language was consciously taken because all the students participating in the study were fluent in this language. The limited English proficiency of some of the learners might have led to difficulties in expressing their thoughts and emotions in the target language which in turn could have influenced their responses (see Fäcke, 2006, p. 73). Thus, all diary entries, with exception of the creative tasks in the post-reading section, were written in German. The responses to the creative writing tasks were done in English because these tasks required working with the English texts, i.e. writing another ending for the story, changing the narrative perspective of the story or writing a letter to one of the characters.

The students were asked to write in their reading diaries before, while and after reading the literary text (see Appendices E and F). Before reading, the students could, for example, describe their expectations concerning the text or elaborate on their prior knowledge about the topic as it was reflected in the title or the book cover. Thus, the students were encouraged to activate schemata prior to reading which could aid their understanding process during reading. Entries in this section of the reading diary intended to make students’ expectations visible for the researcher and give further insights into the students’ prior knowledge. During the reading process, the prompts in the reading diary aimed at obscurities the learners came across while reading, the emotions which the literary text evoked in the readers and their favourite quotes of the narratives. In this part of the reading diary, the students were encouraged to think about what is happening in the story and to simultaneously note down their thoughts and feelings. The intention here was to provide insights into the reader’s thoughts and feelings which emerged during the reading process. In the ‘after-reading’ section of the diary, the students were then encouraged to retrospectively reflect on their reading, on expectations that might have been confirmed or changed, and on aspects they particularly liked about the text and those which they disliked. They could also compare the content of the text with their own lives. Moreover, they were encouraged to move beyond the text and their own reactions and reflect upon their reading process. They could, for example, note down whether the text was difficult for them and why this might have been the case. Thus, the focus of this section of the reading journal was placed on the reader’s retrospective reflection of the reading process. Other post-reading activities consisted of text specific tasks. For each text, I provided two analytical and two creative prompts from which the students could choose. These tasks differed from text to text and required detailed understanding of the text. The analytical tasks focused on the meaning of certain paragraphs, the actions of characters and the reader’s own opinion concerning these parts of the text. The creative writing tasks (e.g. letters by characters, dialogues between characters, etc.) required imagining, empathising, and comparing.

There are several reasons why reading diaries are used in this study. First of all, they can document the whole reading experience of the students, whereas other introspective methods of data collection such as thinking-aloud commentaries are usually only able to focus on short texts or parts of longer texts. Thus, reading diaries give insights into the students’ reading process of longer literary texts (Fäcke, 2006, p. 73). Moreover, reading diaries which are written over a longer period of time also make students’ progress during the reading process visible (Mosner, 2000, p. 93). In case of the extensive reading project which was conducted over a period of three months, the documentation of students’ responses gave insights into the developments students went through while reading different texts of Ugandan children’s fiction. Another argument in support of reading diaries as research instruments is the low degree of structuring and monitoring by the researcher. This may encourage students’ autonomy and confirm their anonymity, which in turn might lead to more open and honest answers than, for example, in thinking-aloud commentaries. Diary studies in general also leave room for individuality and thus they “can give teachers and researchers insights on the incredible diversity of students to be found even within a homogenous language classroom” (Bailey, 1983, p. 98).

Making use of reading diaries as research instruments, however, also confronts the researcher with a number of problematic aspects. It is, for example, frequently criticised that diary entries do not necessarily reflect “what was really going on at the time the recordings were made” (Nunan, 1994, p. 123). Since the students are aware that their diaries are read by the researcher, they may address their responses to her/him. They may, for example, exaggerate or withhold data and present their responses in such a manner that they think is viewed favourable by the researcher. When evaluating the responses of the students, therefore, influences of social desirability have to be considered. However, it has to be noted that as in the case of questionnaires the lack of face-to-face contact between the researcher and the students might facilitate responses to sensitive matters better than the direct contact in, for example, an interview. Another aspect which can be both advantageous and problematic is the low degree of structuring and control of reading diaries. Writing reading diary entries requires much time and commitment, which some students wish to avoid. This also became apparent in my study as a number of students wrote very short diary entries and two students did not write any entries in their reading diaries at all.