The teacher of a class of pre-university students of English as a second language at the high-intermediate level assesses the usefulness of dialogue journal writing to develop second language skills and to promote better writing. The course emphasized essay-writing, not technical writing, and was organized around thematic units using a textbook. Students were required to write a dialogue journal entry for each class meeting and encouraged to write about their experiences with English writing and their responses to content presented in class. Research on several aspects of journal writing (the teacher-student interaction it allows, the sense of audience it promotes, its role in developing pre-writing strategies, and its use as a mode of exploring ideas) is reviewed and the concepts are illustrated in excerpts from student journals. The benefits to the teacher and concerns expressed by the students are also discussed. The first and last entries in one student's journal are presented for comparison. (MSE)