Writing Diary Entries

If you are asked to write a diary/journal entry in the exam, then you will not normally be asked to write an entry that is personal to you and has occurred in real life. Instead, you will be required to write a fictional (imaginary) diary/journal entry. The appropriate layout for a diary entry will consist of:

• Giving each diary/journal entry a day and a date.
• You can begin your diary/journal entry with the phrase ‘Dear Diary’ if you wish, although this is not compulsory.
• Describing what has happened that day and reflect on your thoughts and feelings of the day’s events.
• If writing a number of diary entries, link them by developing the different events occurring in that day/week.

An example of how a diary entry may be laid out in the exam has been provided:

Plan the contents of the entry using short, brief bullet points – remember, spend no longer than five minutes planning. Diary entries are not normally told chronologically (writing down the events in the order in which they occurred in time) so your entry might sound something like this:

As you can see from the example above, ‘on my way to the shop’ is the first action that has occurred in actual time but it is not written like this in the diary entry. Diary entries are not normally told chronologically (writing down the events in which they occurred) and normally have a ‘chatty’ style. Notice the interjection ‘oh’ that is included in the above example (this is an informal element of English that is normally found in speech). A diary entry can be more informal than any other piece of writing because these entries are private pieces of writing that are much more personal than anything else you will be required to write in the exam. The personal nature of the writing requires you to write informally; however, remember not to use any slang and keep any colloquial language to a minimum as you are being assessed on your English skills in the exam.

You may also notice that it is written in the first person. In a diary/journal entry you will either be writing about yourself, or as a character that is writing about themselves. This means that you will need to add some characterisation into your writing. You can do this using certain features; for example, the character above is excitable and this is shown through their frequent use of exclamatives (‘!’). The entry provided includes recorded speech rather than direct; this is a common feature for a diary entry (we will discuss this and characterisation in much more detail in Unit 4 of this course).