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Dialogue journals (DJs) are a type of extensive writing assignment, in which students write for the purpose of communication with their instructor. Previous research has shown that DJs can help students develop writing skills; however, few studies have analyzed how DJs compare with traditional prompt‐based assignments (TAs). The present study, therefore, presents a quasi‐experimental comparison of texts from first‐ and second‐year German classrooms that used either DJs or TAs. Analysis focused on five metrics: (1) word count, (2) sentence count, (3) words per sentence, (4) text‐type ratio (TTR), and (5) measure of textual lexical diversity (MTLD). Results for word and sentence count indicated that TA texts were longer. However, DJs resulted in more complex writing, as measured by sentence length, MTLD, and TTR. Taken together, results suggest that journals can promote writing that is both communicatively oriented and linguistically complex. The article concludes by offering suggestions for practical implementation of DJs. The Challenge: Most language programs focus on communication, but this is not always reflected in prompted writing assignments that center linguistic structure. Dialogue journals provide an alternative that allows students to communicate with their instructor on a topic they choose. This article aims to understand how journals compare to more traditional approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquisition of verbal morphology presents challenges for many second language (L2) learners, in part because they do not readily process those forms during sentence comprehension. Instead, L2 learners rely on lexical-semantic cues (e.g., temporal adverbs and explicit subjects). This study investigated the role of task-essential training in changing learners' processing tendencies and tested whether such changes were related to increased performance with the L2 Spanish present, preterite, and future tenses and first- and third-person morphology. The experiment compared a no-training control group to three groups of learners who completed a multisession task-essential training following the principles of structured input (SI). Groups varied in the type of feedback they received. Results of a cue-reliance assessment indicated that each SI group relied significantly more on verbal inflections after training while the control group did not. Furthermore, the extent to which groups relied on verbal inflections on posttest measures correlated moderately to strongly with performance on interpretation and written production measures. Implications are discussed for input processing, learned attention, and pedagogy, in particular the impact of feedback on cue reliance and learning outcomes.