The main objective of this research is to analyze: (1) the implementation of utilizing dialogue journal as an additional practice in writing; (2) the students’ all writing skills indicators after the implementation of dialogue journal as an additional practice in writing; (3) the effect of gender in the implementation of dialogue journal; (4) the difficulties in the implementation of dialogue journal as an additional practice in writing; and (5) the teachers’ solution to overcome the difficulties in the implementation of dialogue journal as an additional practice in writing.
This case study research was conducted at SMN 2 Cianjur. The research purposively sampling twenty students of grade XI. In order to collect the data, I used three techniques of data collection namely interview, observation, and document analysis. The data were obtained from data sources; (1) informant (the teacher and the student), (2) event, and (3) document. To validate the data, the researcher applied data triangulation, member checking, and external audit. The data in this research was analyzed by using a model proposed by Yin (2014, p. 156) that involved three steps: comparing, affirming, and explaining data.
The research findings revealed that: (1) The implementation of dialogue journal was done five up to seven minutes before the lesson ended, right after the teacher reviewed the lesson, gave feedback, and informed the next lesson. The dialogue journal involved three parts, those were greeting/salutation, body, and closing; (2) Dialogue journal helped the students’ writing a bit in some aspects of writing like organization, content, grammar and mechanic. Vocabulary was the only aspects that got significant benefits due to dialogue journal; (3) Gender did not give influence to the students’ performance in dialogue journal. Students’ performance in dialogue journal changed based on motivational reasons which came both from intrinsic factor and extrinsic factor; (4) Both students and teacher were having some difficulties during the process of dialogue journal. Teacher’s difficulties in doing dialogue journal were time, overly personal writing,  and superactive students.  Whereas,  students’  difficulties  in  doing dialogue  journal were the limited time, vocabulary, grammar, and how to respond and give suggestion to the questions given by the teacher; and (5) To cope with such difficulties, the teacher should manage a schedule to be able to correct students’ work and respond to the students’ questions. Furthermore, students’ difficulties in doing dialogue journal could be solved by allowing students to use five first- language  words  when  they  had  difficulties  in  vocabulary,  discussing  privacy issues, and doing peer correction. As the contribution of dialogue journal on facilitating students’ writing skill was observed in this study, more research could be conducted to investigate the effects of dialogue journal on other language skills such as; speaking and reading.