ABSTRACT
Introduction Diary-writing is a pervasive narrative form. It has, of course, always played an important role in many people's private reflections, and has had many famous exponents (Anne Frank, Samuel Pepys, Malinowski, Katherine Mansfield and many more). It is widely used in specialized and nonspecialized ways in such diverse fields as history, literature, anthropology, autobiography, sociology, health studies, clinical psychology and psychotherapy. In education and in English language teaching, the diary has become increasingly significant both as a reflective genre in itself, and as one of a battery of interpretive micro-ethnographic research techniques. In Van Lier's (1988) terms, most diary-writing clearly belongs in the categories of least control and selection of data (see Chapter 3).
