Why you should keep journaling even before an English test

Most people stop journaling before TOEIC, OPIc, IELTS.

"I need to focus on test prep right now. I'll come back to the journal after the test."

It sounds reasonable. Time is limited. The problem is that once the test is over, the journal almost never comes back. "The test" wasn't really about efficiency — it was a convenient excuse to stop.

I took two English tests. Stopped journaling for one. Didn't stop for the other.

The journal-on test went better

Same person, similar prep window, similar difficulty. The test I kept journaling for scored higher. Could be coincidence, but learning science has a clean explanation.

Spaced Practice

John Dunlosky's 2013 meta-review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest identified the two highest-ROI learning techniques as:

1. Spaced Practice — spreading the same amount of study across multiple sessions retains far more than cramming.
2. Practice Testing — pulling memorized material out of your head is more effective than putting more in.

Daily English journaling does both. Spread across days. Active retrieval every day. A month of one-line journaling before a test is not nothing — sometimes it outperforms a page of vocabulary review.

Hermann Ebbinghaus's classic forgetting curve says you'll forget 60-70% of a memorized word within 24 hours. Re-encountering it in a different context flattens the curve. Daily journaling is the most natural way to re-encounter vocabulary in fresh contexts.

Cognitive Load Theory

Psychologist John Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory divides mental effort into:

• Extraneous load — pressure unrelated to actual learning. Test scores. Time pressure.
• Germane load — cognitive effort that directly contributes to learning.

Test-prep English carries heavy extraneous load. Do only that all day and your brain fatigues. Journaling, by contrast, is germane load — your goal is self-expression, the learning happens as a side effect. Mixing the two disperses the extraneous load and reduces test-prep fatigue.

The Affective Filter Hypothesis

Tests make people anxious. Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis holds that high anxiety dramatically lowers language-acquisition efficiency. Anxiety acts as a filter, blocking incoming input from settling.

Journaling moves anxiety from head to paper. "I'm stressed about the test tomorrow." That one line tends to slow the mental loop. Read it the next day, and yesterday's anxiety looks at you from a slight distance.

Psychology calls this expressive writing (James Pennebaker, 1986). Writing emotions down, instead of letting them rotate in your head, reduces measurable stress markers across many replications.

Test English vs. real English

It's tempting to think tests just check points. But OPIc, IELTS Speaking, and IELTS Writing specifically score your ability to naturally produce your own opinion in English. That's exactly what daily journaling trains.

Don't pause journaling to prepare for the test. Journal while preparing for the test. It's the most efficient route.

So

Don't stop journaling before the test. A three-minute English entry is the best break test prep can have. Score and expression don't grow on separate tracks — they grow together.

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