This study examined how journal writing could improve language minority students' language acquisition. Participants were Serbo-Croatian and Laotian second and third graders from two elementary schools. Initial student surveys and writing assignments, conducted in September to document the problem, found that students lacked writing skills, vocabulary skills, and strong influences in their native languages. Their first language acquisition had not been fully developed. They lacked guidance from their teachers, which resulted in bad learning habits (sloppiness, poor spelling, and lack of self-correction). Based on literature that suggests providing guidance during journal writing time (which builds upon native language skills that can be transferred into English), students participated in a journal writing intervention in which they wrote three types of journals (personal, dialogue, and literary). Teachers observed students daily using a checklist. Students completed a writing assignment and survey at the end of the project. Results indicated that students demonstrated improved writing skills following the intervention. They produced more developed and complex material, and their writing was more mature. They became able to write paragraphs, their sentence structure improved, and the length of their written material increased. (Contains 21 references.) (SM)