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Teaching Writing

Teaching Writing

Writing is one kind of skill that must be mastered by the English learners. Mastering writing skill will assist them to deliver and express their thought through written from which has many gains such as give information, persuade the reader, and so on. Although we know that it skill require others ability in order to create a good writing, the others abilities are vocabulary, grammar, and knowledge. All of those will support the product of writing become the great written text. Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system)  It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.

Writing is in a second language is not an easy task. Nunan (1991) states that in terms of skills, producing a coherent, fluent, extended piece of writing is probably the most difficult thing to do in language learning it is the important thing in writing. For us, teachers of English as a foreign language, to teach writing requires some strategies and techniques. Writing is a means of communication, especially when the person we want to communicate is not right there in front of us. It has been widely admitted that writing is the most complex and difficult skill compared to the three other skills, i.e., listening, speaking, and reading.

White (1982: 25) says that writing is different from speaking. Firstly, writing is permanent, but speaking is not. Secondly, we can correct what we have written and it is received by the reader. The corrections in the speaking tend after we have made an error, which our audience has received. Writing is difficult productive skills because it is require more effort to produce their ability in language. Not only that, it is also the students must be right about the structure, vocabulary, syntax and the other components of writing. Among the students, starting to write is the most frequent problem encountered. Most people agree that writing skills are increasingly important and often not adequately taught. When writing is taught in schools, writing instruction often takes a backseat to phonics, handwriting skills, and reading comprehension.

According to Gaith (1982) Writing is most likely to encourage thinking and learning when students view writing as a process. By recognizing that writing is a recursive process, and that every writer uses the process in a different way, students experience less pressure to "get it right the first time" and are more willing to experiment, explore, revise, and edit. Yet, novice writers need to practice “writing” or exercises that involve copying or reproduction of learned material in order to learn the conventions of spelling, punctuation, grammatical agreement, and the like. Furthermore, students need to “write in the language” through engaging in a variety of grammar practice activities of controlled nature. Finally, they need to begin to write within a framework “flexibility measures” that include: transformation exercises, sentence combining, expansion, embellishments, idea frames, and similar activities).

According to Seow (2002) writing is an activity with some stages or steps. She said that writing essay is what you will be doing in this class in similar in several ways to building a cabin The use pictures in teaching writing is able to support the students to study (Raimes, 1983:11.) Writing paragraph is the process of putting ideas down on the paper to transform thoughts in words, to sharpen the main ideas to give them structure and coherent organization. Writing is one of four skills in English. Writing is one only considered as the representation of language in textual medium trough the use of a set of sign or symbols. It is defined as a way of gaining control over our ideas and getting them down on pair paper. Writing skill include several elements in English such as grammar and vocabulary.

Writing is difficult productive skills because it is require more effort to produce their ability in language. Not only that, it is also the students must be right about the structure, vocabulary, syntax and the other components of writing. Among students, starting to write is the most frequent problem encountered. Most people agree that writing skills are increasingly important and often not adequately taught. When writing is taught in schools, writing instruction often takes a backseat to phonics, handwriting skills, and reading comprehension.

Writing is a tool to communicate between writer and the reader, by writing the writer can tell the reader about information, situation, and many others. Writing is an effort to create a dialogue with readers. And it involves exploring our relationship to our reader in much the same way that me explore our relationship to people we talk to. Writing has been considered the most neglected one in Indonesia school. According to Alwasillah (2004), the teaching writing in Indonesia school is mostly dominated by teachers’ explanation about grammar and rhetoric, the focus of which is on the sentences and paragraph structures. This creates an impression that writing is more about applying rules than communicating ideas. Writing is both a skill and a means of self expression. Writing is clearly the most complex process among the four language skill. Writing is one of four skills in English is defined as a way of gaining control over our ideas and getting them down on plain paper. It is a complex process that allows writer to explore thoughts and ideas and make them visible and concrete. It contains of some components, such as grammar, mechanic, vocabulary, text organization, and developing ideas. So it is no wonder if many students say that writing is difficult.

Writing skill is a creative act. Through writing, we can make sense something such as experience, stories, text or events and many others. From writing, we can communicate each other, send a message and give information to other people. Writing has been considered the most neglected one in Indonesian school. According to Alwasillah (2004), the teaching writing in Indonesian school is mostly dominated by teachers’ explanation about grammar and rhetoric, the focus of which is on the sentences and paragraph structures. This creates an impression that writing is more about applying rules than communicating ideas. Writing is both a skill and a means of self expressions. Writing is clearly the most complex process among the four language skill. Writing is one of four skills in English is defined as a way of gaining control over our ideas and getting them down on plain paper. It is complex processes that allows writer to explore through and ideas and make them visible and concrete. It contains of some components, such as grammar, mechanic, vocabulary, text organization, and developing ideas. So it is no wonder if many students say that writing is difficult.

Based on Wingersky (1981:1) writing is a way of gaining control over yours ideas and getting them down on paper. There is nothing mysterious about this process, and you can learn to write effectively and feel confident about your writing to put in time and effort. After looking at the references above, almost all definitions of writing are the most difficult skill since it involves several competent including contents, vocabularies, rhetoric, grammatical structures, and mechanics, such as punctuation and capitalization.
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