The Nature of Fluency in Witing

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B. Fluency in Writing

1. The Nature of Fluency in Witing

Briere in Hwang 2010: 101 states that one of the most problematic issues in teaching writing is deciding which one that has to be focused first, whether it is quantity or quality of writing. He defines quantity as the number of words or sentences written within a fixed period. Meanwhile, quality is valued by considering grammatical rules, coherence, and ideas. Several experts tend to relate writing fluency with the quantity term. Brown in Fellner and Apple 2006: 19 refers to fluency as “saying or writing a steady flow of language for a short period of time without any self- or other correction at all.” It means that when we say or write something, we do it without getting any trouble like pausing the words because we think of the appropriate words; using wrong tenses; using wrong subject-verb agreement, and the like. In line with this, Fellner and Apple in Thohid 2014: 21 mention that this definition leads to conclusion that the longer a flow of language and the more words a writer produced, the more fluent a writer is. Since being fluent in writing means having almost no hesitation when writing, it needs confident to state opinion, ideas, and thoughts into words. On the contrary, there are also some experts who define writing fluency is related not only with the quantity but also with the quality of writing. As stated by Brand and Brand in Hwang 2010: 101, “The general meaning of fluency is defined as completing an activity or task effortlessly, so that the students complete activities and tasks automatically, fluidly, 21 rapidly, quickly and accurately. To be able to write fulfilling those criteria, it will be hard for people who use English as their foreign language. Many English learners think of English as a difficult language which has many tight rules and vocabulary used for different occassion. It is supported by Lanin in Hwang 2010: 101 that interprets the concept of writing fluency as the ability to organize coherent and cohesive texts with well-grammatical structures that can be easily understood by the readers. Instead of producing many words in fluent way, the text also needs to be readable and understood by the readers. From some experts‟s judgement above, it can be concluded that writing fluency concerns both with the quality and quantity of writing. Therefore, writing fluency needs not only good but perfect understanding of accuracy aspects like grammatical rules and writing mechanics. According to Cassanave in Hwang 2006: 102, focusing on writing fluency enables a writer to write more expressively and freely without worrying about grammatical rules and other accuracy aspects. In addition, focusing on fluency is a way that frees up the writer‟s creativity, problem-solving ability, and other high-order application. It has less attention towards the mechanics of the performance Bloom in Binder et al., 2002: 5.

2. The Strategies for Writing Fluency