writing activity, intensive writing can be done by presenting a paragraph to students in which they have to change a given structure throughout.
The next is Self-Writing. It is writing with only the self in mind as an audience. The activities included in it are note taking and diary or journal writing.
In the note-taking activity, the students take notes during a lecture for the purpose of their recall. The fourth is Display Writing. The activities for all language
students include short answer exercises, examinations, and area research reports, which involve an element of display. While the activities for ESL students, they
need to master a whole array of display writing technique. The last is Real Writing. The activities can be seen in the form of academic, vocational or
technical, and personal activities. In the academic activities, the language experience approach gives groups of
students‟ opportunities to convey information to each other.
c. Types of Writing Task
Writing deals with the learner‟s proficiency level and the level of
difficulties in the writing tasks. Brown 2004: 220 proposes four types of writing performance; they are imitative, intensive, responsive, and extensive. The first
type is imitative, which involves the skills in writing letters, words, punctuation, or a very brief sentence. In this case, the writers are trying to master the writing
mechanics. The activities include copying the letters or words, listening to selection closed tasks, picture-cued tasks the students write down the word that
the picture represents, form completion tasks, and spelling tasks. The second is
intensive in which skills in producing suitable vocabulary in a context, collocations, and idioms, and correct grammar features, up to the length of a
sentence are involved. The next is responsive which is about performing a limited discourse level, connecting sentences into a paragraph and creating a logically
connected sequence of two or three paragraphs. In this case, the writers have already mastered fundamentals of sentence-level grammar, more concerned with
the discourse convention that emphasize on context and meaning. Then, extensive is the last type, which involves good management of all processes and strategies
of writing for all purposes, up to the length of the essay, developing ideas to acquire final project. It is usually implemented in research writing.
d. Micro skills of Writing
Writing is one of the productive skills that involve producing language rather than receiving language. To support the writing performance, there are
some micro and macro skills in writing which need to be considered in with the writing performance. Table 2.1. presents the micro and macro skills in writing as
proposed by Brown 2004:221.
Table 1. Micro and Macro Skills in Writing Micro skills
1 Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
2 Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
3 Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order
patterns. 4
Use acceptable grammatical systems e.g., tense, agreement, and pluralization, patterns, and rules.
5 Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
6 Use cohesive devices in written discourse.
continued
continued
Macro Skills 1
Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. 2
Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose.
3 Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations
as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
4 Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.
5 Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written
test. 6
Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audience‟s interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in
the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing.
The use of micro and macro skills of writing as presented in Table 1 provides some skills which become the focus in learning writing. The micro skills
of writing are appropriately applied to imitative and intensive types of writing tasks, while macro skills of writing are essential for the successful mastery of
responsive and extensive writing. In the teaching of writing, the students need to learn the forms of language as well as the function of language. By using these
micro and macro skills, it can be expected that the writing tasks quality will also be improved and suitable for the students‟ level proficiency.
e. Process of Writing
A writing process is a complicated process since the writing process needs cognitive abilities in recognizing some segments of language to produce a
qualified writing. In general, the writing process is done through two steps that are exploring ideas and processing the ideas into readable text. Rivers 1981:294
