Writing also concerns about communication, action, and social interaction. Pattel and Jain 2008: 125 define writing as linguistic behavior
which is reflected by representing sounds with visual symbols. Sakolik 2003: 88 argues that writing involves a physical and a mental act. The physical act refers to
simply publishing some words or ideas to media which can be online or in print. Then, the mental act is about producing ideas and thinking how to deliver the
ideas by organizing them into a good text. In addition, Hyland 2004: 27 states that writing is not simply a matter of looking for ideas and organizing them into a
good text. However, writing is also social and interactional. It has certain purpose to be delivered to public which means there is an interaction between writers and
readers. To conclude, writing is one of English skills that requires some abilities
such as finding the ideas, transferring them into a good text, and delivering the text to public with certain purpose.
b. Writing Skills
To become a good writer, there are some skills that the participants should master. Proposed by Heaton 1990: 135, there are some skills that they should
posses. They include the language use, mechanical skills, treatment of content, stylistic skills, and judgment skills. Language use deals with the ability to write
correct sentences. Mechanical skills are related to the use of conventions peculiar to the written language. Treatment of content is about how the participant
creatively develops some ideas. Stylistic skills are in relation with the treatment of content. These skills also require creativity in manipulating sentences and
paragraphs and also in using language effectively. Then, the judgment skills are about constructing written products based on certain purpose and audience
supported by the ability of selecting, organizing, and ordering related information.
There are three levels of participant s’ writing skills. As proposed by
Oglan in Hirai 2010: 106, the levels are reluctant, developing, and independent. Reluctant participants commonly write in the first person, find some difficulties
with the text organization and content, and commonly have much less coherent paragraphs. Developing participants are good in organizing the text, using
appropriate conventions, supporting the text with evidences, and structuring the text with various sentence structures. Independent participants are well-read and
advanced in using conventions, organizing the text, proofing with some evidences and using various sentence structures.
According to Brown 2007: 399, there are some micro- and macro-skills for writing production. They are as follows.
Microskills 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,
pluralization, patterns, and rules.
