to readers about the things.
16
Based on Ploeger’s view above, writing can be considered as an activity which covers two steps, i.e. discovering things, may be
in the form of ideas, feelings, etc., and communicate them to the readers in the written form. For instance, as one wants to write about the Javanese culture,
heshe must recall anything that heshe knows or feels about Javanese culture, for instance from its language or the way the Javanese people behave; then when
heshe writes those knowledge related to Javanese culture down into a piece of paper to be read by hisher readers.
In addition, Broughton et al reveal that writing is considered as an activity which is both private and public.
17
This notion can be interpreted that writing is private due to the fact that it is done by the writer alone, whereas it is considered
public activity because it involves others or audiencereaders, i.e. the writers try to communicate their ideas to readers, and sometimes the piece of writing is
determined by the readers’ needs. Moreover, Langan states that writing is a skill that can be learned as well
as it is a process of discovery entailing a number of steps.
18
This definition gives a description of writing that writing is a skill that can be learnt by anyone, certainly
through continuous practices, whereas it is considered as a process of discovery due to the fact that to have a good final draft of writing, one should follow a
number of steps through editing or revising until heshe finds that the writing has served its needs.
To sum up, based on the definitions of writing above, writing can be considered as a complex activity which is done alone by the writer through a
number of steps started from searching the existing knowledge to publicizing the composition to readers. The more people practice to write the more skillful they
create a composition.
16
Katherine Ploeger, Simplified Paragraph Skills, Lincolnwood: NTC Publishing Group, 2000, p. 5.
17
Geoffrey Broughton et al., Teaching English as a Foreign Language Second Edition, New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 116.
18
John Langan, Exploring Writing: Paragraphs and Essays, op. cit., pp. 7—9.
2. Cycles of Writing
To obtain a good composition, there are a number of steps or cycles that must be followed by any writers. A number of experts have their own views
related to the cycles of the writing. This section discusses the cycles of writing based on some experts in details.
Ruetten and Pavlik reveal that there are some processes of writing which consist of:
a. Prewriting The process where one considers audience or the readers, discovers ideas,
narrows the topic through brainstorming, determines a controlling idea, selects the supporting ideas, and organizes the idea in a logical way.
b. Drafting This is the process where one starts to write the ideas down into a piece of
paper to form a paragraph. c. Revising
This is the process where one revises the composition in order that the ideas are conveyed logically and can be understood by readers.
d. Editing This is the process where one checks the composition again whether it has
used correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
19
Besides, Seow reveals that the writing process consists of four basic stages as
what Ruetten and Pavlik mention above
i.e. planningprewriting, draftingwriting, revisingredrafting, and editing, but in the classroom context he
adds three additional stages which derive from teachers’ forces to students as follows:
a. Responding It is the stage in which teachers have some interventions or reactions to
students’ first draft. It is commonly conducted by the teachers as the students
19
Mary K. Ruetten and Cheryl Pavlik, Developing Composition Skills: Academic Writing and Grammar, Boston: Heinle Cengage Learning, 2012, Third Edition, pp. 20—25.
are between the process drafting and revising. It can be in the form of oral or written responsecomments.
b. Evaluating It is the stage in which teachers evaluate students’ writing. The students’
writing are evaluated through analytical scoring i.e. the scoring conducted based on the specific aspect of writing or holistic scoring i.e. the scoring
conducted based on the global interpretation of the aspect of writing. The aspect of writing encompasses grammar and structure, relevance, development
and organization of ideas, spelling and punctuation, the word choice, and so on. Moreover, this stage can be conducted by the students themselves as well;
in this case, they are encouraged to evaluate their peers’ writing based on the scoring criteria above.
c. Post writing It is the stage referring to any kinds of activity in which students and teachers
can do to the students’ final writing. This is conducted as a reward or motivation that the students’ writings are important and worthwhile.
Publishing, sharing, reading aloud, transforming text for stage performance, or adhering them to the notice-board are the instances of any activities that they
can do.
20
In addition, Brown and Hood assert that the writing process theoretically encompasses some activities such as preparing, drafting, and revising, but in fact
the writing process practically may run flexibly among one process and the others as represented in Figure 2.1 as follows:
20
Anthony Seow, “The Writing Process and Process Writing,” in Jack C. Richards and Willy A. Renandya Eds., Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current
Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 316—319.
