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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
The review of related literature is aimed to provide the basic theories of the research. There are five subheadings consisting of review on writing, review
on blog, review on related research, rationale, and hypothesis. There are two main points of view in writing: writing as a process and a final product. It is mentioned
here the stages that are commonly done in the process of writing to produce the writing itself. This chapter also presents the review of literature about blogs as the
main media used in this research. Blog and its features will be explained more in the following section and continued by the review of related researches on the use
of blogs in education, especially teaching-learning English. Finally, it is closed by the rationale and the practical hypothesis of the research.
A. Writing
1. The Nature of Writing
Literacy skills include being able to read and write different sorts of texts for different purposes Cameron, 2005: 124. Literacy, in the sense of social,
provides people with opportunities to share meaning across space and time, while in the sense of cognitive, requires that specific skills and knowledge about how
the written language operates in proceeding text. Fomkin 1990: 342 states “writing is one of the basic tools of civilization”. It was first the pictograms, then
turns into alphabet after centuries. There are three writing systems used in the world: word writing, syllable writing, and alphabetic system. In the word writing
system, every symbol or character represents a word or morpheme as in China; each symbol in the syllable writing system represents a syllable as in Japan; and
each symbol in the alphabetic writing system represents for the most part one phoneme as in English.
Supporting to Fromkin, Bram 1995: 25 states that the purpose of writing is communication. Messages are sent through written form between the
writer and the reader. Nevertheless, a written text uses language in a most
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decontextualized form, produced in isolation from its intended audience and without resource to share context Arndt in Wallace, 1998: 97. It can be
concluded that in writing, someone needs some specific skills to make sure that the other person can get the message of the written text shared.
2. Writing Skills
Writing is one of the English skills. It is usually compared with speaking, reading, and listening. Writing is usually seen as a product, but it is actually also a
process. According to Hudelson in Richard 1995: 130, writing is “a language process in which an individual creates meaning by using symbol to construct a
written text”. The writer’s language background, personal experience, and cultural framework, as well as by the purpose for writing and the audience for the piece
will influence the text that individual constructs. Supporting to Richard, Harris 1993: 10 defines writing as “a process that occurs over period of time,
particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking that precede creating an initial draft”. In the beginning process of writing, initial
draft is created; it is influenced by the writer’s background knowledge and his culture.
Seen as a process, writing is not a simple thing to do. It is done step by step as proposed by Hedge 1998: 9 that “good writers create a text trough certain
processes which lead to successful piece of written work, these are an overall planning, drafting, reviewing, revising, and editing”. In addition, Brown 1994:
321 states “the process approach to writing instruction is an attempt to take advantage of the nature of the written code to give students a chance to think as
they write”. It implies that writing is not instantly produced since writers need a couple of time to be able to produce a complete text. Drawn from the Writing
Tutorials on Microsoft
©
Student 2008 DVD
®
, the four steps of good writing are: a.
Prewriting: choosing the topic and gathering information; b.
Writing: write three parts of structure beginning, middle, and ending; c.
Revising: checking the trait of ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency;
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d. Editing: checking the use of punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and
grammar mechanics. In other words, writing process is periods of thinking that precede
creating an initial draft due to conveying one’s meaning using symbol influenced by one’s language background, personal experience, and cultural framework. It is
done through the process of prewriting, drafting, writing, revising, and editing. From the point of view that writing is a product, writers should master
certain skills due to creating a good writing. Hedge 1998: 8 points out some skills that writers need, these are: a getting the grammar right; b having a range
of vocabulary; c punctuating meaningfully; d using the conventions of layout correctly, e.g. in letter; e spelling accurately; f using a range of sentence
structure; g linking ideas and information across sentences to develop the topic; h developing and organizing the content clearly and convincingly.
Nunan mentions some other writing skills that it includes the control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, spelling, letter formation,
cohesiveness and coherence of paragraphs and texts 1998: 6. He states: Writing involves mastering of the mechanics of letter formation and
obeying conventions of spelling and punctuation; using grammatical system to convey one’s intended meaning; organizing content at the level of the
paragraph and the complete text to reflect givennew information and topiccomment structures; polishing and revising one’s initial efforts;
selecting an appropriate style for one’s audience 1998: 7.
Burns and Broman 1975: 232 note the mechanics in writing as follows: a.
capital letters first word of a sentence, proper names, titles of books, days of the week
b. period end of a declarative sentence, abbreviations
c. question mark end of a question sentence
d. apostrophe contractions
e. exclamation point end of an exclamatory sentence
f. sequence of sentences
g. paragraphs
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Supporting to the previous theories, Brown 1994: 327; 2004: 220 mentions some microskills for writing as follows:
a. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
b. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
c. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order
patterns. d.
Use acceptable grammatical systems e.g. tense, agreement, and pluralisation, patterns and rules.
e. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
f. Use cohesive devices in written discourse.
Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that writing is a process of producing a piece of written text to convey meanings. In doing so, the
writer has to master the skills of producing letters in correct spelling, having a range of vocabulary, using correct grammatical system—including the use of a
range of sentence structure, maintaining cohesiveness and coherence of paragraphs and text, and developing and organizing the content clearly and
convincingly.
3. Writing in the Classroom
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