The Notion of Writing .1 General Concept of Writing

10

CHAPTER II FRAME OF THEORIES

2.1 The Notion of Writing 2.1.1 General Concept of Writing Writing is one of the English skills that is considered more than medium of communication. In this sense, Rogers 2005 : 1 assumes writing is one of the most significant cultural accomplishments of human beings. It allows us to record and convey information and stories beyond the immediate moment. Writing makes word permanent and it can expand the collective memory of human beings from small store and the collective memory of our culture until produce writing as many as capacity of library. In addition, writing is a tool for clear thinking, for sharpening our awareness of the realities around us, for solving problems and shaping argument and for developing knowledge. Rogers 2005 : 1 said that with writing, we can supplement our own memory. We can record much longer texts than we could ever hope to memorize. It indicate that writing more permanent to help us memorize every event. Writing also has unnatural advantage, such as time and vocabulary. Writing needs a long time to advance and it can be retrieved. Writing also has much broader vocabulary and permanent words than it is in the speech. Hyland 2003:9 views that writing is a way of sharing personal meanings and writing courses emphasize the power of the individual to construct his or her own views based on a topic. This means that expression of ideas of a certain topic 11 can be done through a written form. So, a particular message can be served in a written form.

2.1.2 Kinds of Writing

There are many kinds of writing. According to Sorenson 1992:38 there are many types of writing such as: 1. Advertising Advertising, a lucrative, multimedia business, probably provides writers more opportunities for employment than virtually any other kind of writing except, perhaps, journalism. 2. Analogy An analogy explain an idea by making a comparison. The analogy may explain how something works, how something looks, what something means. 3. Announcement An announcement serves to let people know about significant events, meeting, policy changes, new information, forthcoming appearances. 4. Argument To present an argument is to persuade someone to agree with you. 5. Autobiography An autobiography is the story of the writer‟s life 6. Biography A biography is the story of a life. It may vary in length from a paragraph to abook. 7. Comparison and Contrast 12 A comparison-contrast paper allows the writer to show similarities in otherwise unlike subjects and differences in otherwise similar subjects. 8. Description Certain situations require papers that are completely descriptive. You may be asked to describe a setting or a microscopic specimen. In addition, almost all papers require some description. For instance, how could a writer talk about the process by which something is made without describing the steps in the process? Cause-effect, comparison-contrast, definition, narration, literary analysis, analogy- almost anything you write may include description. 9. Directions You may be asked to write directions that will explain how to do something or how to reach a destination. 10. Editorial An editorial expresses an opinion. As part of the editorial page of a newspaper or magazine, the editorial differ significantly from news or feature articles. 11. Essay The term essay refer to any short piece of writing that analyze or interprets something in a personal way. 12. Memorandum A memorandum or memo plural: memoranda is a letter designed to be used within a department, or between the departments or branches of a business. 13. Narration 13 In simple words, a narration or narrative tells a story. Sometimes narration is used as a means of development whereby a writer explains his purpose. 14. Opinion The writer must somehow show she or he has examined all the fact, angles, possibilities,m and, as a result, has made a judgment or formed an opinion. 15. Persuasion A persuasive or argumentative paper is used to convince. It may attempt to convince the reader to follow a certain course of action or accept a belief or position.

2.1.3 Process of Writing

The term process writing is no more than a writing process approach to teaching writing. The idea is to construct process-oriented writing instruction that will affect performance. Process of writing will be easier if the teacher give simple process to the student. According to Sorenson 1996 : 5 the writing process should be fairly simple. Whether your prewriting activities resulted in a list, a scratch outline, or a formal outline, the process of writing the first draft is nothing more than the development of the prewriting-activities products. To make writing process easier, Sorenson 1996 : 5 adds there are four broad steps in writing anything: prewriting, writing, revising, and proofreading. Meanwhile, Seow in Richards and Renandya 2002 : 315 said that the writing process as a private activity may be broadly seen as comprising four main stages: planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Meanwhile, process writing as a classroom activity 14 incorporates the four basic writing stages: planning, drafting writing, revising redrafting and editing, and three other stages externally imposed on students by the teacher, namely, responding sharing, evaluating, and post-writing. The writing steps according to Iragiliati et al. 2007 : 2 there are five steps in writing process: Step One: Prewriting thinking about your topic Step Two: Planning organizing your material Step Three: Drafting using your ideas and plans to write a first draft Step Four: Revising improving the focus, content, and organization Step five: Editing checking grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuations, and word choices Based on those theories above, the simple process of writing consists of planning, drafting, editing and evaluating to make writing better.

2.1.4 Teaching Writing

According to Tiedt 1989 : 1, teaching writing is a complex undertaking. He adds that writing is a method of expressing ideas about any subject content; it appears in classrooms everywhere and, therefore, must be the concern of every teacher. It means that teaching writing is a complex process that need concentration to face step by step to make a good writing. In addition, Tiedt 15 1989 : 2 said that contemporary thinking instruction perceives the process of writing as a total learning experience that includes what happens before the student writes prewriting and what happens after the students writes postwriting. As the teacher, we have to know every stud ents‟ activities when teaching writing process from begin till end. Here is an example model of teaching writing: Figure 2.1 Tiedt Holistic Model for Teaching Writing Tiedt, 1989: 3 Based on the figure above, there are eight steps for teaching writing that should be considered by the teacher in teaching writing. The first step is oral language facility. In this step, the teacher gives instruction to the students to think and express the ideas what should they write first. The second step is writing fluency. In this step, the students have to write what they have thought and expressed into a text. The third step is narration story to tell with detail the story Publication Editing Word Choices Sentence Building Exposition-Statement Narration-Story Writing Fluency Oral Language Facility 16 of topic in the writing process. The fourth step is exposition statement to give the arguments of the writer. The fifth step is sentence building. In sentence building, the students must concern to make sentences into readable text. The sixth step is word choices. In the step of word choices, the students must choose appropriate words in writing process. The seventh step is editing. In editing process, the students checking grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuations, and word choices to make sure that writing easy to understood. The last step is publication to publish the result of writing. Therefore, teaching writing is a complex system that every idea must be done step by step from oral language facility begin till publication end of writing process.

2.1.5 Good Writing

To make a good writing is not easy, it is needed free express an idea from writer. According to Sorenson 1996 : 12, the most important concept of writing is to have reached the point at which you are free to express your ideas without worrying about mechanical details, sentence structure and other formal writing techniques. It means that the writer should write down hisher ideas freely without depend on some rules. Stein 1976 : 2 stated that there are six elements of good writing. They are: 1. Clarity Good writing is clear writing. It is plain. No one should have trouble figuring out what you‟re trying to say. A sentence should have immediate impact on any reader of reasonable intelligence. 2. Conciseness 17 Some writi ng is like forgetting to turn off the water faucet. There‟s more than is needed. The best writing is concise; it say what it has to say and then stops. 3. Directness Good writers do not mince words. They are direct and to the point. Understanding suffers when true meaning is wrapped in flowery packages. 4. Objectivity Objective writing also disciplines the mind and sharpens writing skills. If you can present an idea clearly and meaningfully without forcing your own emotions on the reader, you have achieved a breakthrough in communicating. 5. Simplicity Simplicity is the essence of good writing. Avoid long, complex explanations when simple ones will do. Ideas can often be broken down into their simplest parts for clearer understanding. By simple writing, I do not mean simplistic writing. Obviously, some topics require more complex treatment than others. But it‟s also true that much writing is so engulfed in a fog of bloated rhetoric that the reader is left dazed and uncomprehending. 6. Variety If variety is the spice of life, it‟s also one of the main ingredients in good writing. Variety means getting an interesting mix of words, expressions, sentences, phrases and terms. It likewise means using metaphors,similes,and emphasis where needed. Variety calls for the avoidance of repetition, hackneyed expressions and overworked truisms. In short, variety means not being dull. 18 2.2 The Notion of Descriptive 2.2.1 Kinds of Descriptive