teaching of first and second language writing suggest students to use these processes. Hence there are many steps to make a good writing,
in which the students learn how to generate the ideas with the steps and process of writing that should be followed to make it coherently.
Writing is also an action process of discovering and organizing the ideas, putting them on paper, and reshaping them. Writing is much
like speaking, because it is a way to discover and communicate the ideas. However, unlike speaking the people get the information from
oral communication but in writing through a paper.
4
Other experts such as Marianne Celce-Murcia and Elite Olshtain stated that, writing is the production of the written word that results in
a text but the text must be read and comprehended in order for communication to take place.
5
In short, writing is like a message when someone could not speak with oral communication, written as a text
which the reader comprehend. Based on the above definitions, the writer concludes that
writing is a process of thinking to generate the idea which involves the feeling, experience or activities of someone in order to inform the
reader about the messages.
2. The Types of writing
Generally different types of writing are required for different purposes. Donald Hall in his
“Writing Well” divides types of writing into four kinds, which are:
6
a. Exposition Exposition is an explanation. It does not argue although exposition
can form part of an argument. It does not tell a story-though might
4
Alan Meyers, Gateway to Academic Writing, New York: Pearson Education, Inc, 2005, p. 3.
5
Marianne Celce-Murcia and Elite Olshtain, Discourse and Context in Language Teaching, London: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 142.
6
Donald Hall, Wrting well 2
nd
ed, Boston: Little Brown and Company,2001, p.223.
explain something essential to tell a story. Tricia Hedge defines, “exposition is writing that informs, clarifies, defines, analyze, or
otherwise treats a subject by letting the reader. It often answers the question what, why, how”.
b. Persuasion Persuasion is used in persuading and convincing. Persuasion is
used to make a case or to prove or disapprove a statement or proportion.
c. Description Description tells how something looks or feels or sounds. It
describes features such as sizes, shapes, color, sounds, etc. Alan Meyers stated that a description of a scene allows the readers to see,
hear, or even feel the subject matter clearly, through careful word choice, strong details, and clear organization, people creates a mental
picture for the readers.
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d. Narrative Narrative is telling a story
–by chronological order. Narrative can belong to exposition, as describes the phases the moon. Narration may
help in argument, anecdote or exposition. Based on the book Second Language Writing by Ken Hyland, there
are some factual genres:
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Genre Purpose
Recount
to reconstruct past experiences by retelling events in original sequence
Procedure to show how processes or events are accomplished
– how something is done
Description to give an account of imagined or factual events and
phenomena
7
Alan Meyers, Gateways to Academic Writing, Longman: Longman, 2005, p.60.
8
Ken Hyland, Second Language Writing, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p.20.
