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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
As it has been presented previously, this study aims to improve the eighth grade students’ writing ability of SMP N 3 Tempel in the academic year of
20132014. This chapter provides a review of related literature on writing and describes important issues related to thematic progression.
A. Literature Review
1. Defining Writing
For years, many experts in TEFL are concerned with the definition of writing. Patel and Jain 2008: 125 define writing as
“linguistic behaviour” which is reflected by representing sounds with visual symbols. Bussman 1996: 1294
notes that writing is a way to record spoken language into graphic signs. On the other hand, Malmkjӕr 1996: 559 mentions that writing is understood as the use
of overall “written marks” and their conventions. Sakolik 2003: 88 argues that writing involves “a physical act” and “a
mental act”. Writing is a physical act since it is simply an act of putting down words or idea to some media. The media can be paper, text message in a mobile
phone or a computer. Writing as a mental act refers to the act of producing ideas, thinking about how to state the ideas and organizing the ideas into a good text.
Nevertheless, Hyland 2004: 27 adds that writing is not simply a matter of looking for ideas and organizing the ideas. Writing, he says, is also social and
interactional. It means that writing is aimed to achieving certain purposes. The purposes should be recognized or understood by the readers. If the purpose in
writing is achieved, there will be an interaction between the writer and the reader.
9 Based on the various definition quoted above, it can be inferred that
writing is a kind of purposeful linguistic behaviour which embodies physical, mental, social and interactional acts to put down ideas in the form of graphic
symbols to some media.
2. Micro and Macro Skills of Writing
There are six micro skills and macro skills of writing. As quoted from Brown 2004: 221, the following are the micro skills and the macro skills.
Micro skills
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.
Macro skills
a. Use rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse.
b. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts
according to form and purpose. c.
Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relation as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given
information, generalization and exemplification. d.
Distinguish between literal and implied meaning. e.
Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audience’s interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing
with fluency in the first draft, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peers and instructor feedback and using feedback for revising and editing.
According to Brown 2004: 220, there are four categories of writing performance: imitative, intensive, responsive and extensive. Imitative is the ability
to write letters, words, punctuation, spelling, and sentences. Intensive is the skills to produce acceptable vocabulary within a context, collocations and standard
grammatical forms up to the length of a sentence. Responsive refers to the ability
10 to perform at a limited discourse level, to connect sentences into a paragraph and
creating a logically connected sequence of two or three paragraphs. Extensive is the ability to achieve a purpose, to organize and to develop ideas logically, to use
supporting details, and to use grammatical and lexical variety. Micro skills and macro skills of writing are the basis to define the criterion
of an assessment. The micro skills apply more appropriately to the imitative and intensive category, while macro skills are essential for successful mastery of the
responsive and extensive category.
3. What Makes Writing Difficult