Defining Writing Micro and Macro Skills of Writing

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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