The Nature of Writing

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b. Writing as a Process

Nation 2009: 114 says that one way to differentiate writing with other language skills is to look writing as a process because writing has seven parts that have to be filled by the writers. The seven sub processes of writing proposed by Nation are considering the goals of the writer, having a model of the reader, gathering ideas, organizing ideas, turning ideas into written text, reviewing what has been written, and editing. Nation emphasizes on the communicative aspect between the writer and the reader so that the writer’s meaning can be expressed and successfully caught by the reader. Harmer 2004: 4 also states that there are four stages of writing; they are:

1 Planning

Before writers start to write or type they should think about what they are going to write or say. There are three main issues that have to be considered by the writers in planning stage; they are the purpose of the writing, the audience of their writing, and the content structure of the writing. 2 Drafting The first version of writing is called a draft. In its way to final writing there will be a number of drafts that need to be edited before they come to be final writing. 3 Editing Reflecting and Revising Once the writers have done with their draft, they need to read through what they have written to see if there is any mistake in their writing. In this process, the writers may ask for help from other readers editors to revise 25 and reflect their writing then give the writers comment and suggestion. Then, the writers use the readers’ comment and suggestion to do the next stage of writing. 4 Final drafting After the draft has been edited and the writers have made changes they considered to be necessary, they have made their final draft. This final daft or final writing may be different from its drafts before since it may be has changed by the writers in order to correct and revise the mistakes they made in the previous drafts. In the other hand, Seow in Renandya and Richard 2002: 315 mentions four main stages in process of writing; planning, drafting, revising and editing, that can be applied. Seow has made a schema of writing process as follows: Figure 3: The writing process Seow also says that in teaching writing as a process, writing teacher has to construct the four basic writing stages planning, drafting, revising and editing and three other stages that teacher has to bring to the classroom activity, namely, responding, evaluating and post-writing. 26 1 Planning Pre-writing Pre-writing is activity in the classroom that encourages students to write. In this stage teacher stimulates the students to generate their ideas to start writing. Some activities that can be used in this planning stage are group brainstorming, clustering, rapid free writing, and wh-questions. 2 Drafting At drafting stage, the students are directed to focus on the writing fluency. They are free to write and generate their ideas without feel concerned about grammar. 3 Responding In this stage teacher or peers respond to the students draft by giving comment or suggestion whether orally or written. 4 Revising In revising stage, the students are reviewing their writing and revise it based on the feedback given by their teacher or friends. 5 Editing In this stage the students are asked to put their draft which has been revised as they prepare their final draft to be evaluated by the teacher. They have to be focused on correcting the grammar, punctuation, spelling, diction, sentence structure, and paragraph organization. 6 Evaluating In this stage the teacher evaluates and scores students’ work. The teacher should have some aspects of competencies that will be measured. Asking the 27 students to evaluate their own work or to evaluate each other’s work and give peer feedback can be one of the alternative ways that can be used by the teacher in this stage. It will lead them to be more responsible for their own writing. 7 Post-writing Post-writing is any activity that conducted in the end of writing lesson. The activities in this stage include sharing students’ works, making conclusion and giving feedback, giving motivation to the students, etc. In conclusion, there are several steps that always appearing in the process of writing. Those steps are planning, drafting, editing, and revising or final drafting. The writer should at least follow those four steps to produce a good writing production.

c. Macro and Micro Skills of Writing

Canale and Swain’s 1980 in Hyland 2003: 32 state a framework that writers need in writing. This framework consists of four competences in writing: grammatical competence includes knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and the language system; discourse competence includes knowledge of genre and the rhetorical patterns that create them; sociolinguistic competence includes the ability to use language appropriately in different contexts, understanding readers and adopting appropriate authorial attitudes; strategic competence includes the ability to use a variety of communicative strategies. In addition, Brown 2004: 221 mentions 12 macro and micro-skills of writing. The macro and micro-skills of writing are presented below.