6
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Theoretical Review
1. Writing
a. The Definitions of Writing Writing is one of language skills which are kind of productive skills. It has
crucial functions for communication in daily life. That is why this skill is important to be learnt. There are some definitions of writing by experts. Based on
the Oxford Advance d Learner’s Dictionary Hornby, 1995: 1383, writing is the
activity or occupation of writing e.g. books, stories, or articles. As Heffernan and Lincoln 1986:3 states, writing is a mean of communication. It can be said that
people can exchange information through written forms. The examples of real communication in written forms are public signs, instructions, newspaper,
magazines, brochures, and so on. In line with this statement, Raimes 1983: 11 states that writing means a
connected text and not just a single sentence, which writers write for a purpose and a reader. It is clearly shown that writing is connecting some sentences into a
text. Writers, of course, have some purposes in writing the text that is to communicate with readers. That is why each sentence has its own meaning which
functions to deliver messages. Bell and Burnaby in Nunan 1989: 36 point out that writing is an
extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is required to demonstrate control of a number of variables stimultaneously in a sentence level.
These include control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and a letter formation. It could be said that writing is not
simply changing ideas into a written form. Writers have to consider those aspects in order to be understood by readers. Giving more attention to those aspects are
important because writing does not only need some stages but it also has special conventions related to grammar, vocabulary, letter, words, and text-formation that
are manifested by handwriting, spelling, layout and punctuation Harmer, 2007;323.
b. Characteristics of Writing Learning Brown 2000: 335 states that written products are often the result of
thinking, drafting, and revising procedures that require specialized skills that not every speaker develops naturally. Having a good ability in writing is not an easy
thing to do. In this case, the students do not simply write and ignore the meaning. As Brown 2000: 337 states, meaning is not what writers start out with but what
writers end up with.That is why the best strategy is needed in teaching writing in order to improve students’ skills.
It is known that writing teaching and learning process is one of English macro skills. Brown 2001: 343 enumerates micro and macroskills for writing as
follows. Microskills include; 1. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English
2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. 3. Produce an acceptable care of words and use appropriate word order
patterns. 4. Use acceptable grammatical systems e.g. tense, agreement
pluralization, patterns and rules. 5. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
6. Use cohesive devices in the written discourse.
Kategori