communication with each other in different ways. d.
The communication approach This approach stresses on the purpose of writing and the audience of
it. Students write themselves the crucial questions about purpose and audience:
1 Why am I writing this?
2 Why will people read it?
Traditionally, the teacher alone has been the audience for a students writing. However, some feel that writers do their best when writing. It is
truly a communicative act, with a writer writing for a real reader. As such, the readership may be extended to the classmates.
e. The grammar-syntax-organization approach
This approach stresses on simultaneous works or more than one compositions features. Teachers who follow this approach maintain that
writing cannot be seen as composition of separate skills which are learned sequentially. Therefore, students should be trained to pay
attention to the organization while they also work on the necessary grammar and syntax. This approach links the purpose of writing to the
forms that are needed to convey a message. f.
Process approach Recently, the teaching of writing has moved away from a
concentration on writing as a product to writing as a process. Thus, writers should as themselves these questions:
1 How do I write this?
2 How do I get started?
In this approach, students are trained to generate ideas for writing, think of the purpose and the audience, and write multiple drafts in order
to present written products that communicate their own ideas. Teachers who use this approach give students time to try ideas and feedback on
the content of what they write in their drafts. As such, writing becomes a process of discovery for the students as they discover new ideas and
new language forms to express them. Furthermore, learning to write is seen as a developmental process that helps students write as
professional authors do, choosing their own topics and genres, and writing from their own experiences or observations. A writing process
approach requires the teachers to give the students greater responsibility for, and ownership of their own learning students make decisions about
genre and choice of topics and collaborate as they write. As can be seen above, there are many approaches that can be used
to teach writing. The teacher can use one of them or even combine some of the approaches to be implemented. It all depends on many aspects,
especially the context where the teacher is teaching.
3. Teaching Writing in Junior High School
In teaching writing, the teacher can either focus on the product of the writing or the writing process itself. According to Harmer 2001:257-258,
the teacher can use process approach when they aim to deepen the various
kinds of ability employed in writing and use product approach when the emphasis is on the final draft.
Junior high school students can be considered as teenagers. In the teaching and learning process teenagers usually have a great capacity to learn,
a great potential for creativity, and a passionate commitment to things which interest them. Related to this, Harmer 1998:39 states that the most important
thing for teenagers is the search for an individual identity because this search provides the key challenge for this age group. An identity has to be forged
among friends and classmates. Therefore, in teaching junior high school students, a teacher needs to use relevant topics and engaging materials to
boost the students self-esteem and make them conscious of their need for an identity. In Indonesia, junior high school students are required to be able to
write various kinds of texts. Many techniques and media can be used to help the students in accomplishing this goal. One of them is by using cue cards
media to teach descriptive text.
4. Assessing Writing
White 1994 in Weigle 2001:90 proposes four considerations in designing writing tasks. The first one is clarity, which is essential so that the
test-takers can understand what is required in the task easily. The second one is validity. A valid tasks will result in higher scores gotten by skilled writers,
while the unskilled ones will get lower scores. It also should allows the skill writers to write their best and the weaker ones at their own level. The third
requirement is reliability. It is essential that the scoring criteria should be
applied consistently to all responses, which will result in similar, or identical scores to the same paper by different raters. Finally, a task should be
interesting, both for the writers and the readers. For the first requirement, clarity, the researcher made sure that all of the
students understood what they were supposed to do by explaining orally. In the beginning of the writing process, the researcher also took a look at every
student’s work, so all students would write correctly based on the instructions. For the validity and the reliability, the researcher used a writing rubric, which
was taken from ESL Composition profile proposed by Jacobs et al. 1981 from Weigle 2002:116. For the fourth requirement, the researcher made the
task interesting by providing picture-based cue cards that attracted the students’ attention. Based on the interview with the students, they were
excited to use cue cards because they had never used it in the classroom before and the pictures chosen were suitable for kids their age.
B. Cue Cards Media 1.
Definition of Media
According to Heinich, et al 1993:9-10, a medium plural, media is a channel of communication. It is derived from the Latin word meaning
“between”. The term refers to anything that carries information between a source and a receiver, for example videos, television programs, diagrams,
printed materials, computers, and instructors. On the other hand, Burden and Byrd 1999:137 state that instructional media are books, audio-visual
materials, and duplicated materials which serve instructional functions.
