Teaching Writing Writing Skill

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b. Teaching Writing

In order to help students master in one language, teacher should teach them four language skills, including writing. The reason why teacher should teach writing is led by the advantages of writing itself. According to Pereira 1991 writing has moved up in the scale of classroom priorities, partly because it provides the following advantages: 1 Writing and thinking are closely connected. The process of writing enables students to explore a topic fully. 2 Writing helps students to discover what they want to say. The writing process is creative. The students sit down to write with a definite idea in mind, but as they write, new ideas develop. 3 Writing reinforces grammar, idioms, and vocabularies that students have been working with in class. 4 When writing, students become involved with the language, with themselves, and with their audience. 5 Students have the opportunity to be adventurous with the language, to take risks, to go beyond what has been taught. Writing a form of language motivates students to think by exploring a topic, develop it, and compose it in a good organization. Teacher should help the students master language so that the student can produce a good writing. In order to do that, teachers should have a good strategy when they are teaching writing. Fortunately, there are several approaches which can be used to teach writing. One of the approaches that the teacher can use to teach writing is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 12 genre-based approach. Hyland 2003 argues that teachers need to look beyond subject content, composing processes and textual forms to see writing as attempts to communicate with readers if they take a genre orientation to writing instruction. It means that this approach values the communicative purpose of the text. In other word, the focus of this approach is the text type. Genre-based approach has an advantage for students to develop their writing skill. Richards Willy A. Renandya 2002, p.104 state that A genre-based approach provides students with ample opportunities to become aware of the different purposes of written communication and the different ways information is organized in written texts. Teaching using genre-based approach has several stages to do in one cycle. Hyland 2003 argues that the cycle can help the teacher teach writing because the cycle suggests how the teacher of writing can sequence tasks to achieve particular purposes at different stages of learning. Feez 1998 explains five main stages in writing as showed in the following figure. Figure 2.1. Stages of the teachinglearning cycle Feez, 1998:28 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 13 a. Stage 1. Building the Context. This stage is sometimes also called building the knowledge of the field. In this stage, the students are introduced to the context of culture, context of situation, and the social purpose of the authentic model of text-type being studied Feez, 1998. b. Stage 2. Modeling and Deconstructing the Text. This stage is intended to investigate the structural pattern and language features of the text Feez, 1998. In this stage, the teacher’s role is to present examples, the purpose of the texts, identify the stages of the text, and introduce the language features of the texts Hyland, 2003. c. Stage 3. Joint construction of the Text In this stage, students begin to contribute to the construction of whole examples of the text-type and the teacher gradually reduces contribution to text construction Feez, 1998. Students’ growing understanding allows them to create a target text. In this stage, the students develop a text together in collaboration with the teacher and their peers Hyland, 2003. d. Stage 4. Independent Construction of the Text. In this stage, the students work individually to write a text Feez, 1998. The teacher no longer directly gets involved in learning but withdraws to a more encouraging and monitoring role, advising, assisting, and providing feedback on the students’ drafts Hyland, 2003. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 14 e. Stage 5. Linking to Related Texts. In this stage, the students investigate how what they have learnt in this teaching learning cycle can be related to other texts in the same or similar contexts and also related to future or past cycle of teaching and learning Feez, 1998. The teacher and students should cooperate well to achieve a successful learning and teaching process. Considering that teaching writing using genre- based approach needs some stages, it is also the same when teachers are teaching the students how to write a recount text. The stages can help teacher deliver the knowledge of how to write a recount text to the students well. Finally, it is expected that the results of students’ writing are satisfying.

2. Recount