General Concept of Writing

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2.2 Review of the Theoretical Background

In this part, I would like to talk about the review of the theoretical background. It includes the explanation of general concept of writing, writing skills, teaching writing, narrative texts, teaching narrative texts, teaching English to Senior High School students, and video clips.

2.2.1 General Concept of Writing

Besides in spoken form, people can express their ideas and feelings in written form through writing activity. The word “writing” derives from a verb, “write”. Hornby 1995: 1382 states that the word “write” means: 1 to make letters or other symbols on a surface, usually paper, especially with a pen or pencil, 2 to compose something in written form, 3 to put information on a sheet of paper or in the appropriate places on a form. Moreover, the word “write” also means “to make marks which represent letters, words or numbers on a surface, such as paper or a computer screen, using a pen, pencil or keyboard, or to use this method to record thoughts, facts or messages” Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Third Edition. Furthermore, Boardman and Frydenberg 2002: xii write: The writing process consists of more than just picking up a pencil and writing a paragraph or an essay from beginning to end. Writing is a process because it goes through many stages. It starts with understanding what is expected of the writer in a writing assignment. Next, it involves thinking about what the writer is going to write and planning how the writer is going to organize it. The final steps involve writing, checking the work, and rewriting. Meyers 2005: 2 states that “writing is a process of discovering and organizing ideas, putting them on paper and reshaping and revising them. By doing writing, language learners will be able to measure how good their English 12 is, because it deals with their grammar and vocabularies mastery. Moreover, it also has something to do with learners’ knowledge of the target language culture.” In those four definitions of writing above, writing is seen as a process. Another expert that gives a definition of writing as a process is Harmer. He 1983: 86 states that “writing is a process that what we write is often heavily influenced by the constraints of genre, then those elements have to be presented in learning activities.” Oshima and Hogue 2006: 265 also state that “writing is a process of creating, organizing, writing, and polishing. In the first step of the process, you create ideas. In the second step, you organize the ideas. In the third step, you write a rough draft. In the final step, you polish your rough draft by editing it and making revisions.” From some definitions of writing above, I am able to conclude that writing is not as simple as putting or making letters on a paper or other media. Writing needs a process from planning until presenting the text. By doing writing, someone is able to express herhis thoughts, organize them into logical order, and share them to other people.

2.2.2 Writing Skills