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3. Writing Skill
Writing skill is the opposite of reading skill. While reading is receptive skill, then writing is productive skill.
a. The Nature of Writing
Basically, writing is the physical act of committing words or ideas into a medium. Bailey 1994 as cited by Rinanti 2009:14 stated that “writing is the
mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into
statements and paragraphs that will be clear for reader”. Rinanti 2009 also stated that there four common purposes of writing. They are to
express idea or share feelings, to teach someone on how to do something, to persuade someone to agree with the wri
ter’s point of view, and to explain or clarify topics.
b. Types of Writing Activities
There are two types of writing activities. They are writing as a process and writing as a product. Rinanti 2009:15 explained that in process writing, the
activities are brainstorming, drafting, writing, feedback, revising, and editing in a a cyclical fashion. Davies and Pearse 2000 provided three examples of simple
writing tasks which can be conducted easily by junior high school students. They are parallel compositions, parallel letters, and picture compositions. These
activities descriptions are as follows.
1 Parallel compositions
In class, the teacher discusses a topic with the students. For example is animal’s characteristic. After creating and showing some sentences, then the
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teacher ask the students to use the sentences as patterns. Later the students can write a parallel composition about other animals same topic.
2 Parallel letters
The students are asked to read a letter, which consists of personal information of someone. The students then write a reply with their own personal
information using the same patterns or format of the letter they have read before.
3 Picture compositions
A volunteer is asked to tell a simple story based on the provided sequence of pictures. After memorizing the story, the students write the story.
Before designing writing material, as productive skill, the researcher will design receptive skill first which is reading skill, reading comprehension to be
exact. The comprehension obtained in this reading later will be used as the basis to create the writing material in this research. Therefore, the integration of reading
and writing skill is needed in this research.
4. The Integration of Reading and Writing
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