17 required to learn and master writing skill based on the curriculum, Kurikulum Tingkat
Satuan Pendidikan KTSP. Moreover, the advantages of learning writing in EFL classes proposed by Raimes 1983 also show that the EFL students really need to
learn writing skill. Writing skill reinforces and challenges the students to learn how to write texts in English, a foreign language for them. Although Tiedt 1989 argues that
the effective writing program is student-centered, where the students become the focus of teaching, the researcher believes that teachers still have important roles in
teaching writing skill. Teachers can help the students during the process of writing, especially in choosing the topic, and also help the students to deal with the
complexity of the target language such as grammatical rules and sentence structure in writing texts.
2.1.2 Report Texts
Report text is a genre of writing which classifies and describes in general terms the way things are Feez Joyce, 1998. It creates a clear picture or impression of a
place, person or object. In writing report texts, the students have to do an observation first or use his or her sense to report a phenomenon. Learning to access information
which is stored in books and other written forms is an important skill which needs to be encouraged in the development of any young writers Martin, 1985. Therefore,
report text is an important text to be learnt by the EFL students since it helps them to widen their knowledge.
18 According to Christie 1990, the communicative purpose of report text is to
describe how information about our world is organized in various disciplines. In writing report texts, the students do not focus on the sequence of events but on the
description of phenomenon about living and non-living things, for example, animals, plants, and computers.
The description of things in report and description texts is different from each other. Report text describes things in general. Meanwhile, description text describes
things in specific. The difference of these two genres of text can be shown in the title of the text. The example of the title of report text is “Bicycle” then the example of the
title of descriptive text is “Hanna’s Bicycle”. From the example of the title of report text, “Bicycle”, the students will focus their writings on describing the bicycle in
general. But from the example of the title of descriptive text, “Hanna’s Bicycle”, the students will focus their writings on describing Hanna’s bicycle that might have some
differences to other bicycles in general. Therefore, report text describes things in general, not in a specific way, in order to give information to the readers.
In order to write report text, the students have to understand the generic structure of report texts. Generic structure of report text consists of general
classification and descriptions. Derewianka 1990 states the general classification of report text functions to locate what is being talked about in the universe of things and
the descriptions function to talk about various aspects of the subject. The general classification tells the topic that is going to be reported in the text. It describes the
topic in general, for example the definition and classification of the topic discussed.
19 The details of the topic are reported in the description part. It describes the topic more
in detail in order to support the general classification.
2.1.3 Perception
