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2. Provide many opportunities for students to write
To improve writing skills, students must always practice. The teacher must give many chances for students to develop their writing skills by providing
them some different types of writing. Narrative, recount, report, procedure, and descriptive texts are the examples of writing types that can be provided
by the teacher. 3.
Make feedback helpful and meaningful Students crave feedback on their writing. The teacher must always provide a
feedback for students. In providing a direct feedback, make sure the students understand the vocabulary or symbols that the teacher used.
4. Clarifying The teacher must clarify himself, and for his students, how their writing will
be evaluated . Teacher must evaluate the students’ writing objectively. A
rubric is the answer that can elaborate the elements of writing that are to be evaluated.
b. The Reason for Teaching Writing
There are many reasons why the teacher must teach writing to students of English as a foreign language. According to Harmer 1998:79, reinforcement,
language development, learning style and writing as a skill are the reasons why the teacher teach writing to their students.
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1. Reinforcement: to see how the students acquire language is not only by an oral way, but also from the language writing down. The visual
demonstration of language construction is needed for students to be an aid to commuting new language to memory. It is also useful for students to
write sentences using new language shortly after they have studied it. 2. Language Development: The mental activity in writing helps the students
to learn by on going learning experience. 3. Learning Style: Each student has a different learning style. Writing is
suitable for learners who produce language in slower way. 4. Writing as a skill: Writing is included to basic language skills. Beside
writing, the students need to know how to write advertisement, letter, etc.
c. Approaches in Teaching Writing
There are various approaches to teach writing. Hyland 2003:2 proposes some
approaches to teach writing, those are:
1. Focus on language structures
In this view, learning to write in a foreign or second language mainly involves linguistic knowledge and the vocabulary choices, syntactic patterns,
and cohesive devices that comprise the essential building blocks of texts. 2.
Focus on text functions This approach here relates structures to meanings, making language
use criteria for teaching materials. It aims to help students develop effective
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paragraphs through the creation of topic sentences, supporting sentences, and transitions, and to develop different types of paragraphs
3. Focus on creative expression
This approach can help generate self- awareness of the writer’s social
position and literate possibilities. Writing is a way of sharing personal meanings and writing courses emphasize the power of the individual to
construct his or her own views on a topic. 4.
Focus on the writing processes The process approach to writing teaching emphasizes the writer as an
independent producer of texts, but it goes further to address the issue of what teachers should do to help learners perform a writing task.
5. Focus on content
This involves a set of themes or topics of interest that establish a coherence and purpose for the course or that set out the sequence of key areas
of subject matter that students will address. 6.
Focus on genre and contexts of writing Teachers who take a genre orientation to writing instruction consider
subject content, composing processes and textual forms to see writing as attempts to communicate with readers. They are concerned with teaching
learners how to use language patterns to accomplish coherent, purposeful
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prose. The central belief here is that we don’t just write, we write something to achieve some purpose: it is a way of getting something done.
In the process of teaching and learning, a teacher must consider six approaches and be able to keep the balance of those approaches. The teacher cannot
choose only one of the approaches because to make students have a complex ability in writing, the students need various approaches.
d. Types of writing performance
