Concepts of Writing REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

In this chapter the writer would like to discuss: concepts of writing, writing skills, teaching descriptive writing, teaching writing in senior high school, concepts of WebQuest, WebQuest in teaching writing descriptive text, and action research.

2.1 Concepts of Writing

As an essential language skill, writing demands students to master it well. This skill will help them to express their thoughts, feelings, ideas and knowledge. It is not an easy job to implement the best method in improving students’ writing skills. Researchers need to understand what is involved in writing. They – in general— need to know the princples, models, and methods of teaching writing; researchers also need to particularly understand teaching descriptive text. The definition of writing is explained in many ways: Meyers 2005:2 states that writing is an action- a process of discovering and organizing ideas, putting them on paper, reshaping, and revising them. It means that in order to create a quality work of writing, the writers need to use all their thoughts and knowledge. In other words, the writers have to be creative in generating and organizing their ideas into meaningful written text. Meanwhile, Meyers also says that writing is a way to produce language when you do and when you speak. Writing is communicating with others in a verbal way. Meyers 10 states: Writing is a way to produce language, which you do naturally when you speak. Writing is communicating with others in a verbal way. Meyers 2005: 2. In line with Meyers, Harris 1993:10 states that writing is a process that occurs over a period of time, particularly if we take into account that sometimes extended periods of thinking precede creating an initial draft. Even in the more immediately focused stage of constructing a text actually writing the words down a writer will pause, think, write, pause, think, and revise and so on. Harmer in How to Teach Writing states “Writing is a process that what we write is often heavily influenced by the constraints of genres, then these elements have to be present in learning activities” 2004: 86. Quoting Plato’s statement that “Written language addresses the reader when its author is absent; written language has no capacity to respond” 2004:154, Randal Holme added that “Writing is an ability to make a form of words that in general it may have a higher truth value than the fact that it has set it down” 2004:160. Writing itself is considered a means of communication. Communication in writing tends to involve a thinking process. From the definition above, the writer can conclude that writing is the way to communicate ideas with others in a verbal context by organizing ideas, putting them together on paper, and editing and revising them into become a fine writing text. 11

2.2 Writing Skill