Significance of the Study

creatively develops some ideas. Stylistic skills are in relation with the treatment of content. These skills also require creativity in manipulating sentences and paragraphs and also in using language effectively. Then, the judgment skills are about constructing written products based on certain purpose and audience supported by the ability of selecting, organizing, and ordering related information. There are three levels of participant s’ writing skills. As proposed by Oglan in Hirai 2010: 106, the levels are reluctant, developing, and independent. Reluctant participants commonly write in the first person, find some difficulties with the text organization and content, and commonly have much less coherent paragraphs. Developing participants are good in organizing the text, using appropriate conventions, supporting the text with evidences, and structuring the text with various sentence structures. Independent participants are well-read and advanced in using conventions, organizing the text, proofing with some evidences and using various sentence structures. According to Brown 2007: 399, there are some micro- and macro-skills for writing production. They are as follows. Microskills 1 Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English. 2 Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. 3 Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns. 4 Use acceptable grammatical systems e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization, patterns, and rules. 5 Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. Macroskills 6 Use cohesive devices in written discourse. 7 Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. 8 Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose. 9 Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. 10 Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing. 11 Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text. 12 Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audience’s interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing. Brown 2007: 399

c. Types of Writing Performance

As stated by Brown 2007: 399-402, there are five major categories of classroom writing performance. They are imitative, intensive, self-writing, display writing, and real writing. Each category is explained as follow. 1 Imitative, or writing down In this level, participants simply write down English letters, words, and sentences in order to learn the conventions of the orthographic code. There are some dictations in this category which involve these steps. a Teacher reads a short paragraph once or twice at normal speed. b Teacher reads the paragraph in short phrase, units of three or four words each, and each unit is followed by a pause. c During the pause, students write exactly what they hear. d Teacher then reads the whole paragraph one more at normal speed so students can check their writing. e Scoring of students’ written work can utilize a number of rubrics for assigning points. Usually spelling and punctuation errors are not considered as severe as grammatical errors. Brown 2007: 399-400 2 Intensive, or controlled The participants, in this category, are controlled and do not have much creativity. In controlled writing, participants simply alter certain grammar and structure such as changing the present tense verbs to past tense verbs. In guided writing, trainer guides the participants to write something. The trainer guides them with some questions. Another term in this category is a dicto-comp. Here, trainer reads a text two or three times and the participants rewrite the text. Trainer also gives some key words to give the participants cues. 3 Self-writing Self-writing is when the writing is with only the self in mind as an audience. The example of self-writing is dialog journal. Participants record their thoughts, feelings, and reactions and the trainer reads and responds to them. 4 Display writing Display writing is usually writing within the school curricular context. There is an element of display in short-answer exercises, essay examinations, and research reports. The participants should master the display writing techniques.