Specification of The Product Significances of The Development

elements of a text are bound together. Those aspects determine the quality of a written product. Writing skill is one of the most difficult skills that is taught in English learning especially for non-English speaking students, because writing can not be mastered naturally instead of taking some learning writing steps to be an expert writer based on Richards and Renandya 2002:303 who state that writing is the most difficult skill to be mastered by foreign students. Furthermore, Grenville 2001:iv adds that writing becomes hard when the students should think about grabbing the first interesting sentence, blank about what to write, and realize that writing is to find interesting stuff to write. As a result, there are some problems of learning writing for the foreign students such as the students are lack of developing ideas and they do not know how to attract the reader by creating an interesting sentence in foreign language. In improving the writing skill, the students cannot be composing a good writing product because in learning the writing skill, there are some steps that should be done. Harmer 2007:326 states that the writing processes are divided into three steps namely planning, drafting and editing. Based on theory the students use the characteristics of written language and the aspects of writing to help the students in composing a writing product easily. According to Brown,1994 in Weigle:2002 the characteristics of written language are divided into seven points. 1. Permanence: oral language is transitory and must be processed in realtime, while written language is permanent and can be read and re-read as often as one likes. 2. Production time: writers generally have more time to plan, review, and revise their words before they are finalized, while speakers must plan, formulate and deliver their utterances within a few moments if they are to maintain a conversation. 3. Distance: Distance between the writer and the reader in both time and space ,which eliminates much of the shared context that is present between speaker and listener in ordinary face-to-face contact thus necessities greater explicitness on the part of the writer. 4. Orthography: Orthography which carries limited amount of information compared to the richness of devices available to speakers to enhance a message e.g. stress, intonation, pitch, volume, pausing,etc. 5. Complexity: Complexity, written tends to have characteristics by longer clauses and more subordinators, while spoken language tends to have shorter clauses connected by coordinators, as well as more redundancy e.g.repetition of nouns and verbs. 6. Formality: because of the social and cultural uses to which writing is ordinarily put, writing tends to be more formal than speaking. 7. Vocabulary: written texts tend to contain a wider variety of words, and more lower-frequency words, than oral texts. In conclusion, writing is a productive skill that must be learnt and mastered by the English students that involve the processes of planning, drafting, and revising. Writing is means of communication that has to be understood in conveying the meaning and the students have to consider some writing aspects to compose a good writing product. b The Subskills of Writing In developing the writing skill, there are some skills of writing components that should be mastered by the students. In line, Brown 2004:221 states that there are a number of subskills of writing. He divides into microskills and macroskills components. Furthermore, Brown 2001: 342-343 mentions a list of micro and macroskills for written communication which focuses on both the form of language and the function of language. Firstly, microskills are related to the letters and words in English writing system. The components of microskills are listed in the following: 1. producing graphemes and orthographic pattern of English 2. producing writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose 3. producing an acceptable core of words and using appropriate word order patterns 4. using acceptable grammatical systems such as tense, subject verb agreement and etc 5. expressing a particular meaning in different grammatical form 6. using cohesive devices in written discourse and using the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. Meanwhile, macroskills focus on some components. The components of macroskills are listed below: 1. using generic structure of written texts 2. achieving communicative purposes of written texts 3. producing coherent writings 4. developing ideas 5. differentiating literal meanings from implied meanings 6. using references based on contexts and applying writing strategies that include such as accurately in using prewriting devices 7. writing with fluency in the first drafts 8. using paraphrases and synonyms 9. soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing. In conclusion, the components of micro and macroskills have to be introduced in every stage of writing composition. Those subskills of writing skill will develop the student s’ writing ability. By understanding the micro and macroskills, it can help the students in improving their writing skill. c Teaching Writing in Senior High School