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school is text or genre. Both the two others text, that is transactional and interpersonal conversation and short functional text, are also taught after the genre
text. Different from senior high school, English materials in vocational high
school concerns with the transactional and interpersonal conversation and short functional text, such as invitation. The needs of graduating students of vocational
high school are supposed to have life skill rather than the theory of text. Short functional text, invitation clearly stated in:
Standard Competence : 1. Berkomunikasi dengan Bahasa Inggris setara Level Novice
Based Competence : 1.7 Menuliskan Undangan Sederhana
2.2.4 General Concept of Writing
According to Meyers 2005: 2, writing is like speaking in a way to discover and communicate ideas, unlike speaking, however it does not happen all
at once. The writer cannot see and hear the reader, so he has to present the ideas in logical order. He has to be careful in organizing, his writing to make the meaning
stronger and clearer. Therefore, writing as one of the basic competence in learning language is the most sophisticated language skill. It demands a lot of practice and
exercise. According to White as cited in Nunan 1989: 36, it states that writing is
not a natural activity. All physically and mentally normal people learn to speak a language. Yet all people have to be taught how to write. This is a crucial
difference between the spoken and the written forms of language. There are other
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important differences as well. Writing unlike speech, is displaced in time. Indeed, this must be one reason why writing originally evolved since it makes possible the
transmission of a message from one place to another. A written message can be received, stored, and referred back to anytime. It is permanent in comparison with
the ephemeral “here one minutes and gone the text’ character of spoken language- even of spoken language that is recorded on tape or disk.
Writing is a kind of complex process which allows the writer to express their ideas, feeling knowledge, etc. and make it visible or concrete. Nunan 2003:
88 states that writing is both a physical and mental act. At the most basic level, writing is the physical act of committing words or ideas to some medium. Besides
that, writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, and thought how express and organizing them into statement, paragraph or text that will be clearer to reader.
Although writing is a complex skill, the writer concludes that writing is one of the important skills that have to be mastered by English learner including
vocational high school students.
2.2.5 Definition of Short Functional Text
