Critical Thinking Test The Concept of Critical Thinking

often a zigzag journey ”. 22 It means that the process of writing is often complicated and need time to reach the final draft because each stage has its own difficulty and complexity as well as its own significance and goal. Therefore, in order to write effectively and correctly, each process should be conducted carefully. There are many steps of writing process as proposed by some experts. The process of writing is mainly depend on the reader, the purpose, the content and the situation in which the writer composing writing. 23 Dietsch proposes the stages of writing into 4 steps as follow: 1. Prewriting This is the first stage of writing. In this stage the writer produces some ideas and decides the purpose and the reader of the writing. 2. Drafting Drafting is primarily a stage of discovery and exploration. This stage requires the writers to transform ideas into sentences in semi organized manner. The aim is to let the writers‟ ideas develop, expand and build connection. 3. Revision Revising is the activity of deleting, expanding and clarifying the ideas. Revising can be done during all the process of writing. 4. Editing proofreading In this stage requires examining ideas, details, words, grammar, and punctuation. Here the emphasis is on accuracy, correctness and clarity. 24 Meanwhile, Oshima and Hogue state that the process of writing consists of four steps, those are: pre-writing, organizing, writing a draft and the last is 22 John Langan , College Writing Skills, New York: McGraw- Hill Companies, 2007, 6 th Edition, p. 13. 23 Kristine Brown and Susan Hood, Writing Matter: Writing Skills and Strategies for Students of English, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 6. 24 Betty Mattix Dietsch, Reasoning and Writing Well: A Rhetoric, Research Guide, Reader and Handbook, New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 2006, 4 th edition, p. 11. polishing the draft by editing and revising. 25 The various processes of writing need various skills to meet the aims in a writing activity. Another opinion was given by Keith Miller. He suggests three steps of writing as follow: 1. Drafting Drafting means writing preliminary version of a work that the writers will later revised their work. In this stage, the writer puts hisher ideas on paper so that heshe can work with them. 2. Revising Revising is seeing again or taking another look. Appraising the content, checking the organization, refining the style in order to see what work and what might need changing. 3. Editing Editing is the stage on which the spelling, mechanics and punctuation are rechecked again. 26 Moreover, Harmers suggest 4 elements for the process of writing which called “the process of wheel” as described in the figure below: Figure 2.1 The Writing Process Wheel 27 25 Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue, Introduction to Academic writing, New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007, 3 rd edition, p. 15. 26 Robert Keith Miller, Motives for Writing, New York: McGraw- Hill Company, 2006, 5 th edition, pp. 27 —34. The figure above shows that all of the arrows lead to the final version. It means that we can bring out the final version after passing through the three processes, namely; planning, drafting and editing. Planning which is also sometimes called as pre-writing is the stage where the writer collecting the ideas of writing through brainstorming, clustering, and the like. Meanwhile, drafting is the stage where writer puts ideas and information into paper. The last step is editing or revising. Here, the writer produces the final version. Checking grammar and spelling accuracies, punctuations, and word choices usually becomes the main task to be done at this stage. In conclusion, producing good writing needs some processes that should be followed by the writer. The process is varying and sometimes different depending on the writer. Those processes are planning, drafting, editing and revising. By following the process can help the writer writes easily, effectively and systematically.

3. The Purpose of Writing

Different people have different aims in writing. Different form of writing descriptive, argumentative, narrative and etc. also has each own goal. Some people write in order to communicate to the other such as writing email or memo; while, some people write with the goal is to entertain like writing novel or story. Generally, people write based on their need and their goal, as stated by Langan; “when you write for others, it is crucial to know both your purpose for writing and the audience who will read your work ”. 28 It means that understanding the goal and the reader is important in order to transfer our ideas properly. There are various forms in writing and each form has its own purpose. For example, exposition writing is the genre of writing that the purpose is to explain or inform the reader. Persuasive writing seeks to convince the reader of a particular position or opinion;while, the purpose of descriptive writing is to describe or picture something in words. 27 Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach Writing, London: Pearson Education Limited, 2004, p. 6. 28 Langan, op. cit, p. 14.