g Writing to amuse others This writing aim is to bring pleasure to others for example by telling a joke
or story which makes someone pleased. This kind of writing is always there in a narrative text.
17
5. The Process of Writing
One of the important things in writing is its process. Writers need to concern process in writing in order to make their writing well organized. These are
several process in writing based on Lunsford’s book entitled
The St. Martin’s Handbook
:
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a Exploring Writers need to determine the topic by exploring it by choosing a topic,
surveying what they know, and determining what they need to find out. Writers can do this steps in several ways, they are brainstorming, reading, free writing,
browsing resources, and questioning. b Planning
In this step, the writers will be helped by making an organizational or an outline of their writing. It can be started by writing their thesis statement and
reviewing exploratory notes of the topic, then list of examples or supporting ideas about the thesis.
c Drafting
Even the writers have explored the topic, they would almost certainly discover more about it while drafting. Maybe, they can turn back and revisit their
plan, research, approach, audience or purpose. At same point, the writers attempt an actual written draft.
d Reviewing
Reviewing means that reading the writers draft with a critical eye and asking other to look over their work to reassess the main ideas, organization, paragraph
structure, sentence variety, etc.
17
Ibid, p. 569.
18
Andrea A. Lunsford, op.cit., p. 25-26.
e Revising Revising means involve reworking the writers draft on the basis of the
review and making sure that draft is clear an effective and includes all essential information.
f Editing
Editing means checking details of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. They also do not forget to proofread their writing to make it ready for publishing.
6. Teaching Writing
Writing becomes one of the skills in English which is important to be taught to students at school. There are several reasons for teaching writing to the
students.
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The first, writing gives students more thinking time. When students are writing, they are doing language processing which means that they are
thinking about the language. It is different from when they are in a conversation because they do not have more thinking time like when they are doing writing
activity.
The second, writing is a practice tool for students. It helps students practice and work with the language they have been studied. This is actually called
writing-for-learning which the main focus in writing is language itself. The last, writing is directed students in developing their skills as a writer. The purpose is
the students should become better at writing. This is called writing-for writing which the main focus is the whole text.
Thus, writing skill is taught to students at school. This skill is also taught in junior high school students. Teaching writing at junior high school students is
based on curriculum that is used at the school. Based on 2013 curriculum, The students are expected to be able to write sentences and generate them into
paragraphs, then develop the paragraphs into several kinds of text. They are
19
Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach English, new edition, Cambridge: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, p. 112.
