Micro- and Macroskills of Writing

20 process approach, students are required to spend more time on prewriting phases, editing, redrafting, and finally publishing their work. Process approach may seem perfect for any writing classroom activities but if classroom time is limited, it is kind of impossible for teacher to use this approach. Therefore, it all comes back to the classroom situation and condition whether teacher needs to use process or product approach. The second approach is writing and genre. In a genre approach, teacher will let their students to look at and examine many models of typical writing they are going to write. If, for example, students have to write announcements, the teacher will then ask them to observe various types of announcement. Studying real examples will help students to discover some facts about construction and also specific language being used in that genre. In addition, there are several different factors need to be considered whilst one is writing within a particular genre. The first factor is conventions and style of the genre. The next two are context in which the writing will be read and by whom. And last but not least, students also need to have knowledge of the topic. On the surface, a genre approach is really suitable for ESP students. However, it still is also appropriate for general English students if they want to produce quality writing product. The next approach is creative writing. According to Gaffield-Vile cited in Harmer 2001: 259 creative writing is a journey of self-discovery which promotes effective learning. This type of writing produces things such as stories, poetry, and plays. The term itself points to imaginative tasks, which means students can base their work on whatever that is in their mind. One thing that is 21 really interesting is that every time teacher asks their students to do creative writing, they tend to try harder to produce better result and use more correct and appropriate language than when they do their routine assignments. However, for some students, creative writing can also be a source of frustration. This can be solved by building up the activities little by little and always giving students encouragement. Next is writing as a cooperative activity which happens to be the focus in this research. In general, writing is pretty much an individual activity. Every day, whether they are at home or at work, people always write on their own. However, teacher can take advantage of this situation by setting up cooperative writing activities. This needs to be done because, in actuality, there are a lot more benefits in writing as a cooperative activity than individual writing. Boughey cited in Harmer 2001: 260 states that group writing actually allows the teacher to give more detailed and constructive feedback as they only deal with a number of small groups rather than so many individuals. Writing in groups can also be really motivated for students and evidently, it works quite well with other approaches such as process and genre-based. The last is using computer. This advanced technology has been proved to be a good writing tool. Harmer 2001: 261 is at least able to list four good reasons why computer is appropriate for writing. 1. A word-processing package removes the problem of poor handwriting that some students suffer from. 2. A word-processing package allows the competent user to edit his or her material at great speed and with great facility. 3. Spellcheckers can ease the task of achieving correct spelling.