c. Exposure to the foreign language through more than one medium, especially if skills are properly integrated, appears to be more effective than relying on a
single medium alone. d. Writing provides variety in classroom activities, serving as a break from oral
work. e. Writing is often needed for formal and informal testing.
3. Micro and Macroskills of Writing
Micro and macroskills of writing help the teacher to assess hisher students’
writing. Brown 2004:221 mentions micro and macroskills of writing that can help the
teacher to assess hisher students’ writing.
Micro skills 1. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. 3. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order
patterns. 4. Use acceptable grammatical systems e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization,
patterns, and rules. 5. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
6. Use cohesive devices in written discourse. Macro skills
7. Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. 8. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts
according to form and purpose. 9. Convey links and connections between events and communicate such
relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.
10. Distinguish between literal and implied meaning when writing. 11. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written
text. 12. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately
assessing the audience’s interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first draft, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting
peer and instructor feedback, using feedback for revising and editing.
4. Teaching of Writing
a. Processes of Writing
Richards and Renandya 2002: 316 state that there are four basic stages in the process of teaching writing. They are planning, drafting, revising, and editing.
Those steps will assist students to make better writing. 1 Planning
Planning activity aims to stimulate students to write. Oshima and Hogue 2007:16 state that pre-writing activity is the way to get ideas. In this step,
students think what they are going to write. They think about the purpose of their writing, and then they choose a topic. They may use a mind map to plan and
organize their ideas. 2 Drafting
When students have decided the topic they are going to write, they will start to make a draft. In this step, students will focus on the content. They make the
outline of their writing. They do not give much attention to language features. 3 Revising
Students review and reexamine their writing to check whether their writing is good or bad. According to Harmer 2004:5 “reflecting and revising are often
helped by other reader or editor who comment and make suggestion. Another reader’s reaction to a piece of writing will help the author to make appropriate
revisions.” The teacher as the reader may assist them to revise their drafts. Then they make revisions based on the teacher
s’ comments and their own ideas to
improve their drafts. They should think about what to add, what to cut and what to change.
4 Editing The main activity done by students in this step is editing their own writing.
They edit their mistakes in grammar, punctuation, spelling, diction, sentence structure, and accuracy of supportive textual material such as quotation. They tidy
up their writing.
b. Approaches to Teaching Writing
There are several approaches that can be implemented in the practice of writing skills both in and outside the classroom. The teacher should choose an
approach that will be used, before shehe asks students to write their own texts. It will make them pay attention to their writing.
There are two main approaches which are the product and process. In practicing writing skills, students may pay attention to the final product of their
writing or to the writing process itself. Harmer 2001:257 states “when we
concentrating on the product we are only interested in the aim of a task and in the end of product. Those who advocate process approach writing, however, pay
attention to the various stages that any piece of writing through.” The product approach focuses on the final product, while the process approach pays attention
to the process of how students develop their writing. There is an advantage of getting students to pay attention to the process of
writing more. Students cannot spend the whole time in the classroom to write, because they also need to learn other skills. And it also cannot be done in a short
