Research Objective Significance of the Study

10 reports, and so forth. If students can write not copy well enough, it is an indicator that they are able to grasp any information they have received. This way, students are not only capable of collecting information from their surroundings but also sharing it in a written form with their teacher and their friends. This then will make the cycle of information alive. One thing has to be remembered. There is no quick and easy way to learn writing as this language skill is actually a developmental process. It means that one will learn more things when they get older and more exposed to the language. Students of course cannot learn writing by themselves. That is why, in this case, teacher’s guidance is really needed. Brown 2001: 334 states that writing is a lot like swimming. When people want to be able to swim, they must have an instructor to show them basic ways or tricks to swim, even though the instructor is not a professional one and is only one of their parents or friends. After they learn the basic ways to swim, they will develop their own style along the way as long as they never stop practicing. If one wants to learn or master something, they have to take this saying to heart. Practice makes perfect. This, of course, applies to writing as well. The more chances one gets to write, the more perfect one becomes. However, unlike other skills of language which come “naturally”, reading and in this case writing need a bit of an extra effort to be mastered. Not only one must practice those skills regularly, they will also need guidance from other people who have been quite familiar with the rules of reading and writing. This is why teacher takes a 11 significant role in students’ learning process of writing especially in the early stages. Learning writing is when one experiments with words, sentences, and also paragraphs so that they can communicate their ideas effectively. In writing, students are able to reinforce vocabulary and also grammar they have gotten in class. Sometimes students make use of their own vocabulary to write sentences or stories, fill in the blanks, or just practice their handwriting. This then resulted in writing being called as an original text production as it is based on one’s mind and linguistic resources. Writing is the final product after students learn several stages of writing separately before Wallace, 2004: 15. This means that writing is actually the last output after one continuously learns separate acts of writing. Those acts or stages of writing according to Wallace are note-taking, identifying a central idea, outlining, drafting, and editing. This just reinforces the fact that writing is a really complex language skill as it involves more subskills one has to perform before they are able to produce a decent piece of writing. However, if one is willing to give this skill more time, writing is actually a lot more fun to learn.

b. Process of Writing

Final product is important but it should not be the only thing students need to focus on especially in writing. If students want to produce a good writing, they must pay attention to the process of writing. The process itself is divided into several stages. However, many experts propose different stages of writing. Harmer 2004: 4, for example, suggests much simpler process of writing. He 12 divides it into four stages. Those are planning, drafting, editing, and final draft. These steps of writing are more often being used in the classroom because of the simplicity. The first stage which Harmer puts forward is planning. According to him there are three things that have to be considered in this stage. The first one is writing purpose. It is worth of consideration as the purpose of writing will surely affect other features such as text type and content of the text. Next, one also needs to consider the referred readers. This aspect will have great impact on language choice. One should choose whether they want to use formal or informal language. Other than writing purpose and referred readers, one has to consider the content structure as well which is about sequence of the text. To learn more on how to sequence ideas, arguments, and facts in the best way possible, one could read it all in Harmer’s book. The second stage according to Harmer is drafting. Students begin to write their ideas of certain topics they have selected beforehand. In this stage, students usually make outline. They will write the outline of the content before they start to compose a full writing form. After drafting, students can move on to the next stage which is editing. In editing, they need to check and edit the drafts they have already written. Having done all the checking and editing, students then can start to put together the better and more developed form of writing. There are two things worth remembering if anyone wants to get the best final product of writing. First, attention to details is really needed in editing stage. Second, there is no such thing as one time editing.