Objective of the Research Significance of the Research

writes to others, it is crucial to know both the writer’s purpose for writing and the audience who will read the writer’s work. Another definition of writing is proposed by Harmer 2001:4. He defines that writing is a process of writers go through in order to produce final written form by considering the content, the type, and the medium of writing. Furthermore, Harmer 2007:112 categorizes writing into two categories. The first is writing for learning and second is writing for writing. Writing for learning is used as practice tools to help students to practice and work with language that they have been studying. Writing activities such as writing sentences using a given structure, using new words or phrases are examples of writing for learning. Meanwhile writing-for-writing is directed at developing the students’ skills as writers. In other words, the main purpose of activities in this category is that students should have better writing ability. From both categories of writing, it is clear that the way of teachers organizing and correcting students’ writing will be different, depending on what kind of writing they involved in. According to Brown 2001:335, writing is written products that are often the results of thinking, drafting, and revising procedures. He also states that writing requires specialized skills. The skills include on how to generate ideas, how to organize them coherently, how to use discourse markers and rhetorical conventions, how to put them cohesively into a written text, how to revise text for clearer meaning, how to edit text for appropriate grammar, and how to produce a final product. Nunan 1989:37 points out that successful writing involves ways to master a number of aspects in writing such as mastering mechanics of letter formation, mastering conventions of spelling and punctuation, using the grammatical system to convey one’s intended meaning, organizing content at the level of the paragraph and completing text, publishing and revising the writing, and selecting an appropriate style for audience. From the explanation above, it can be concluded that writing is a skill used as a way to communicate with other, involving a process of discovery that is often the results of thinking, drafting, and revising.

b. Micro and Macro skills of Writing

It has been mentioned before that writing can be defined as skills. According to Brown 2004:220, there are micro and macro skills that need to be considered by teachers to define the right assessment procedure of writing. Micro skills of writing are appropriate to be applied in imitative performance and intensive performance. Imitative performance is related to mechanic aspect such as writing letters and punctuation, while intensive performance is related to the word level such as word choice, tenses, and cohesive devices. On the contrary, Macro skills of writing are necessary to be applied in responsive and extensive writing performance. Responsive performance deals with the form and the communicative purpose of written texts, while extensive performance is related to the higher level proficiency in writing such as essays, research, or even a thesis. The followings are the micro and macro skills of writing: Micro skills of writing: 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 of writing: 1 Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. 2 Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose. 3 Convey links and connections between events and communicative such relations as main idea, supporting ideas, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. 4 Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing. 5 Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text. 6 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 drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing.

c. The Process of Writing

According to Harmer 2007:113, writer goes through processes in order to produce something in its final written form. This process is called writing process. Furthermore, Harmer suggests that the process has four main elements: 1. Planning Writers plan what they are going to write. They have to think about three main issues of writing before they start to write. The issues are the purpose of their writing, the audience, and the content structure.