17 version, as illustrated in figure 1: The Writing Process Proposed by Harmer
2004.
Figure 1. The Writing Process Proposed by Harmer 2004 1.
Planning
In this stage, the writer plans what to write. In the planning stage, the writer needs to think about three main elements. First, he needs to consider the
purpose of the writing because it will influence the type of the text and also the language to be used. Second, the writer needs to think about his audience because
it will influence the shape of the writing and the choice of language level of formality. The last one to think about is the content structure of the piece which
refers to how he will sequence the ideas.
18
2. Drafting
Draft refers to the first version of writing. In this stage, the writer puts down what he has planned for later to be edited and revised. As the process of
writing goes into editing and revising, there may be a number of drafts before the final version is completed.
3. Editing reflecting and revising
The next step after writing the draft is reading through the draft and reflecting on the writing to see what works and what does not work. In other
words, the writer reflects on his own mistakes and flaws to be revised.
4. Final version
Final version refers to the final product. The final version is the result of writing that has gone through editing and revision. It means that the writer has
made several changes to produce the final version.
d. The Common Difficulties in Writing
The quality of a piece of writing is determined by several aspects, including content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics
Weigle, 2002
.
A good piece of writing is the one that has a substantive content, highly organized ideas, a wide range of vocabulary, an effective use of language
features, and high accuracy in mechanics use. However, only a few could really achieve this level.
19 Most writers went through a lot of struggle before mastering the writing
skill and being able to create a high quality piece of writing. To be a good writer, one has to overcome difficulties and weaknesses. Peter Westwood 2008
classified the areas of writers‟ weaknesses as follows:
1. Weak writers produce a much smaller amount of work than more
proficient writers. 2.
Weak writers spend little or no time thinking and planning before they start to write.
3. Weak writers are usually reluctant to revise, edit, and polish a first draft.
4. Weaker writers tend to be preoccupied with the mechanical aspects of
writing. 5.
Weaker writers have problems with spelling. Peter Westwood, 2008: 60- 3
The duty of the teacher is to guide writer-students to overcome the difficulties listed above. Appropriate teaching techniques need to be implemented
to achieve the goal. To implement the „appropriate‟ teaching techniques, the teacher has to first understand the principles in designing the techniques.
e. Cohesion and Coherence
Susan Feez and Helen Joyce 1998 defined text as “any stretch of
language which is held together cohesively through meaning”. This definition implies that a piece of writing has to be unified as a whole to convey meanings,
thus a text has rhetorical features called cohesion and coherence. According to Eli Hinkel 2004,
cohesion refers to “the connectivity of ideas in discourse and sentences to one another in text, thus creating the flow of information in a unified
way”. In other words, cohesion has something to do with the connection between sentences and paragraphs. Furthermore, Eli Hinkel 2004 defined coherence as
