The Nature of Writing The Process of Writing

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a. The Nature of Writing

According to Wright et al. 2006, writing has purpose “to communicate something to somebody ” by written form of language p. 3. It means that people have to be able to write correctly if they want to communicate with others by using written language. Moreover, Brown 2007 states that writing is a kind of skill that “requires learners to product a correct written language” p. 391. He also says, “Written products are often the result of thinking, drafting and revising procedures that require specialized skills…” 2007: 391. In other words, writing producessome written products after employing some steps. However, writing is the most difficult skill to master. It is supported by Tiedt 1989 who says, “… of all the language skills, writing is the most difficult and it is a hard work ” p. 6. Harmer 2011 agrees with the statement by saying “writing is a complex skill which requires some steps and takes more time” p. 52. It shows that writing is a complex skill to master by students. Brown 2007: 397- 398 presents the characteristics of written language as follows all are direct quotes. 1. Permanence: written language has power to clarify the text. 2. Production time: the time in writing written language is limited. 3. Distance: the writers’ background influences their content of writing. 4. Complexity: written language has some sentences and clauses. 5. Vocabulary: in writing written language, the writers also enrich their vocabulary. 6. Formality: the writers need to write well-structured and correct sentences. 11

b. The Process of Writing

Meyers 2005 states that writing is defined as a process of discovering, thinking and organizing the ideas, putting them on the paper and revising them. Those stages require “specialized skills” Brown, 2007: 391. According to Brown 2007, there are three stages of composing a written text. In the first stage, namely prewriting, students may obtain ideas by reading, clustering, questioning, or making outline. After obtaining ideas, students go on to the drafting stage. In this stage, students have their time to compose sentences and paragraphs within class hour.After the students submit their wrriten texts, the teacher have to give feedback to their written texts. Then, students go to the last step, namely revising. In this step, students re-write their drafts into better written texts. The students can omit or add some important things in editing their drafts Meyers, 2005. However, when the classroom time is limited, students may revise their drafts as homework writing assignment Harmer, 2011. Finally, the students can submit their revised written texts to the teacher or post it.

c. Teaching Writing in EFL classes