Teaching the Writing skill

if the teacher‟s goals do not match with the students‟ goal. The second is providing many opportunities for students to write. In improving writing skills, students have to practice a lot. The teacher should give opportunities for students to develop their writing skills by providing some different types of writing. The next is providing feedback helpful and meaningful. When the teacher gives feedback to students, it is important for students to understand the symbol or vocabulary that the teacher used so that the feedback will be meaningful. The next principle is clarifying. The teacher should clarify himself, and for his students, how their writing will be evaluated. The teacher should evaluate the students‟ writing objectively. The teacher may use a scoring rubric as a guideline to assess the students‟ writing. In addition, Nation 2009 proposes some principles in teaching writing. The following principles can be used to evaluate the teaching and learning activities. 1 Meaning-focused Input Students should bring experiences and knowledge to their writing. Writing is most likely to be successful and meaningful for the learners if they are well prepared for what they are going to write. This preparation can be done through the choice of topic, or through previous work done on the topic either in the first or second language. 2 Meaning-focused Output Students should do many writing and different kinds of writing. There are many elements of writing skills which are peculiar to writing. Different genres use different writing conventions and draw on different language features Biber, 1989 in Nation, 2009 and so it is useful to make sure that students are getting writing practice in the range of genres that they will have to write in. Students should write with a message-focused purpose. Most writing should be done with the aim of communicating a message to the reader and the writer should have a reader in mind when writing. Students should experience a feeling of success in most of their writing. They should use writing to increase their language knowledge. 3 Language-focused Learning Students should know about the parts of the writing process and should be able to discuss them related to their own and others‟ writing. They should have conscious strategies for dealing with parts of the writing process. Spelling should be given an appropriate amount of attention largely separated from feedback on writing. Furthermore, teachers should also provide and arrange for feedback that encourages and improves writing. 4 Fluency Development Students should improve their writing speed so that they can write very simple material at a reasonable speed. Fluency development can occur through repetitive activities and through working with easy, familiar material.

h. Teaching Writing in Junior High School

A writing skill is one of language skills which are taught to students. Moreover, the writing skill determines the students‟ communicative competence in English. According to BSNP 2006, communicative competence is having discourse abilities; comprehending oral and written texts and producing oral and written texts. Those abilities are carried out into four language skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing. The essence of teaching writing is guiding and facilitating students to work. This is supported by Brown 2000: 7 who proposes that “teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, and setting the conditions for learning”. It implies that teaching cannot be separated from learning. When teachers teach writing to students, they do not only teach how to develop ideas in writing, but they also need a serious attention of how to write English sentences grammatically. Hence, teaching writing depends on the teacher‟s ability how to teach writing effectively which can make the students‟ ability improved. Teaching writing for students of junior high schools is one of the important thing that has to be done well because English is one of the compulsory subjects that has to be taught for students of the junior high school level. English learning in junior high schools is targeted to make the students reach the functional level, that is, to communicate written and oral in solving daily problems. One scope of English learning at junior high schools is that students can understand and produce a short functional text and short essays in the form of procedure, descriptive, narrative, and recount Depdiknas,2006. In particular, the standard of competence of writing skills for eighth grade students of Junior High Schools is to express the meaning of written functional texts and simple short essays in the