The Process of Writing

c. To Persuade

Persuasion is fundamental to everyday life, because it can attempt to get someone to do something what the people want. 9 Through writing, the students can accuse or defend and affect the reader’s minds, because writing persuades the readers to engage with their thoughts or actions. The examples of persuasive writing are recipes, maps, instructions on food and tools, telephone directories; ballot papers, etc. 10

d. To Amuse

In this world, there must be a joke in daily lives. Some people make a joke to amuse other people with their joking because everyone needs entertainment to release their stress. Same as writing, the students may give an entertainment to refresh reader’s mind by using humor so the written is appealing the readers to read. Here, the student s’ primary object is to make the readers enjoy themselves by trying to laugh with rather than at, for instance making a joke. But, the students also need being good-humored in joking for not making the readers become offended. 11 In making a joke, the students should not write satirical things such as gender, religion, ethnicity, racial identity, social class, etc. that can make the readers offended. It can be concluded that writing has several purposes to make the reader interested in it. Writing can inform the readers about something that contains the factual information yet the information that they needed, explain the information itself to make the information more understandable, persuade readers to affect the reader’s minds and the last amuse the readers by using humor.

3. The Process of Writing

Mostly, every successful person passes their lives through difficult process to be the best. Same as that thing, to make a good writing, there are many processes 9 Miller, op. cit., p. 451. 10 Nunan, loc. Cit. 11 Miller, op. cit., p. 570. to make it the best according to the students. Sometimes, the students are worried about using the wrong words or sentences in writing. But, from that worry the students reread the paragraph to make sure that the readers could understand about what they want to deliver. Langan stated that writing has some steps, they are discovering a point by using prewriting, developing solid support for the point by also using prewriting, organizing the material and making a first draft, the last is revising and then editing carefully. 12 In composing any kinds of writing, the students must follow every stage of writing process to produce the idea clearly and effectively. The first stage is prewriting, means the first step that the students should take before writing their first draft. 13 In prewriting stage, the students can arrange their ideas for the writing. Not only do students arrange the ideas, but they can also choose their topics to be written. The prewriting methods are designed to get started in generating ideas, recalling facts and anecdotes and realizing patterns. 14 It means that in prewriting stage, the students start their first writing process to gather the ideas before beginning to compose a paragraph. The second step is drafting, a stage of discovery and exploration. 15 Here, the students need to organize their prewriting become a good structure of writing. When the students write the first draft, they are ready to give the details and additional thoughts that did not exist since in prewriting stage. 16 Beside organizing their prewriting, the students also need to add more information about their writing for making a good coherence. In drafting stage, the students write a framework of ideas they have generated to make their writing is constructed coherently. 12 John Langan. English Skills, seventh edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2001, p.17 13 Donald Pharr and Santi Buscemin, Writing Today: contexts and options for the real world-Brief Edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2005, p.25 14 Ibid, p. 40. 15 Betty Mattix Dietsh, Reasoning and Writing Well, New York: McGraw Hill, 2006, p.11 16 Langan. op. cit., p. 25. The third stage is revising. This stage helps the students to build upon what has already been done, in order to make it stronger. 17 They need to recheck what they have already written in the draft. Then the last stage after revising is editing. This final stage means checking the writing for mistakes in grammar, punctuation, usage, and spelling. 18 In this stage the students have to refine some mistakes that they have made.

B. Recount Text

1. Definition of Recount Text

Recount text is one of subjects that should be taught in Senior High School, especially in first grade. That requirement is found in Competency Standard- Standard Kompetensi SK and Basic Competency- Kompetensi Dasar KD. From its name, recount text is a kind of some genres in writing. There are some experts who define recount text, two of them are the Andersons who in their book said that “A recount is a piece of text that retells past events, usually in the order in which they occurred.” It means that a recount text tells about something that has happened in the past chronologically. Chronologically means that recount text should contain of what happened, who was involved, when the events happened, where the events took place and why and how the events could have happened. In recount text, the students may write all past events not only retell about factual or historical events but based on their personal experience. 19 It means that writing about past event; personal experience, factual or historical events, that has happened is called by recount text. The students must have their own past stories about their lives, such as their holiday, terrible moment, and happy moment. They could write them all into paper called recount. As mentioned above, recount text is 17 Ibid, p. 26. 18 Ibid, p. 30. 19 Maureen Hyland, Writing Text Types: A Practical Journal, Western Australia: R.I.C. Publications, 2009, p. iii.