how to use discourse markers and rhetorical conventions coherently into a written text, how to revise text for clearer meaning and how to edit text for appropriate
grammar and how to produce a final products. In other words, the above theories explain that the term of writing can be
defined as a process of productive skills both physical and mental activity that are aimed to express and impress from the products of thinking, drafting, and revising.
b. Micro and Macro Skills of Writing
In writing, there are some aspects that have to be considered. Brown 2004:221 has summarized all those aspects into two main skills; they are the micro
skills and macro skills of writing. They are needed to develop the effective writing.
Those skills are described as follows:
Micro skills: 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: 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 idea, new information, given information,
generalization, and exemplification. 4 Distinguish between literal and implied meanings of 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 audiences 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.
In conclusion, it can be said that the earlier micro skills tend to describe about the writing mechanic and at the level of word, such as cohesive devices, past verb,
etc. On the other hand, the macro skills covered wider areas of writing, such as the form and the communicative purpose of a written text, main idea and supporting
idea, the literal and implied meaning writing, etc. Therefore, based on the micro skills and macro skills that have been
determined, the writing activity and process should include them as well as employ writing strategies needed by the students. It aims to help the students constructing the
idea effectively and making them easier to make various kinds of texts. To make a teacher more focused in teaching writing, heshe must consider the
micro and macro skills of writing, but heshe also should pay attention to the micro and macro skills that are needed especially for the level of hisher students. For
junior high school students, the teacher can refer to the contents of National Examination of SMPMTs 20132014 as a consideration in teaching writing.
According to Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 2013, those macro and micro skills of writing for junior high school students are shown in the Table 1.
Table 1: The Contents of National Examination of SMPMTs 20132014
Number Competence
Indicator 2.
Expressing the meaning in writing of short functional text and simple essays
in the form of descriptive descriptive, Determining the correct word
to fill the incomplete sentence in
the form
of simple
