to get the ways of thinking which logical and formal. Piaget in Suryanto 2007:7 states that ―cara berfikir anak berkembang melalui keterlibatan langsung dengan
benda dan lingkungan yang ada di sekitarnya ‖. Therefore, using media in
teaching English for young learners is important to get optimal results.
2.6.1 Teaching Writing for Young Learners
Based on Scott and Lisbeth 1990:68 although the writing and the oral skill are combined in the classroom and the one clearly benefits from the other, writing has
certain characteristics which seem to make it difficult for pupils to get the grips with, especially for younger pupils:
1 Teacher cannot make the same use of body language, intonation, tone, eye
contact, and all the other features which help teacher to convey meaning when heshe talks.
2 Very little of what teacher writes is concerned with the here and now, which
is where many young children exist for a lot of the time. 3
Many children take a long time to master the skill of writing. If teacher can occasionally type out a pupil‘s work it really does help those who are
struggling with the mechanics of writing. 4
Writing in a foreign la nguage is all too often associated with ―correcting
errors‖. If we try to make children‘s writing meaningful from the start, with the emphasis on content, then errors can be gently corrected and re-written
in cooperation with the teachers.
Even if there are difficulties in writing in the foreign language, it is still a useful, essential, integral and enjoyable part of the foreign language lesson. Based
on Scott and Lisbeth 1990:82 there are dos and don‘ts on free writing: 1
Do concentrate first on content,
spend a lot of time on pre-writing work, make sure that it springs naturally from other language work,
try to make sense of whatever the pupils have written and say something positive about it,
encourage, but do not insist on, re-writing, display the material whenever possible, and
keep all the pupils‘ writings.
2 Do not
announce the subject out of the blue and expect pupils to be able to write about it,
set an exercise as homework without any preparation, correct all the mistakes you can find, and
set work w hich is beyond the pupils‘ language capability.
In general, writing skill can be divided into four categories, there are: copying, guided writing, substituting, and free writing. Implementation of each
category is based on difficulties level and class leve l of students‘ ability in
English. Materials in writing skill are about students‘ identity, family and friends, favourite things, pets, and hobbies.
2.6.2 Teaching Descriptive Text for Young Learners
