Review of Previous Studies

12 videos or even movies. Moreover, digital storytelling is believed can help students to develop their ideas.

b. The Benefits of Digital Storytelling for Students

Ohler 2008, Ware and Warschauer 2005 explain that “the use of digital storytelling not only helps to connect high-tech development nowadays and low- tech educational system, but also gives many benefits that cannot be achieved by the use of traditional storytelling .” as cited in Miller, 2009, p. 12. Those benefits are: 1 Providing students with the ability to achieve the „21 st century s kills‟ Kajder, 2004; Robin, 2008; Ware, 2006. 2 Increasing students‟ motivation Ohler, 2008; Ware and Warschauer, 2005. 3 Making a new ideal strategy of telling personal stories Miller, 2009, p. 13. 4 Encouraging students to organize and express their ideas and knowledge in meaningful way Sadik, 2008, p. 490.

2. Writing Skill

Since this research focuses on the improvement of students in term of writing skill, this part provides several explanations about writing skill. Those explanations are provided in order to understand about writing skill definition, its process and component. 13

a. The Definition of Writing Skill

Byrne 1988, p. 1 states that “writing is clearly much more than the production of graphic symbols. The symbols have to be arranged according to certain conventions to form words, and words have to be arranged to form sentence.” It means that writing is not just putting some characters into words or sentences, but a writer has to consider the word spelling or sentence structures. Johnstone, Ashnaugh, and Warfield 2002 argue that “writing is considered as one of the most difficult skills. ” as cited in Javed, M., Juann, W. X., Nazli, S., 2013, p. 130. This statement is supported by Byrne 1988, p. 1 who notes that writing produces sequence sentences arranged and linked in certain ways. It is not easy to make a good writing that is coherent between each sentence. A writer must pay attention toward each sentence. From all those experts, it can be concluded that there are many aspects that should be put into consideration in writing. One of which is the writer should not only pay more attention to the structure of sentences, but also make coherence between each sentence. From those sentences, it should be hand in hand with the purpose of writing which is to share information or ideas. The definition of skill is taken from Hornby 1979 that defines skill as “the ability to do something well.” as cited in Dyan, 2009, p. 20. Thus, writing skill is defined as an ability to arrange characters into words and sentences. The arrangement of sentences is considered by the linguistics aspects such as the spelling of words and sentence structures in order to communicate or share ideas to others. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 14

b. The Process of Writing

Before the activity of writing, the teachers need to pay attention to the process of writing. The process of writing should be followed by the students in order to make a good writing. This part provides the explanation of the process of writing that guides students in writing activities. Harmer 2001, p. 257 states that in writing, teacher s‟ focuses should be on two things: the product of the writing and the writing process. When focusing on the product, the teachers should consider the aim of a task. In order to make a good product of writing, McCrimmon 1984, pp. 10-11 divides the process of writing into three stages: 1 Planning Planning is a series of strategies designed to find and produce information in writing. In this early stage of writing, a writer can discover what to write. It helps the writer start thinking about selecting the topic and gathering a lot of information to be put on the writing. 2 Drafting Drafting is a series of strategies designed to organize and develop a sustained piece of writing. After planning the topic, a writer should be able to see those subjects of topics in different perspectives. The writer can decide which subject of topics can make better understanding so that they can organize and develop into meaningful clusters. From those clusters, the writer should study the relationship of each cluster and develop them.