Definitions of Writing The Nature of Writing

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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Theoretical Description

In the background of the study, the writer has emphasized the importance of writing in order to communicate with others. The writer also provided some cases of students where they had to produce a paragraph as stated in the part of the identification of the problems. In this chapter, the writer is going to provide some definitions of writing, macro and micro skills of writing, principles of writing, approaches to teaching writing, and the theory of developing materials.

1. The Nature of Writing

a. Definitions of Writing

Writing is one of the four skills of language, and writing is recognized as a productive skill because writing needs to produce the ideas that generate into a good paragraph. To know more about writing, the definitions of writing as provided by many experts is as follows: Writing is a complex metacognitive activity that allows on an individual’s knowledge Huy, 2015. In addition, writing is like a process of learning a language that can increase the amount of vocabulary and the use of punctuation Connors, 2002. In addition, writing is often a process of exploration and continuing discovery Langan 2010. As a result, a person can communicate a variety of messages to close or distant and known or unknown readers Olshtain 2001. Matsuda Silva 2010 states that writing is both a noun and a verb. Writing refers both to the written text and the act of constructing written text. As the result, 11 in a text the writers have to express their ideas and try to communicate with their audiences using words. Likewise, writing is a combination of letters which relate to the sounds we make when we speak, so writing is the act of forming these symbols to make marks on a surface of some kind Byrne, 1988. Based on the above statements, writing is a process of using symbols to communicate thoughts and ideas in a readable form, making coherent words on paper and composing text, and also producing meaning by using words that have been selected and put together in written or printed form. Writing involves starting and finishing, both requiring very different kinds of orientation Murry Moore 2006. In line with that, writing considered as one of the most difficult skills for learners to master, writing in a second or foreign language pointed out Ghufron et al., 2016. According to that, Raimes 1983 propoese that writing down on paper is not simply to do it. Thus, many people know that the most difficult skill to master in learning a second language is writing. In the same reason, it is very difficult to organize and generate the ideas into readable texts. From those statements, writing is not easy to produce and lay down the ideas, it needs more than words because the writers or students have to consider many aspects of writing such as mechanics, punctuations, grammar, vocabulary, meaning of the writing, spelling and the purpose of their writing. Furthermore, Bell and Burnaby 1989 pointed out that writing is an extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is required to demonstrate control of a number of variables simultaneously, and writers have to consider about 12 content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling, cited in Nunan 1989: 36. In short, writing can be defined as the activity of using vocabulary to generate text or paragraphs, it can be act or art of forming letters and characters on paper, wood, or other materials for the purpose of recording ide as which exist in people’s mind, or communicating them to the others by visible signs.

b. Micro and Macro skills of Writing