Muhammad Abdu Sabur Wicaksono Bab II
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW A. Writing 1. Definition of Writing Nowadays, writing has received the first priority to be focused. As Palmer (1994:1) states that writing is a top priority in many classrooms
today. In fact, however, writing is a complex activity. Nunan (1991:6) and Davis (2000: 96) state that writing is extremely complex cognitive activity that requires the writer to control several variables at one. It implies several elements such as grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, cohesion, and so on. They should be combined or applied by students when they deal with writing.
Developing the writing ability, therefore, students are hoped to be able to master the basic skills needed. Besides, students should also have the cognitive skills if they are in the higher level. The cognitive skills are gathering information and ideas relevant to the topics and discarding what is not relevant, organizing the information and ideas into a logical sequence, structuring the sequence into sections and paragraphs, expressing the information and ideas in a written draft, and editing the draft and writing out a final text (Davis, 2000:96).
Moreover, Nunan (1999: 88) and Langan (2000: 12) said that writing process includes inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into paragraphs as clear as possible.
7 Hence, the ideas should be organized and arranged into an understandable and acceptable language because the reader can not totally be ignored. Meanwhile writing as a skill, means that, it can be learned by each person. When someone wants to create a good writing he must do exercise continuously.
2. Writing Process
Some of Assum ptions said that writing is ―a natural gift‖ then they thinks that writing is should be simple, it is in the straight line from the writer’s head onto the written page. Yet, in reality writing is a rather complicated activity, like one step of journey that finished on a paper comes out of draft. Langan (2000: 12) states that, writing is a process of discovery involving a series of steps and those steps are very often a zigzag journey.
Writing is a process. When someone conducting writing, they do several steps started from their willingness to write until his writing is ready to be read by the others. If we want our writing is readable and understandable, we need some of stages.
According to Oshima (1999: 3) there are four main stages in the writing process. Those are: prewriting, planning, writing and revising draft, and writing the final copy.
a. Prewriting Prewriting is the first step in producing a piece of writing, and it will also help someone to establish his train of thought and to prepare continuing with the other steps in writing process. During this stage, students plan and organizational stage consist of a series decision about why to write, what to write about which aspects of the topic to focus on, where the audience will be and which approach to take.
b. Planning (outlining) After getting the idea to write, students have to plan to organize it well. They can create the outline that contains some consideration about purpose, audience, point of view, and format. Harmer (2004: 4) states that writers have to think about three main issues. The first is the purpose of writing; it includes the type of text, the language they use, and the information. Second, the audience they are writing for. It includes the shape of writing and the choice of topic. Third, the contents structure of the piece that is best to sequence the fact, ideas or arguments which they have decided to include. In conclusion, the writer should make outline in order to be able to arrange and focus their ideas based on the topic.
The basic function of outlining is to understand the important how to organize topic into good paragraph c. Writing/ revising drafts
Revising means the writer revise or change what they have written. There are three stages to the revising process. Those are:
1) Writing the first rough draft The first version of a piece of writing has the same meaning as rough draft. The writers are able to write exactly what they want to say and how they want to say it the first time. In fact, most writers make many changes before they finish writing. It means that the first version of a piece of writing is not perfect. Oshima (1999: 10) states it is known that no piece of writing ever perfect the first time. It means that the students make the first draft without any revising and editing. 2) Revising content and organization
After producing the finish draft, writers need to reread their writing to determine if they have included sufficient and appropriate detail to support ideas. Also they need to check the order in which they express their ideas to be certain that the relationship of the ideas is clear and easy to understand. The teacher and peer correction take the important role in this time.
3) Proofreading Proofreading or editing is the last step in the writing process, so it should be easiest. Proofreading is the final step in which you make sure your paper is grammatically correct and free of error. In proofreading, students give attention to language use such as tense, pronoun, article and etc. beside that students also give attention to mechanic such as spelling, punctuation, handwriting, and it may also make minor stylistic changes.
d. Writing a final copy After writers have edited their drafts that they consider being necessary, they produce their final version. The final version is the best writing that should be taken into score. This represents the whole idea of their writing that is complete and perfect.
3. Principles for Teaching Writing
The classroom of teaching learning process requires some principle to make the learning focus on the goal of writing subject. The principle should be adapted to the many different learning situations. Below are the principles for teaching writing based on Nunan (2003: 92-94) point of view.
a. Understand the students’ reasons for writing
The greatest dissatisfaction with writing instruction comes when the teacher’s goals do not match the student’s, or when the teacher’s goals do not match those of the school or institution in which the student works. It is important to understand both and to convey goals to students in ways that make sense to them. Are the students required to take other courses? If so, which ones? Will those courses require writing? If so, what kind of writing?
b. Provide many opportunities to students to write
Writing almost always improves with practice. Evaluate lesson plans: how much time is spent reading or talking about writing, and how much is spent actually writing. Since writing is in part a physical activity, it is like other physical activities
—it requires practice, and lots of it. When practice writing sessions are integrated regularly into the syllabus, students will become more comfortable with the act of writing. Practice writing should provide students with different types of writing as well. Short responses to a reading, journal entries, letter writing, summaries, poetry, or any type of writing you find useful in your class should be practiced in class.
c. Make Feedback Helpful and Meaningful
Students crave feedback on their writing, yet it doesn’t always have the intended effect. If the teacher writes comments on students’ papers, make sure that students understand the vocabulary or symbols used.
Take time to discuss them in class. Be cautious about the tone of comments. The margins of a paper are small and can force you into short comments. When writing short comments, we tend to leave out the words that soften our message. Finally, feedback should not entail ―correcting‖ a student’s writing. In order to foster independent writers, you can provide summary comments that instruct students to look for problems and correct them on their own. So, instead of adding an
- –s to
the end of every first person present tense verb, a comment at the end might say, ―There are several verbs that are missing an -s at the end. Try to locate and correct these verbs in the next version of this paper.‖ d.
Classify How Students’ Writing Will be Evaluated
Students often feel that the evaluation of their writing is completely subjective. One way to combat that feeling is to first develop a statement about what is valued in student writing, either in classroom, some questions might be asked. Those are: 1) on a scale of 1
- –10, how important is creativity, or originality of ideas? 2) on a scale of 1
- –10, how important is following a particular written format (such as a research report, book report, letter, etc.)? 3) on a scale o>–10, how important is grammatical accuracy? 4) on a scale of 1
- –10, how important is it that the assignment include recently taught material? 5) on a scale o
- –10, how important is accuracy in spelling and punctuation? Answering these (and other questions that are relevant to the situation) will help the teacher to develop a rubric of writing, a kind of scoring grid that elaborates the elements of writing that are to be evaluated. This rubric should outline the weight of grammar and mechanics in relationship to content and ideas, as well as other features of writing that teacher find important 4.
Features of Effective Writing
A writer should be able t recognize an effective writing. In order to make a writer able in telling some expressing idea in their concept, they need some knowledge of writing features. According to Bowen and Caly
(2003: 1) there are five features of effective writing. Those are: focus , organization , support and elaboration , style , and conventions.
a. Focus
Focus is the topic/subject established by the writer in response to the writing task. The writer must clearly establish a focus as he/she fulfills the assignment of the prompt. If the writer retreats from the subject matter presented in the prompt or addresses it too broadly, the focus is weakened. The writer may effectively use an inductive organizational plan which does not actually identify the subject matter at the beginning and may not literally identify the subject matter at all. The presence, therefore, of a focus must be determined in light of the method of development chosen by the writer. If the reader is confused about the subject matter, the writer has not effectively established a focus. If the reader is engaged and not confused, the writer probably has been effective in establishing a focus.
b. Organization
Organization is the progression, relatedness, and completeness of ideas. The writer establishes for the reader a well-organized composition, which exhibits a constancy of purpose through the development of elements forming an effective beginning, middle, and end. The response demonstrates a clear progression of related ideas and/or events and is unified and complete. c. Support and Elaboration
Support and Elaboration is the extension and development of the topic/subject. The writer provides sufficient elaboration to present the ideas and/or events clearly. Two important concepts in determining whether details are supportive are the concepts of relatedness and sufficiency. To be supportive of the subject matter, details must be related to the focus of the response. Relatedness has to do with the directness of the relationship that the writer establishes between the information and the subject matter. Supporting details should be relevant and clear. The writer must present his/her ideas with enough power and clarity to cause the support to be sufficient. Effective use of concrete, specific details strengthens the power of the response. Insufficiency is often characterized by undeveloped details, redundancy, and the repetitious paraphrasing of the same point.
Sufficiency has less to do with amount than with the weight or power of the information that is provided
d. Style
Style is the control of language that is appropriate to the purpose, audience, and context of the writing task. The writer’s style is evident through word choice and sentence fluency. Skillful use of precise, purposeful vocabulary enhances the effectiveness of the composition through the use of appropriate words, phrases and descriptions that engage the audience. Sentence fluency involves using a variety of sentence styles to establish effective relationships between and among ideas, causes, and/or statements appropriate to the task.
e. Conventions
Conventions involve correctness in sentence formation, usage, and mechanics. The writer has control of grammatical conventions that are appropriate to the writing task. Errors, if present, do not impede the reader’s understanding of the ideas conveyed
5. Technique for Teaching Writing in Classroom
Teaching writing in classroom is the main focus of the rule of teaching learning process. The technique to deliver the material into the whole class should be planned better to overcome the students’ weaknesses in doing activity. Nunan (2003: 97) argued that the activities of writing is not only to encourage the idea to learning to write but also for creating the final product by using learning of series of skill leading to writing product. Some of the techniques are bellow.
a. Brainstorming Brainstorming is an activity with which most people are familiar.
The object in brainstorming is to compile as large a list as possible of potential examples for a given topic. This is a great activity to do in small groups or with the entire class, Nunan (2003: 97).
Brainstorming a list of ice cream flavors is an easy one to start with when introducing the concept. Naturally, one idea will spark
another, so it is helpful to have students working together when brainstorming. Give your students permission to be as creative as they like. Anything goes with brainstorming. Challenge your students to come up with as many examples as they possibly can for whatever topic you give them
b. Free Writing
Free writing is an individual activity for getting thoughts from your head on to paper. Free writing is simply putting on paper every thought that is going through their heads. Like with brainstorming, anything goes. The goal of this activity is to never let your pen or pencil stop
writing . Help students understand that though they will begin with a
particular topic in mind, it is okay to veer off on tangents as they write.Spelling and grammar are not important for this activity; it is ideas that we are trying to grasp. Give your students a set length of time for this activity..
c. Journalistic Questions Journalistic questions approach a topic in a more structured
WHO WHAT
manner. Start by reviewing the question words: , ,
WHERE , WHEN , WHY and HOW . Then, given topic, ask questions
starting with each of these words. For example, if the topic was study habits, they might ask, ―Who has good study habits? Who benefits from good study habits? What are the good habits? Where do people with good study habits study? Where to they keep their books? Where do they organize notes and homework? When do they study? When do they complete assignments? This activity can be done either individually or in groups with success. Have students write answers to each question. When finished prewriting, have them go back and read what they have written and organize their thoughts in preparation for writing d.
Cluster Mapping
IDEA WEBBING
Cluster mapping, also called , is a great way to
show relationships between ideas. Cluster mapping is also part idea
generation and part organization, so students will know exactly how to group their ideas once they are ready to write. To begin, write your
topic in the center of the page and put a circle around it . Then
you can move in one of two directions.e. Flow Charting Flow charting is similar to cluster mapping in that it shows
relationships between ideas. However, flow charting is most
effective when examining cause and effect relationships . With
the central themein the center of your page, to the left students would make list of causes for drug abuse with arrows pointing at the central idea. Depending on the topic, students may create a chain of cause and effect relationships and choose to write about the series
f. Double/ Triple Entry Double or Triple Entry is another focused brainstorming
activity. This is especially useful when comparing and contrasting
two or three topics or when exploring two or three areas of one topic . With this prewriting method, have students make two (or three)
columns on their paper. Each column should have a topic which focuses the idea generation.
B.
INTEREST 1. Definition of Interest
There are many definitions of interest. Many experts present the definition of interest that differs from another but their ideas complete each other. According to Crow and Crow, the word interest may be used to refer to motivate force which causes individual to give attention to a person, a thing, or an activity (crow and crow, 1973:159). Besides, WS Winkel (2004:188) and Slameto Hilgard (2003:57) have the own opinion about interest, it is defined as the persistent tendency of subjects to feel interested in the subject or a certain subject and was pleased to learn that the study. It is persisting tendency to pay attention to enjoy some activity or content. It means that interest is a permanent tendency to notice and remember some of the activities, attention constantly accompanied pleasure. Moreover, he also stated that interest is a preferred taste and interest in a matter or activity, without being told". Interest is essentially the acceptance of a relationship between people with something outside themselves. It can be said that the stronger or closer the relationship the greater the interest.
Markshefel defines that interest is something that implies or motivates the learners to strive for a particular goal (1969: 63). Hornby (1989:654) also states that interest is a cause of one of somebody to give one’s or his attention or to be concerned about something. Meanwhile, according to Sutarno NS (2006:27) that "The interest of one's fellow feeling that something is high, the passion or desire someone of something". Interest may arise because of the habit. Interest a person can determine what activities will be selected. So the interests of one another that shows the difference. In the relation of teaching learning process, the term interest can be interpreted as a persistent tendency owned by a person or students are interested in particular object or material and that she or he will enjoy to learning it and of course it is followed by feeling of content.
Based on various definitions of interest, it can be concluded that the definition of interest is a tendency interested or excited about something that can be established, learned and developed, so it is not a trait of interest and it may arise because of the habit.
2. The Importance of Interest
Interest plays an important role in all activities. It is the important factor that must be fulfilled before carrying out the activities. It can motivate someone to do them and to achieve the goal consciously. If one has good interest they will likely to seek some book to learn.
In learning activity, interest determines one’s success. Hurlock (1956:402) states that interest provides a strong motivation to learn. It is supported by Abraham (1964: 188) who states that interest is the major factors in any learning situation. It is a motivation to learn. Interest has great sense within its correlation with the learning process. Without having interest, one wills not succeed in learning.
From those statements above, it can be stated that interest has a high important role in influencing learning activity which include emotion, feeling, attention, satisfaction, motivation and pleasure. The personal positive interest and attitudes of each learner will increase the chance for success.
3. Kinds of Interest
Carl Safran as quoted by Sukardi (1988: 63) determines the kinds of interest into three. Those are: a. Expressed Interest
Expressed interest means that people can express his interest in a choice by saying a certain word. For example: he says that he is interested in tracking.
b. Manifest Interest Manifest interest can be explained that people can express their interest by saying what he likes. For example: he like dancing, then join in dance club
c. Inventoried Interest Inventoried interest is people can evaluate their interest in choice by answering all question given.
Mappiare (1982; 63-65) divided the kinds of interest into four. Those are: a.
Social and Individual Interest
The adolescent awareness about the appraisal social surrounding is looked at from their own such as school, finances, own things and friends. So they are show their self by dress up, body treatment, clots or jeweler that appropriate with their group.
b. Recreation Interest
The activities that is done by adolescent such as sport, watching movie stories, reading novel or comic, and listening radio drama with adventure, heroic or romance theme.
c. Religious Interest
The adolescent seriously think about religion. They discuss about religion with their friend and tend to influence other with their religion.
d. School and Position Interest
Their parents and group interest influence the adolescent interest. They will work oriented if their parent and group are work oriented. But they will college oriented if their parents and group are college oriented too.
Bhatia (1977: 340-341) in his book points out that there are some important interest in detail that we must be considered. They are: a. Play Interest It is present at all stages and childhood has been described as the play time of life. Play activities are diversified with age.
Student of education and psychology are aware of the changes that come about in the play interest of pupils at different b. Interest in Talking and Conversation
From they day the child learns to talk he maintains almost incessant conversation, sometime with himself. Conversation does not only serves communication but also helps emotional release, self expression, co-operation and competition, social interaction and control.
c. Reading Interest As soon as a child learned to read he need story books.
Children are interested in stories, fairy tales and animal and travel stories.
d. Interest in Film Young people interest in films, however seem to be growing very fast and children’s films have not made any headway e. Vocational Interest
As young people grow up vocational interests emerge. In early childhood they wish to become postman, soldiers or hawkers, but these interests can hardly be described as vocational. It is in latter childhood or adolescent that vocational interesedt take a realistic turn.
4. Factors Influencing Interest
The students’ interest is influenced by some factor to force their self in reading some books. The factors will make the students able to read and and knowing the content of their favorite books. Crow and Crow (1963: 159) classify factors influencing interest into three. Those are:
a. The Factor for Inner Urges This factor is closely related to pleasure and un-pleasure, like and dislike, and other feeling, which appear from inner urges.
b. The Factor for Social Motives Social motives are factors which appear from outside individuals.
Those factors can be objects and activities in society.
c. Emotional Factors Emotional factors are closely related to feeling and emotion. It the individual success in doing activity, they will be satisfied and please.
On the other hand, if the fail, it will cause a loss of interest. Emotion is a factor that makes interest unchanging.
C. Reading Interest
Ideally, a child must have an interest in something so that he can learn in earnest. The size of interest will greatly affect a person's attitude toward the activity he was doing. Similarly, for some people, reading can be interpreted as a hobby that is part of the daily preoccupations. For students in particular, interest in reading is something very necessary for those that are expected to facilitate the learning process. With self-interest in reading the students will likely be able to motivate them to learn to be independent so it can help to achieve the maximum learning achievement.
Reading activities can enrich one's knowledge, in simple terms is defined by Oxford Learners Dictionary ( Hornby, 2002:83) Reading is to see and understand the contents of what is written. According to Ibrahim Bafadal (2005:192) reading is a process of capturing or acquiring the concepts intended by the author, interpret, evaluate the author's concepts, and reflect, or act as intended of those concepts. Thus, it can be said of reading not only operate the various skills to understand words and sentences, but also the ability to interpret and evaluate so as to obtain a comprehensive understanding.
Reading is a complex and deliberate activity, in this case the form of the thought process in which the action consists of various works in an integrated way of thinking leads to one goal, namely to understand the overall meaning of text exposure. By reading a person will gain new understandings, gain knowledge, gain new ideas, expand the view so that later they have high intelligence and civilization that is useful to himself and useful to others.
Students who love reading can facilitate learning and improve academic achievement. Therefore, teachers or educators need to guide learners to be more found of reading. In the opinion of Sutarno NS (2006:27) that "a person reading can be interpreted as a tendency of elevated liver that person to a particular source of reading".
Habit of reading can help a person to obtain useful information for daily life, for smooth operation and increased effectiveness for achievement as well as a basic capability is very important for the progress of society and the individuals themselves. This is in accordance with the opinion Suyatmi (2000:38) says that "reading is a situation arising from a strong desire. It arises because of the desire of certain motifs that have a great urge to do an activity to read"
Reading craze will not grow by itself but must be fostered through the learning process. Therefore, to develop interest in reading, students are guided to learn to feel not as an obligation but as a necessity. Therefore, it can be concluded that the definition of interest in reading is a situation arising from the desire to perform reading activities and to achieve a goal. Basically an interest in reading among individuals to each other differently depending on the size of the motives they have read.
Interest in reading is divided into two, namely reading interests and reading interests patterned spontaneous. Spontaneous interest in reading is reading activities undertaken voluntarily or spontaneously self initiative without any encouragement or external command. While the definition of reading is the reading pattern that occurs due to external factors, such as a command from the teacher or teachers or parents
D. Correlation Between Reading Interest and Writing ability
. The relationship between reading and writing is a bit like that of the chicken and egg. Which came first is not as important as the fact that without one the other cannot exist. A child’s literacy development is dependent on this interconnection between reading and writing. Basically put: reading affects writing and writing affects reading. According to recommendations from the major English Language Arts professional organizations, reading instruction is most effective when intertwined with writing instruction and vice versa.
Research has found that when children read extensively they become better writers. Reading a variety of genres helps children learn text structures and language that they can then transfer to their own writing. In addition, reading provides young people with prior knowledge that they can use in their stories. One of the primary reasons that we read is to learn. Especially while we are still in school, a major portion of what we know comes from the texts we read. Since writing is the act of transmitting knowledge in print, we must have information to share before we can write it. Therefore reading plays a major role in writing
At the same time practice in writing helps children build their reading skills (Brummit, 2008:1). This is especially true for younger children who are working to develop phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Phonemic awareness (the understanding that words are developed from sound ―chunks‖) develops as children read and write new words. Similarly, phonics skills or the ability to link sounds together to construct words are reinforced when children read and write the same words. For older children practice in the process of writing their own texts helps them analyze the pieces that they read. They can apply their knowledge about the ways that they chose to use particular language, text structure or content to better understand a professional author’s construction of his or her texts.
E. Previous Research in Reading interest and Writing Ability
For strengthening the arguments that there is a deep relationship between reading interest and writing ability, the writer present some researches that have resemble topic of research. Koons (2008: 88) has done a research about reading and writing connection with the entitled The Reading
- – Writing Connection: an investigation of the relationship between reading ability and writing ability discourse modes. The research concluded that there is relationship between reading ability and writing quality. This study examines the relationship between grade-level reading comprehension and writing quality. Data were collected from a total 521 students in one school district in Mississippi. Results of correlation and structural equation modeling analyses indicate a developmental trend in the relationship between reading comprehension and writing quality with the largest correlations. The relationship between reading comprehension and writing quality was not
Besides, Culp and Spann (1990: 3) conclude their research about reading and writing correlation that the relationship between writing and reading is exist. The result of study indicated that both reading and writing was affecting each other. The used of experimental research proved the significant correlation of writing and reading.
Furthermore, Ito (2011: 27) explains in her research about reading-
panese EFL high school students
writing correlation of L2 Students in Ja that reading skill cause the improvements of writing quality. This study examines the relationship between English reading and writing skills in Japanese high school students, based on reading and writing test scores gathered in 2006.
The participants were 68 native Japanese high school students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The correlation between L2 reading and writing test scores is statistically significant. These results imply some effect of L2 readings skills on the quality of L2 composition in Japanese EFL high school students.
The other research is from Nur Eko Krisdianto who conducts the research in Muhammadiyah University of Purwokerto. The research investigates the correlation between students reading interest and writing achievement. This research was conducted in April 2003 at English Department of Muhammadiyah University of Purwokerto. The researcher used questionnaire to evaluate the students reading interet and used subjective test of writing to evaluate writing ability. The result of research showed that, there is a correlation between students reading interest and writing
nd
achievement of 2 Semester Students of English Department of Muhammadiyah University of Purwokerto Academic Year 2002/2003.
From those reasons and research findings, it can be seen clearly that there is a correlation between reading and writing ability. In order to make differencies of this research and previous research, the researcher use students reading interest of english book that be compared with their writing ability.
F. Hypothesis
Based on the research of related literature above, the hypothesis of this research is ―there is significant correlation between students reading interests of English book and their writing abilities.