English is still considered one of the most important school subjects and

therefore, beginning teachers can find the responsibility of teaching it both

exciting and challenging. Everyone agrees that the subject 'English' is vitally
important and typically. It is described as the most important of all school
subjects, principally because reading, writing, speaking and listening are
needed to a greater or lesser degree in every school's subject.
English is also the most consistently controversial and debated subject. It
might be argued that English is the subject that many interested parties
would most like to control. The history of English is simply a history of
constant change. Inevitably, this makes teaching it a special kind of
challenge, but it also imbues the subject with energy and excitement. All
subjects have their debates and passions but English seems to have the
most, and they are very often unusually public and attract plenty of media
attention. As media attention is almost inevitably negative, the public
perception of English nationally can be that children cannot spell, produce a
decent paragraph or even conduct a reasonable conversation; at the same
time parents, i.e. members of that 'public', will tell people that their children
have received an excellent English teaching at the local school.
Generally speaking, more reading does contribute to greater awareness of
the use of language and this will have an impact on pupils' writing. However,
this will probably be quite subtle and almost unconsciously achieved as the
more sophisticated aspects of language use are adopted in much the same
way as grammar is absorbed from birth. But what about those pupils who do
not want to read, or do not have the same opportunities to read, or can read
at only a decoding level? How do they develop their writing skills?
Writing is one of the most often used skills by the teachers in teaching
English at all levels of education. The writing skills include compositions like
writing reports, designing posters and invitations, drafting business letters
and letters to the editors. Visual and verbal clues can be given to the
students as inputs without any additional inputs from the teachers and the

students can be asked to form stories, narratives, conclusions, reports and

criticisms.
It is undeniable that writing is probably one of the most familiar things in our
life. Every day people get written announcements, advertisements, letters,
information, even warning in the form of writing. In school, they do a lot of
writings such as taking note, making lists, completing laboratory reports and
composing any kinds of texts and others. In short, people are consciously or
unconsciously engaged in writing a lot. As it becomes crucial to enhance
their life, they learn the skills from pre-elementary school to university level.
Then, they master them by applying them into business of life.
However learning to write is not an easy task to do. Many students still make
errors and mistakes and, then, they are fossilized. Their interest becomes
less and less and students begin to create negative stimuli about learning to
write. This condition drives the students to assume that writing is a very
difficult task to do.
Besides, teachers should be aware of the importance of interest in facilitating
and aware of the use of a variety of methods to induce students' interest.
Teachers should be able to apply methods that can motivate students to
learn

English

writing

and

make

them

actively

involved

during

the

instructional activity. In addition, the methods used are hoped can evolve the
students' self-confidence and behavior that are creative and innovative.
A good method will have a great influence in teaching learning process.
Conversely, if the teacher uses inappropriate method, it will make the
students bored in joining the lesson. The learning output, undoubtedly, will
not be satisfying. There are several methods that can be used to facilitate
learning English writing like process approach and product approach.
Most of traditional approaches of teaching writing focus merely on the
product. The production of the composition is structurally correct and well
-looking. Unfortunately, this path does not reach the crux of teaching writing
itself. In this case the students cannot show up their own ability in writing
maximally. They cannot express their ideas. It seems that their ideas just

stay put in their mind. This path emphasizes on grammatical correctness and
adherence to given models or guidelines only. This method, however, is less
effective and makes students having no confidence in expressing their ideas.
There is little or no opportunity for the students to add any thoughts or ideas
of their own. The inevitable consequence is that little attention is paid to the
ideas and meaning of student's writing, what it communicates to the reader,
the purpose and the audience (Raimes 1983 : 75). Most students do not
know how to do free writing, and they do not possess the strategies for
composing texts independently. Furthermore, most of them do not enjoy
writing and lack of confidence in writing on their own.
Therefore, the teachers should select and apply an appropriate method and a
learning technique in teaching writing that can make the students able to
explore and discover their thoughts, construct meaning and asses it at the
same time. These characteristics navigate to the process approach. The
implementation of process approach is considered as the most appropriate
method used to teach writing. In spite of the characteristics possessed by
the process approach, this approach can lead the students compose free
writing. What is meant by free writing here is a composition that gives
freedom to the students to determine the ideas and thoughts about a certain
topic given by the teacher. The teacher still determines the framework of the
composition that is the genre of the text. By referring to the same genre, the
students can freely make their own outline.
By implementing the process approach, the teacher gives opportunities to
the students to generate their ideas and thoughts. Consequently, the
grammar of the composition might not be totally correct. This condition
navigates the teacher to play his role as a guide, a motivator, and also a
facilitator. It is important because the ultimate thing that needs to be
measured in process approach is the end of the process.

a. What is teaching?

Teaching is a social process. There are so many educationists, complimented

their definitions about teaching, Here are some, to keep in mind.
According to Gage, "Teaching is a form of interpersonal influence aimed at
changing the behavior potential of another person."
Edmund Amidon defined it as-" Teaching is an interactive process, primarily
involving class room talk which takes place between teacher and pupil and
occurs during certain definable activity."
Brubacher," Teaching is an arrangement and manipulation of a situation in
which an individual will seek to overcome and from which he will learn in the
course of doing so."
Skinner- Teaching is the arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement."
Ryans- "Teaching is concerned with the activities which are concerned with
the guidance or direction of the learning of others."
H.C. Morrison Teaching is an intimate contact between a more mature
personality and a less mature one which is designed to further the education
of the latter.
Edmund Amidon - Teaching is defined as an interactive process, primarily
involving classroom talk, which takes place between teacher and pupil and
occurs during certain definable activities.
So we can take a conclusion that teaching is processes that improve the
student's seeking level more easily and it might be overcome any situation
as an easy way."
b. What is learning and learning approaches?
Learning is the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing,
existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve
synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed
by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow
learning. Learning is not compulsory; it is contextual. It does not happen all
at once, but builds upon and is shaped by what we already know. To that end,
learning may be viewed as a process, rather than a collection of factual and

procedural knowledge. Learning produces changes in the organism and the

changes produced are relatively permanent.1 Human learning may occur as
part of education, personal development, schooling, or training. It may
be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning
occurs is part of educational psychology, neuropsychology, learning theory,
and pedagogy. Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical
conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex
activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning
may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. Learning that an
aversive event can't be avoided nor escaped is called learned helplessness.
There

is

evidence

for

human

behavioral

learning prenatally,

in

which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation,

indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and
primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.2
Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning.
Children experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact
through play. Lev Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's
development, since they make meaning of their environment through play.
85 percent of brain development occurs during the first five years of a child's
life.
Approach to learning can be defined as a starting point or point of view
toward the learning process, which refers to the view of the occurrence of a
process which is still very common, inside hosts, inspired meeting,

1 Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. Wegner (2009, 2011). Psychology,

2nd edition. Worth Publishers. p. 264.
2Sandman, Wadhwa, Hetrick, Porto & Peeke. (1997). Human fetal heart rate
dishabituation between thirty and thirty-two weeks gestation. Child Development,
68, 10311040.

strengthened, and became the basis of learning methods with a particular

theoretical coverage.
White and Arndt identify 6 non-linear procedures or processes when
writing. Figure 1 on the following page shows these procedures and how they
inter-relate (White & Arndt, 1991, p. 4). (bikin gambar)
White and Arndt (1991, p. 7) have also identified a possible sequence
of activities for the
classroom shown in Figure 2 below. (bikin gambar)
Fig. 2: Sequence of Activities in the Process Approach to Writing
(adapted from White and Arndt 1991) (keterangan gambar)
The role of both the teacher and the student differs from other
approaches in that,The teacher, instead of being cast merely in the role of
linguistic judge, now becomes a reader, responding to what the students
have written; the students, rather than merely providing evidence of mastery
of linguistic forms, proffer experiences, ideas, attitudes and feelings to be
shared with the reader. (White & Arndt, 1991, p. 2). Essentially, the process
approach, as its name suggests, focuses on the process one goes through
when writing including generating ideas, deciding which ideas are relevant to
the message and then using the language available to communicate that
message in a process that evolves as it develops. In the classroom this
translates into group brainstorming exercises, general discussions, and group
planning activities to decide on the content of the piece of writing. Peer
correction and group evaluation are also encouraged.
5.2 Other Approaches
5.2.1 The Product Approach
This is the traditional way to teach writing. Badger and White (2000, p.
153) point to Pincas (1982b) for one of the most explicit descriptions of
product approaches. They cite her view that writing is primarily about
linguistic knowledge, with attention focused on the appropriate use of
vocabulary, syntax and cohesive devices.

Pincas identifies four stages to writing: familiarisation; controlled

writing; guided writing and free writing ( (Pincas, 1982a), cited in Badger and
White, 2000, p. 153). This approach is, as Nunan (1999, p. 272) points out,
consistent with sentence level structuralist linguistics and bottom-up
processing. The role of the teacher is provider of model language and
guided exercises and corrector of errors when the final perfect product is
created.
5.2.2 The Genre Approach
Badger and White (2000, p. 155) argue that genre theory is an
extension of the product approaches. The similarities being that both see
writing as predominantly linguistic. They (Badger & White, 2000, p. 155)
argue that genre theory differs from product approaches, because it admits
that the writing varies with the social context in which it is produced.
Genre analysts, they suggest, believe there are several elements of a genre
which will determine the language chosen in writing. These are primarily the
purpose of the writing but also the

subject matter, the relationships

between the writer and the audience, and the pattern of organization. The
role of the teacher therefore, is to provide model language and to facilitate
the learners understanding of the purpose and context of the writing
(Badger & White, 2000, p. 155).
5.2.3 The Process Genre Approach
The main idea behind this approach, devised by Badger and White
(2000, pp. 157-8) is that Writing involves knowledge about language,...
knowledge of the context in
which writing happens and especially the purpose for the writing,...
and skills in
using language. ... Writing development happens by drawing out the
learners
potential... and by providing input to which the learners respond....
So by being a combination of the two approaches it benefits from their
advantages but avoids their weaknesses.

5.3 The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Process Approach

Badger & White (2000, p. 156) argue that the process approach
evolved out of dissatisfaction with more traditional product approaches,
which view the end product as their focus, with the supporters of the former
rejecting the latter as old fashioned and ineffective. The process approach,
however, is also not perfect. Firstly it requires a significant investment of
class time to be successful. In addition, it was developed to meet the needs
of the native classroom, where learners, who were already verbally fluent,
needed to address the issue of the writing process and as a result, it neglects
the linguistic element of written language. A recent adaptation within this
approach, which aims to address this weakness, is the introduction of are
formulation stage where the teacher provides assistance in reformulating the
language without losing the writers original meaning. This may take the
form of a letter to the writer asking for clarification or explaining vocabulary
they have used. An example of this is provided by White and Arndt (1991,
pp. 8-9). However, it too requires an additional investment of a teachers
time as every student is likely to have his own unique mix of problems and
therefore each piece of writing must be replied to individually for this stage
to lead to improvement.
On the other hand, EFL students might not have extensive L2 language
resources but they still have experience of the world and knowledge of
conventions in their own language, which they can bring into the learning
process when using the process approach and as Brown (1987, p. 82) points
out: The native language of the second language learner is often positively
transferred, in which case the learner benefits from the facilitating effects of
the first language. This is unlikely to happen in the product approach. When
using the process approach students can also develop skills, such as drafting
and editing texts, which are required when writing.
Raimes (1993) maintains a shortcoming of the debate around these
issues is that process and product have been seen as either/or rather than
both/and entities. (Nunan, 1999, p. 273) Badger and White (2000, p. 157)

agree, saying that the conflict between the approaches is misguided, and
damaging to classroom practice. What Raimes and Badger and White both
suggest is that approaches are not mutually exclusive and I believe the
approach, or combination of approaches, chosen by a teacher should be
based on the learners goals, level and needs, and the time constraints
imposed by exam or learning deadlines.
c. What is Writing ?
When we write we use graphic symbols that is letters or combinations
of letters which relate to the sounds we make when we speak. (Byrne,
1979) Do we just use graphic symbols for the sake of using them? I think
No. Of course, the symbols which are used need to be arranged properly to
form words and then to form the sentences with a view to communicating
our ideas in an organised way. In fact, when we communicate through
writing, we have so many ideas to express for which we consider different
ways of combining and arranging them which lead us to our drafting, revising
or redrafting and so on. In other words, it can be said that writing is encoding
of a massage of some kind that is, we translate our thoughts and ideas into
language. So, in a way, writing represents our thoughts and ideas. What one
thinks leads to ones writing in the form of sentences and by organizing the
sentences into a cohesive text where we are able to communicate with our
readers successfully.
So far as the teaching of writing is concerned, the teacher should keep
this nature of writing in mind. Writing always has become difficult to teach or
to learn because it involves a different kind of mental process which includes
the sub-skills like drafting, editing, revising, organizing etc. Thats why, it is
the duty of a teacher to make the learners acquire the sub-skills for acquiring
the main skill.
d. Contextual Teaching And Learning Approach To Teaching Writing
Writing is an activity is the delivery of messages by using stationery as
the medium (Suparno and Jonah, 2003). The message is the payload

contained in writing, while writing a symbol language that can be seen and
agreed upon the wearer. Communication in writing, at least there are four
elements involved, i.e. the author as a better Messenger messages, content
writing, media channels or in the form of writing, and audience as the
recipient of the message.
Learning is an activity which aims, many of the students events and
activities involving teachers. To achieve the learning objectives required an
approach that can be used as a tool to achieve that goal. In the process of
teachers need to use varied teaching approach to achieve the learning
objectives that had been planned earlier.
During this time, learning to write is more accentuated on the results in
the form of writing, not on what should be done when students write. During
this time, students practice writing directly without learning how to write.
The teacher asked the students to write in accordance with the basic
competencies in the curriculum. Upon completion, students collected
writings, corrected, and assessed by the teacher. This activity is constantly
carried out which resulted in students feel saturated and not passionate in
following instruction writing. As a result, the writing skills of students are
very low. According to Badger & White (2000), basically there are three main
approaches in learning to write, namely (1) the product approach, (2)
approach to the process, and (3) the approach to the genre. However,
because each of these approaches have advantages and drawbacks of each,
all deemed that approach complement each other so that suggested the
existence of a new approach, called a process approach to genre (Badger &
White, 2000; Kim & Kim, 2005; Xu, 2005; Kaur & Chun, 2005; Kim, 2007; Yan,
2005; Gao, 2007; and Lee, Goh, Chan, & Yang, 2007). According to Badger &
White (2000), in learning to write basically to consider that writing includes
the knowledge of the language (as stressed in learning to write with the
product and approach the genre approach).
There are various approaches to teaching writing that are presented by
Raimes (1983) as follows:

1) The Controlled to Free Approach:

In 1950s and early 1960, the audio- lingual method dominated second
language learning which emphasized on speech and writing through
mastering grammatical and syntactic forms. Here, the students are given
sentence

exercises,

and

then

paragraphs

to

copy

or

manipulate

grammatically, these controlled compositions then followed by correction of

errors, so that it can lead to the free composition. Overall, this approach
focuses on accuracy rather than fluency.
2) The Free Writing Approach:
This approach stresses writing quantity rather than quality. This
focuses on fluency rather than accuracy. It is based on the principle that if
once ideas are there, the organization follows.
3) The Paragraph Pattern Approach:
This approach focuses on organization by copying the paragraphs or
model passages. It is based on the principle that in different culture or
situations, people construct and organize communication with each other in
different ways.
4) The Grammar-Syntax Organization Approach:
This approach stresses on simultaneous work on more than one
composition feature. In a way, it is inclusive here that writing cannot be seen
as composed of separate skills which are learned sequentially. So, students
must be trained to pay attention to organization while they also work on the
necessary grammar and syntax.
5) The Communicative Approach:
This approach focuses 'on the purpose of writing and the audience for
it. They are given some tasks where they have to behave as writers so that
they can learn by doing it.
- Why am I writing this?
- Who will read it?
Thus, this approach is quite functional in nature, which can provide the
actual experience to the learners.

6) The Process Approach:

This approach shows the shift from product to process which shows:
- How do I write this?
- How do I get started?
Here, the students are trained to generate ideas for writing, to think of
purpose, audience, and ways of communication and so on. In fact, it's a
developmental process from generating ideas to expressing them, drafting,
redrafting, organizing and so on. This process of writing can have three
stages like: Prewriting, Writing and Post-writing (Revising or Redrafting).

Conclusion
So far, we have seen what writing is, the nature of writing, types of
writing and so on. In fact, written mode is important for communicating our
ideas, thoughts and even for recording the same. One can always read
his/her writing and reflect on the ideas. Writing is considered the secondary
skill because it comes after the Speech which again makes writing more
sophisticated as a skill. By sophisticated, I mean that writing needs proper
planning and organization. One has to master the sub-skills of writing for a
good and more expressive writer.

Since, the duty of the teacher is to teach writing effectively and

enable the students acquire the writing skill with a view to making them
expressive. Writing is a powerful mode of communication so one needs to
acquire the skill. The teacher can always teach keeping the learners in mind,
by making teaching functional and also by giving the proper purpose to the
learners for writing.