TEACHING WRITING

1. The nature of writing

According to Nunan (2003), writing is physical and mental act. It’s about discovering
ideas, thinking about how to communicate and develop them into statements and paragraphs that
will be comprehensible to reader. Writing is also a process and a product. The writer creates
plans, writes various drafts, revises, edits, and publishes the final writing (product- which then
read by publics. According to Harmer (as cited in Faisal and Suwandita, 2013), writing is one
skill that should be taught for every level which can be improved by practicing a lot because
writing has many contributions for our life. It means that, writing can contribute or give positive
outcomes to our life.
Furthermore, Tarigan (as cited in Utami, 2012) states that writing is one of the language
skills which is used to communicate indirectly, without having face to face with other people. It
means that, students can convey ideas, thoughts or feelings indirectly. Moreover, Brown (as cited
in Onozawa, 2010) claims that writing is a thinking process in which it can be planned and given
revisions before its release. It means that, writers can edit or modify the texts anytime as they
want. It differs from speaking, because in speaking, speaker cannot edit or modify what he/she
has said.
Based on theories above, it can be concluded that writing is a skill that is very beneficial
for our life in which to delivering ideas, thoughts, or feelings indirectly through written form.
Besides, writing differs from speaking. Even though they are categorized as productive skill, but
in writing, writers can modify as what writers want before its release. The students should learn
to improve their writing because it will help them to face the challenges of life when they grow
up, especially for academic purposes.
According to Linse & Nunan (2006), writing is the combination between process and
product. The process is when collecting the ideas that can create product which can be read by
the readers. So, the students should be able to process their ideas into an understandable product
of writing therefore their message can be understood by the reader. Moreover, Hedge (1998, p.
159) asserts that writing is the result of employing strategies to manage the composing process,
which is one gradually developing text. It involves a number of activities: setting goals,
generating idea, organizing information, selecting appropriate language, making a draft, reading
and reviewing it, then revising and editing.
 In addition, Raimes (198, p. 3), writing is a skill in which we express ideas, feeling,

and thought which are arranged in words, sentences, and paragraph using eyes, brain and

hands. This also means the writers have to be able to compose and integrate information

through components of linguistic logically. They have to develop their own ideas into

coherence sentence, cohesively and well organization, e.g., constructing words into phrase,

then into clause, and complete sentence containing certain idea arranged in logical order, so

the reader can easily understand the language being used in written language.
From the statements, it can be concluded that writing is the complex process to express

ideas, feeling and taught in the written form involving several indicators: grammar,

vocabulary, content, mechanic and organization as the integral part of indirect

communication between the writer and the reader.

2. Why teach writing?

The reasons for teaching writing for students are as follows (Harmer, 2007).
1) Reinforcement: some students acquire languages in a purely oral/aural way, but most of
us benefit greatly from seeing the language written down. The visual demonstration of
language construction is invaluable for both our understanding of how it all fits together
and as an aid to committing the new language to memory. Students often find it useful to
write sentences using new language shortly after they have studied it.
2) Language development: it seems that the actual process of writing (rather like the
process of speaking) helps us to learn as we go along. The mental activity we have to go
through in order to construct proper written texts is all part of the ongoing learning
experience.
3) Learning style: some students are fantastically quick at picking up language just by
looking and listening. For the rest of us, it may take a little longer. For many learners,
the time to think things through, to produce language in a slower way, is invaluable.
Writing is appropriate for such learners.
4) Writing as a skill: by far the most important reason for teaching writing, of course, is
that it is a basic language skill, just as important as speaking, listening, and reading.
Students need to know how to write letters, how to put written reports together, how to
reply to advertisements – and increasingly, how to write using electronic media. They
need to know some of writing’s special conventions (punctuation, paragraph
construction etc.) just as they need to know how to pronounce spoken English
appropriately.