THEORY OF LEARNING WRITING SKILLS

THEORY OF LEARNING WRITING SKILLS

Warta Madrasah - The word ‘’learning’’ is noun from the verb ‘’learn’’ which has meaning ‘’gain knowledge or skill in a subject or activity’’.1 According to Hilgrad and Bower (Fudyartanto, 2002), learning has many definitions: first, to gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery of trough experience or study, second, to fix in the mind or memory; memorize; third, to acquire trough experience, to become in form of to find out.2 Based on definitions above, the researcher can include that learning is obtaining knowledge or mastering knowledge through experience, remembering, mastering experience, and getting information or finding.

There are three learning components; teacher, learning material and student. Teachers’ role in learning process is very important. A teacher has a center role in learning process. During learning process, the students listen, give attention, raise questions, try and do assignments and give conclusions to the teacher. The teacher gives opinions, asks questions to the student, gives a sample, guide and gives feedback and also give evaluation to the students.

Learning takes place most successfully when the students are put in communicative situation in the target language. Therefore, there is no need formal instruction (e. g. the teaching of grammatical point). Instead, the students are simply asked to perform communicative activities in which they have to use the foreign language. The more they do is the better they are using the language. Furthermore when the students learn genres, they have to pass many cycles in the process of learning genre. The key stages of the cycle are: setting the context which means revealing genre purposes and the settings in which a genre is commonly used. Next stage is modeling, in this stage the students analyze the genre to reveal its stages and key features. Then, joint construction guided stage, here, the teacher support students to practice in the genre. Independent construction, in this stage the students write independently which monitored by the teacher, and the last stage is comparing, this is relate to what has been learned to other genres and contexts.

Writing Skills

There are a lot of definitions about writing which are presented by experts. Meyers says that ‘’writing is partly a talent, but it’s mostly a skill, and the any skill it improve with practice.’’ Writing is one of four language skills, it is considered as a difficult skill because the writers have to make some aspects in writing such as content, organization, purpose, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling in balance way. This is the basic students’ problems in writing. It is also need attention because it needs its own principles and method it requires mastery not only of grammatical a rhetorical devices but also of the conceptual and judgment. Because of that, it needs practice to improve that skill.

Students write papers and answer questions on tests, scientists write reports on their work, teachers write evaluations of their students, people make lists to remember what they must do, some of us keep diaries to remember what we have done, salesman write messages from the field to the office, and we write notes and letters to keep in touch with relatives friends.

There are practical reasons for writing. From the statement above, I assume that writing needs practice. Students’ practice with their papers and answer question on tests, teachers’ with their students’ evaluations, salesman with messages from the field to the office letter, etc.

Meyers also says that writing is an action a process of discovering and organizing putting on paper, and reshaping and revising them. Writing can express thought, feeling, ideas experiences, etc to convey a specific purpose. Harmer adds that to deliver from that explain of course we need to practice or express what idea in our mind in the form of lists, letters, essays, reports, or novels.9 Based on all statements above the researcher can conclude that writing is an activity of developing ideas, thoughts and memories into written form, either in sentences or paragraph form.

Next, writing means to express writers’ ideas, thoughts and feelings, on the other hand, writers can write everything in their mind. To make good writing, the students have to pass the following stages of the writing process. These stages presented in Maimon’s 1988 article ‘’Cultivating the Prose Garden,’’ are recommended with minor modification and with the reminder that these stages are overlapping and recursive: First is prewriting sometimes called ‘’rehearsal. This is time when the students get information try with some ideas and making plot a course. The second stage is drafting. In this stage, all thoughts and ideas of students mind are translated into sentences and paragraphs. Next stage is sharing. This is the opportunity for students to achieve their mental distance from a piece of writing by reading aloud some pieces of their writing then the listeners give response with questions and comments. Next stage is revising, during this process the students expands their ideas, then clarifies it meanings, and reorganizes the information. Later stage is editing, in this process the students focuses on conventions of language, such as spelling, punctuation, syntax, and structure are analyzed and corrected. The last stage is publishing, this time to publish students’ writing. It can be variety forms: individual books, class books, newsletters, literary magazines, bulletin boards displays.

According to Lundsteen (1989) states that ‘’Writers need to be creative enough to organize those ideas into meaningful text’’. It means that to solve students’ problems in writing, the students should be creative in organizing and choosing the ideas and words in order to make a good writing.

On daily life, people read magazines, newspapers, and tabloids. Through these media, writing has important role especially in giving further information about what happens in entire world. Writers make a good writing in order to attract readers to read it. The writer adds that there are some reasons why writing is important for the students; first, writing is a tool for discovery. When someone writes, he or she stimulates his or her thought throughout process by the act of writing; writing helps us to ‘’harvest’’ what we know.

Second, writing helps someone to organize his or her ideas. By writing down ideas, we can arrange them in coherent form. Third, writing helps someone to absorb and process information, when he or she write about a topic, he or she learn it better. Fourth, students get much of their knowledge through written materials like books, magazines, and newspaper. Especially in writing their paper or thesis, they must quote some important statements of expert to support their ideas.

Tweet