Definition of writing

Warta Madrasah -- “Writing is functional communication, making learners possible to create imagined worlds of their own design.” It means that, through writing, learners can express thought, feeling, ideas, experiences, etc to convey a specific purpose. The purpose of writing is to give some information. Meyers said that writing is an action. This means that when we first write something down, we have already been thinking about what we are going to say and we are going to say it. Then after you have finished writing, we read over what we have written and make changes and corrections.

Writing is one of productive skills, which contains a symbol (orthographic) and involves a complex process. In making good writing, we must use correct grammatical rules, choose appropriate vocabulary, and consider the coherent and cohesion. Some linguists gave some definitions of writing that may help us get clearer definition. One of them is stated by Celce and Murcia, “Writing is the production of the written word that results in a text but the text must be read and comprehended in order for communication to take place.” O’Malley and Pierce add that writing is a personal act in which writers take ideas or prompts and transform them into self-initiated topics. So, it prosecutes students to formulate goals and plans for creating an organized structure in their compositions.

White states that writing is an act of sharing new ideas or old ideas with a new perspective with the human community. Written language is simply the graphic representation of spoken language, and that written performance is much like oral performance, the only different lies in graphic for writing instead of auditory signals for speaking. So writing is closely related to speaking not only in such item of content, organization of ideas, and vocabulary but also the relationship of the ideas or the coherent with the other sentence.

From some definitions above, it can be concluded that writing is a system of human communication which represents a symbol. By writing, we can share our idea, feeling, or anything that exist in our mind. Writing prosecutes students to focus on generating idea, rganizing coherently, revising it into good composition, using discourse markers and rhetorical conventions cohesively, and editing text for appropriate grammar. Therefore, students who want to be able to write a good writing, they must learn to write regularly.

1. Writing Process

Writing is a never one-step action. Writing as one of productive skills needs a process. This process sues writer to write in sequence stages. Harmer states that the writing process is the stages that a writer goes through in order to produce something (a written text) before to be a final draft. There are four processes of writing:

a. Planning

At this stage, the writer must think about three main issues. Those are the purpose, the audience (the reader), and content structure. The purpose of writing will influence not only the type of text that the writer wants to produce, the language that the writer uses, but also the information that the writer chooses to include. Secondly, the writer must think of the audience. The audience will influence not only the shape of the writing (how it is laid out or how the paragraph is structured) but also the choice of language (formal or informal language). Thirdly, the writer has to consider the content structure of the piece. It means that how the writer sequences the fact, ideas, or argument.

This stage is often called by pre-writing process. Prewriting is the thinking, talking, reading, and writing that the writer does about his topic before he writes a first draft. Prewriting can be defined as a way of warming up the brain before write. There are two ways of warming up the brain; brainstorming and clustering.

Brainstorming is a quick way to generate a lot of ideas on a subject. So, brainstorming is the way to get “the ideas creation engine” running. The purpose of brainstorming is to make a list of as many ideas as possible without worrying about how writers will use them. Writers’ list can include words, phrases, sentences, or even questions.

There are five steps that must be done by writers to brainstorm:

1) Writers must begin with a broad topic.

2) Writers must write down as many ideas about the topic as writers can do in five minutes.

3) Writers can add more items to their list by answering the questions what, how, when, where, why, and how.

4) Writers group similar items on the list together.

5) Writers can cross out items that do not belong.

Clustering is another pre-writing technique. It is a visual way of showing how writers’ ideas are connected using circles and lines. When writers cluster, they draw a diagram to connect ideas.

There are five steps that must be done by writers to cluster:

1) Writers must write the topic in the center of blank place of paper and draw a circle around it.

2) Writers can write any ideas that come into their mind about the topic in circle around the main circle.

3) Writers must connect these ideas to the center word with a line.

4) Writers think about each of their new ideas, write more related ideas in circles near the new ideas, and then connect them.

5) Writers repeat the process until they run out of ideas. The picture above is an example of clustering

B. Drafting

After you have finished in planning, you can continue to the next step (drafting). As you write, the first draft on your paragraph, use the ideas you generated from planning as a

guide. As you write, remember to:

1) Begin with a topic sentence that states the main ideas,

include several sentences that support the main idea.

2) Stick the topic does not include information that does not

directly support the main idea.

3) Arrange the sentences so that the other ideas make sense.

4) Use signal words to help the reader to understand how the

ideas in your paragraph are connected.

C. Editing (Revising)

It is almost impossible to write a perfect paragraph on the first try. The first try is called the first draft. Perhaps the order of information is not clear or the discourse marker is wrong. The way to revise and improve the first draft is called editing. The writer edits their own or their peer’s work for grammar, spelling, punctuation, diction, sentence structure, and accuracy of supportive textual material such as quotations, examples and the like.

It is almost impossible to write a perfect paragraph on

the first try, so it needs to be revised. The steps are:

1) Add new ideas to support the topic.

2) Cross out sentences that do not support the topic.

3) Change the order of the sentences.

4) Using the following checklist to revise your paragraph;

a) Make sure you have a topic sentence.

b) Cross out sentences that do not relate to the main idea.

c) Check to see if the sentences are in the right order.

d) Add new ideas if they support the topic sentences.

e) Make sure you have included signal words to help guide the reader.

f) Check the punctuations, spelling and grammar.

D. Final Version

Once the writer has revised and edited the draft and made the changes that considered being necessary, he has produced the final version.

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