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APPLIED LINGUISTICS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING ENGLISH SKILLS:


TEACHING WRITING

By:

I Wayan Bagastana NIM. 1729081005


Muhammad Mersandy Wirajaya NIM. 1729081010
Rikardus Jehadun NIM. 1729081044

POST GRADUATE PROGRAM


ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
GANESHA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
2018

INTRODUCTION

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In everyday interaction, human beings express their ideas not only through spoken

language but also through written language. Writing, which is the written language, is an

active means of communication that requires a special attention as it is a productive

language process. Writing is physical and mental act (Nunan, 2003). It is about discovering

ideas, thinking about how to communicate and develop them into statements and paragraphs

that will be comprehensible to readers.


According to Carroll (1990) writing is the most important invention in human

history. Writing provides a relatively permanent record of information, opinion, beliefs,

feelings, arguments, explanations, theories, and so forth. Through writing, we can share our

communication not only with our contemporaries, but also with future generations. Besides,

we can communicate with people from the near and far-distant through writing.
In spite of its importance, among the other skills, writing is viewed as the most

difficult skill to learn (Richard and Renandya, 2002:303). Writing is a complex process

which is about expressing knowledge. Students express their knowledge as much as they can

during writing. It is a complex skill that requires an ability to translate ideas into text that

can be understood by the readers.


This paper discusses the nature of writing and why it is important to be taught.

Furthermore, this paper presents several reasons why writing is difficult from expert

perspectives. It also reveals problems faced by students gained from several studies. Finally,

it offers certain solutions that may be used by students to cope with students’ writing

difficulties.

TEACHING WRITING
1. The nature of writing

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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.

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.

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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.

3. What makes writing difficult?


Writing is complicated for several reasons. First, writing consists of complex
activities. Writers must learn how to move redundancy, how to combine sentences, how to
make references to other elements in a text, how to create syntactic and lexical variety,
and much more (Brown, 2001). Second, there are some components found in writing,
namely content, organization, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, mechanics, purpose, and
audience (Brown, 2001). Students need to consider these components in composing an
effective writing. By doing so, conveyed message(s) can be easily understood by intended
readers.
Third, writing includes numerous cognitive and metacognitive activities (Nunan,
2003). At the most basic level, writing is the physical act of committing words or ideas to
some medium. On the other hand, writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking
about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will
be clear to a reader. Furthermore, it covers activities such as brainstorming, planning,
outline, organizing, drafting, revising, and publishing final product (Richard and
Renandya, 2002; Ozagac, 2004). These activities are required in order to produce quality
writing. Such activities prove that writing is not an instant process. It takes time and
needs a lot of practice.
Fourth, writing requires prerequisite knowledge before composing a good writing
(Brown, 2001). Such knowledge involves content knowledge deals with knowledge of
concepts involved in the subject area, context knowledge refers to knowledge of the
context in which the text will be read, language system knowledge deals with knowledge
of those aspects of the language system necessary and writing process knowledge deals

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with knowledge of writing task. As writers, students should consider this knowledge in
producing a piece of writing.

4. Types of Classroom Writing Performance


There are several kinds of classroom writing performance (Brown, 2001). Each is
explained below:
1. Imitative, or writing down
At the beginning level of learning to write, students will simply “write down”
English letters, words, and possibly sentences in order to learn the conventions of the
orthographic code. One example of imitative writing is dictation (Brown, 2001).
Dictation typically involves the following steps:
a. Teacher reads a short paragraph once or twice at normal speed.
b. Teacher reads the paragraph in short phrase units of three or four words each, and
each unit is followed by a pause.
c. During the pause, students write exactly what they hear.
d. Teacher then reads the whole paragraph once more at normal speed to students
can check their writing.
e. Scoring of students’ written work can utilize a number of rubrics for assigning
points. Usually spelling and punctuation errors are not considered as severe as
grammatical errors.
2. Intensive, controlled
Writing is sometimes used as a production mode for learning, reinforce, or
testing grammatical concepts. This intensive writing typically appears in controlled,
written grammar exercises. This type of writing does not allow much, if any,
creativity on the part of the writer.
A common form of controlled writing is to present a paragraph to students in
which they have to alter a given structure throughout (Brown, 2001). So, for example,
they may be asked to change all present tense verbs to past tense; in such as case,
students may need to alter other time references in the paragraph.
Guided writing loosens the teacher’s control but still offers a series of
stimulators (Brown, 2001). For example, the teacher might get the students to tell a
story just viewed on a videotape by asking them a series of questions: Where does the
story take place? Describe the principal character. What does he say to the woman in
the car?
Another form of controlled writing is a dicto-comp (Brown, 2001). Here, a
paragraph is read at normal speed, usually two or three times; then the teacher asks
students to rewrite the paragraph to the best of their recollection of the reading. The
teacher, after reading the passage, puts key words from paragraph, in sequence, on the
chalkboard as cues for the students.
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3. Self-writing
A significant proportion of classroom writing may be devoted to self-writing, or
writing with only the self in mind as an audience (Brown, 2001). The most salient
instance of this category in classrooms is note-taking, where students take notes
during a lecture, for the purpose of later recall. Other note-taking may be done in the
margins of books and on odd scraps of paper. Diary or journal writing also falls into
this category.
4. Display writing
For all language students, short answer exercises, essay examinations, and even
research reports will involve am element of display.
5. Real writing
While virtually every classroom writing task will have an element of display
writing in it, some classroom writing aims at the genuine communication of messages
to an audience in need of those messages. Academic, vocational/technical, and
personal writing are kinds of real writing performances.

5. Issues on problems faced by students in writing


Farooq (2012) in his article entitled “Opinion of Second Language Learners about
Writing Difficulties in English Language” conducted a study aimed at exploring writing
difficulties in the English language faced by second language learners. A survey was
conducted to achieve this purpose. Data were collected from four boys and girls public
sector colleges. Two hundred and forty-five 12th graders studying English as a compulsory
subject were randomly selected out of five hundred and twenty. These students were from
different public-sector colleges existing in the city of Lahore, Pakistan (known as the city
of colleges).
Results of the study revealed that the most frequent problem which Pakistani
students face is that they first think in Urdu and then translate it in English which is
different from Urdu in syntax, idiom and imagery. The most serious problems were that
of vocabulary deficiency, L1 interference and confusion in grammatical rules. The
students feel difficulties in writing when they face difficulties in reading. The female
students face more difficulties than the male students in English writing due to the factors
taken in this study.
Megaiab (2014) in her study entitled “The English Writing Competence of the
Students of Indonesia Senior High School” was aimed to find out the English Writing
Competence of the Students of Indonesian Senior High School, highlights the problems,
find out the cause and provide some suggestions to overcome the problems. To find out

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the objectives of this study, the researcher collected the data through a writing test. The
participants were the First Senior High school students in SMA1 and SMA3.
The results revealed that the researcher found the challenge in teaching writing as
the students’ mother tongue has influenced a lot in the production of the students’ writing.
In this case, the students tend to use their first language to write in English, and as a
consequence, they mostly face problems on grammar such as spelling, prepositions,
verbs, tenses, singular and plural, and articles. In addition, the students also face
difficulties in terms of punctuation and capitalization. Through the research, Megaiab
realizes that the problems faced by the students are because writing was not taught in an
effective way by the teacher and was not learned maximally by the students because of its
lack of portion rather than other aspects in English.
Rahmatunisa (2014) conducted a research entitled “Problems Faced by Indonesia
EFL Learners in Writing Argumentative Essay”. The purpose of the study was to reveal
problems in writing argumentative essay faced by Indonesian EFL learners. It is carried
out in a qualitative research design as it attempted to describe the problems and their
ways out. The data were taken from university students’ writing task and interview. The
participants are the second year of university Indonesia students who enroll their study in
English Department.
Results of the data indicated that Indonesian EFL learners faced the problems in
three categories, those are linguistics problems, cognitive problems, and psychological
problems. Mostly, students faced problems in linguistics related to the grammatical
structure (23.2%), formatting words (30.2%), words classes (16.3%), error in using words
(9.3%), and the use of article (21%). Second, cognitive problems are related to organizing
paragraph, difficulties in remaining word classes, getting lost the generic structure,
making a conclusion, and putting punctuation. Last, psychological problems which
included laziness, egoism, bad mood, and difficulties to start writing also faced by
Indonesian EFL learners. Data analysis also indicated the problem solving which
hopefully will be beneficial for EFL teachers in writing class. It is strongly recommended
that the EFL class should strengthen all the language skills in general and writing in
particular, motivate the students to use English with the teachers, introduce pair work,
peer-correction, and use dictionaries frequently etc.

6. Problem and solutions on writing


6.1. Problems faced by EFL Learners
Ibnian (2017) conducted a research to examine writing difficulties encountered by
Jordanian EFL Learners. The study aimed at exploring difficulties that university students

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face when they write in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It also aimed at proposing
solutions to help EFL learners overcome writing difficulties. The sample of the study
comprised 82 English majors from the World Islamic Sciences and Education University
in Jordan. Instruments of the study included a questionnaire on difficulties that may face
English major while they write in English. The questionnaire also included an open-ended
question on suggestions and solutions that can help the students overcome writing
difficulties.
The results revealed that “lack of ideas” topped difficulties faced by Jordanian EFL
students in writing class, followed by “the incorrect use of mechanics of writing”. The
study also revealed that “lack of clear assessment instruments and marking schemes”
occupied the third rank, while “time restriction” ranked fourth. “The unsuitable methods
of teaching writing” and “vocabulary restriction” occupied the fifth and sixth ranks
respectively, while “topic inappropriateness” occupied the seventh rank. Finally,
“grammar difficulties” and “lack of teacher’s help” ranked eighth and ninth respectively.
6.2. Solutions to the problems
1) Problem 1: lack of ideas. To solve this problem, teachers should place more
emphasis on the pre-writing stage so as to help learners generate ideas through
brainstorming sessions, reading about the topic, watching a film, listening to a text
related to the topic or even describing a picture about the topic.
2) Problem 2: the incorrect use of mechanics of writing. To resolve this problem,
students should be trained on how to appropriately use and implement mechanics of
writing (spelling, punctuation, quotation, and capitalization).
3) Problem 3: lack of clear assessment instruments and marking schemes. Teachers
should help students be aware of the assessment instruments and marking schemes
upon which they will be marked. Teachers are also suggested to create rubrics. A
detailed scoring guide or performance rubric helps students to recognize the
component parts of a writing task and understand how their competence will be
assessed in each of these areas. A good rubric helps students to see what comprises
high quality writing and to identify the skills they will need to perform well.
Teachers might want to provide the rubric to students along with the assignment so
they know what the criteria are in advance and can plan appropriately.
4) Problem 4: time restriction. To deal with this problem, students should be given
enough time to gather ideas, link them together and get involved with the different
stages of the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and
publishing).

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5) Problem 5: The unsuitable methods of teaching writing. To solve this problem,
teachers are recommended to frame the techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting,
and revising stages. There are certain method that can applied by teachers in
teaching writing:
a. Process approach
Hyland (2002) in Nyasimi (2009), indicates that the process approach
focuses on how a text is written in-stead of the final outcome. He adds that the
process approach has a major influence on understanding the nature of writing
and the way writing is taught. Therefore, the process approach emphasizes on the
importance of certain procedures such as pre-writing, drafting, evaluating and
revising. He points out that the process approach involves introducing techniques
that help the students identify and engage in a topic. Students are required to
produce multiple drafts of a work. After discussion and feedback from
evaluators, the students would revise the drafts. Rewriting, revision and editing
are essential parts to writing in this approach. The drafting and revising stages
are the core of process writing. Several strategies and skills apply to the
drafting/revising process in writing such as getting started (adapting and
freewriting techniques, peer-reviewing for content (accepting/using classmates’
comments), using the instructor feedback, editing for grammatical errors, and so
on (Brown, 2001).
b. The genre approach
According to Badger and White (2000) in Nyasimi (2009), the genre or
eclectic approach is considered as the most effective and successive in the
teaching of writing skills. The genre approach combines process theories with
genre knowledge and also emphasizes on the social con-text in which writing is
produced. In other words, this approach provides the learner with opportunities
for developing their individual creativity as well as helping them fully
understand the features of the target genres. Giving the knowledge of form and
language at the same time, helps the student to understand how a particular form
functions in a specific context; in this way, learners’ writing proficiency can be
enhanced.
6) Problem 6: vocabulary restriction. To solve this problem, we suggest teachers to
connect reading and writing. By reading, students will be exposure to various
English words. Students will learn (conscious or unconsciously) English
vocabularies that they may use when they write. Furthermore, Students learn to

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write in part by carefully observing what is already written. That is, they learn by
observing, or reading, the written word. By reading and studying a variety of
relevant types of text, students can gain important insights, both about how they
should write and about subject matter that may become the topic of their writing.
7) Problem 7: topic inappropriateness. To cope with this problem, students should be
given enough opportunities to choose topic to write about. If it is possible, students
are free to choose topics they are about to write. Besides that, students are provided
as much authentic writing as possible. Sharing writing with other students in the
class is one way to add authenticity. Publishing a class newsletter, writing letters to
people outside of class, writing a script for a kit or dramatic presentation, writing a
resume, writing advertisements – all these can be seen as authentic writing.
8) Problem 8: lack of teacher’s help. Teachers play important role in the classroom to
assist students with their writing task. One of the roles that teachers can do in
writing activities is to give feedback to students’ writing. Students need feedback
from their teachers related to content as well as English conventions and mechanics
of writing. In addition, students are needed to be motivated. It is teachers’ role to
motivate students to write. Teachers need to inform students about the benefits of
writing in their lives, especially for their academic purposes.

CONSLUSION

In teaching English as a foreign language context, writing is one of the four language

skills that should be learned by students and the most complicated skill to achieve. It has

been discussed in this paper reasons why writing should be taught, why it is difficult, as well

as some strategies on how to teach writing. This paper has also explored issues related to

problems faced by students in writing. Solutions offered to solve the problems are also

discussed. Having this knowledge in mind may help English teachers to deal with students’

problems in writing. Besides that, such knowledge may assist English teachers in facilitating

students to achieve writing goals.

REFERENCES
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Faisal, F., & Suwandita, K. (2013). The Effectiveness of FRESH Technique to Teach
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Faroog, M. S., & Hassan, M. U. (2012). Opinion of Second Language Learners about Writing
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Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Cambridge: Longman.

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