improve the students’ writing proficiency through collaborative writing

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

           Language is the most important thing for people as a means of communication. It is basically a means of both oral and written communication. People use language to express their ideas and wishes to others’ people such as when they need others help so that close relation among members of the group can be carried. It is important to learn English because it is an international language which is used in many countries over the world and widely used in many sectors such as information, trade, education, etc.

     In Indonesia, English has an important role especially in education. Therefore, English is taught as the first foreign language in all levels of schools and language courses. In school, English has been taught as a local content. Since The Basic Course Outlines of the 2004 Curriculum (2004: 7) in Nurhawaeni states that the objective of learning English at junior high school as a local content is to develop students' communication ability in the context of school. It means that the students are expected to be able to make simple transactional and interpersonal conversation which is potentially needed to communicate in the context of school. Here, the teacher plays important role since he has to be able to set students interest and motivation in learning English in order to develop students’ ability to communicate using all the resources they have already acquired to interact with others about their needs and interest.

      In this study, the writer will focus on teaching writing in Junior high school considering that in learning language writing is the skill that students acquire in first to write something. Writing is important to support learning English especially in enriching vocabulary and gaining a large portion of their education. Therefore the writer considers that writing can be taught at junior high schools.

There are four skill should be mastered in learning English; speaking, reading, listening and writing. Writing will provide a basis for development of other language skills.

Due to the importance of writings explained above, the teachers have to develop students’ writing ability since it is the first stage they learned English. By developing students’ ability to writing well, the teachers develop their students’ ability to become more independent learners, as the students will be able to reproduce language accurately and refine their understanding of grammar and develop their own vocabulary. The better students improve their writing ability, the better they reach the achievement in writing  Teachers, therefore, should explore a new productive strategy in brightening writing classes in order to encourage students in learning writing skill. They should create interesting and entertaining materials to motivate the students’ active responds in doing writing exercise. After the teaching and learning process and all the materials are given to the students, there is an expectation that students will make a progress in their study. To know whether the students make some progress in their study, it is useful for teacher to conduct a test or an examination at the end of a program. So the students will be motivated to learn and master the materials which have been taught by the teacher.

There are many reasons for getting students’ to write, both in and outside class. Writing gives they more thinking time then they get when they attempt spontaneous conversation. This allows them more opportunity for language processing, that is thinking about the language. When thinking about writing, it is helpful to make a distinction between writing for learning and writing for writing. In the case of the former, writing is used as a practice tool to help students practice and work with language they have been studying. When we are give example, ask a class to write five sentences using by using a given structure, or using five of the new words they have been learning. Writing activity like this are designed to give reinforcement to the students. This is particularly need a mix of visual and kinesthetic activity.

The kinds of writing we ask student to do will depend as most other things do, on their age, level learning styles and interests. We won’t get beginners to try to put together a complex narrative composition in English; we probably won’t ask a class of advanced business students to write a poem about their mothers (unless we have specific reasons for doing this). In order to help students write successfully in different styles.

In helping the students to write, we need to consider with the gender. A gender is a type of writing which members of a discourse community would instantly recognize for what it was. Thus we recognize a small add in newspaper the moment we see it because, being members of a particular group, or community, we have seen many such texts before and are familiar with the way they are constructed.????