CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Writing
1. The Definition of Writing
There are three definition of writing according to experts. According to White
(1986:10) writing is the process of expressing the ideas, information, knowledge, or
experience and understand the writing to acquire the knowledge or some information
to share and learn. Besides that, Tarigan (1994: 3) stated, writing is activity to produce
or draw graphic symbols which represent a language that is understood by people, so
that other people can read the graphic symbols presented. People will understand the
graphic symbols presented if they understand the language and the graphic itself.
Almost the same with Tarigan, Ramelan (1992: 14) also stated, writing is
representation or symbol of language.
From the definition above the writer can conclude that writing is an activity to
express ideas, events, feeling or thinking in written form that can be the tool to
communiacate with the other people.
2. The Importance of Writing
The reason for teaching writing to the students of English as a foreign language
include reinforcement, language development, learning style, and the most
According to Harmer (2004: 31-33) there are some importance of writing. Those
are:
a. Writing encourages students to focus on accurate language use because they think
as they write, it may provoke well development as they resolve problems which
writing puts in their mind.
b. Writing is often used as a means of reinforcing language that has been thought.
They use writing skill to make a note about what they have learnt while learning
process happens.
c. Writing is frequently usefull as preparation for some other activity.
d. Writing can be used as an integral part of a larger activity where the focus is on
something else such as language practice, acting out, or speaking.
e. Writing is also used in questionnaire-type of activities. Writing is important to
face questionnaire test. In the examination, students are asked their answer in the
form of written.
3. The Process in Writing
Harmer (2004: 4-6) states that there are four main elements in writing process.
Those are planning, drafting, editing (editing and revising), and final version.
a. Planning
Harmer (2004: 4) stated that in planning process, there are three main issues
of writing. Next, students have to think about language styles. Finally, students
have to consider the content.
b. Drafting
Harmer (2004: 5 ) stated that drafting is the first version of a piece of writing.
In this point the students should be given a lot of time, because they need to focus
on the development ideas and the organization of those ideas more than the
development of perfect grammar, punctuations or spelling.
c. Editing
Harmer (2004: 5 ) stated that in editing the students read again what they write
as a draft to check their writing if there are mistakes. After the students found the
mistakes, then revise it. By doing those, the mistakes can be minimize.
d. Final version
Harmer (2004: 5-6) said that the last stage is the final version. After all process
have done, the students make final version. It is possible that the final version is
much different in the plan and the draft has been made before. It happens since
there are many change in editing process. Any unimportant information stated in
the draft can be deleted.
After finishing that processes, the result of writing is ready to be sent out to the
reader. It is different if students write spontaneously. Therefore, the result of
4. The Purpose of Writing
Tarigan (1994 : 24) summarize the purpose of writing, those are :
a. Assignment purpose
The writers will start writing when someone asks writers to write about
something. Therefore, the idea which will be written by the writers does not come
from writers itself.
b. Altruistic purpose
The purpose is to entertain the readers, to remove the readers sadness with the
writer‟s work.
c. Persuasive purpose
It has purpose to convince the readers about the true opinion presented.
d. Information purpose
The purpose of writing is to give information, explanation to the readers.
e. Self-expresive pyrpose
The purpose is to introduce the writer to the readers.
f. Creative purpose
The writing has to achieve artistic value, value of art.
g. Problem-solving purpose
This writing is used to solve problem faced by the writer. Writers want to
explain and observe carefully about his thought and idea to be understood and
B. Descriptive Text
1. Definition of Descriptive Text
A descriptive text is a text that describe the features of someone, something,
animal, or a certain place. Wardiman in fitriyanti (2014: 16) stated that descriptive
text a kind of text which describes particular thing, person, or other.
Descriptive Text is a kind of text with a purpose to give information. The context
of this kind of text is the description of particular thing, animal, person, or others.
(Linda Gerot in M Mursyid PW, 2005: 4).
From the explanation above, it can be concluded descriptive text is a text which
describes a person, place, animal, or thing.
2. Generic Structure of Descriptive Text
The generic structures of descriptive text according to Pardiono (2007: 34), as
follows:
a. Identification : consisting of identification phenomenon to be described.
b. Description : consisting of the description parts or things (physical appearance),
qualities (degree of beauty, excellence, or worth of value), characteristics
(prominent aspects that are unique).
3. Language Features of Descriptive Text
Wardiman (2008 : 122) states that there are some main language features of
descriptive text :
a. Specific Participant
b. The use of Adjectives
Example : beautiful, sharp, strong, small, big, handsome, famous, and etc
c. The Use of Simple Present Tense
4. The Evaluation of Descriptive Text
The type of test to evaluate writing descriptive text is subjective test. The
subjective test which will be used is paragraph. From the topic given students choose
one of the topics, students make descriptive text by using its generic structure. They
also use language features of descriptive text such as use simple present tense,
adjective, etc.
There are some aspects of writing that can be evaluated (Nurgiantoro, 2001: 307),
those are:
a. Content (The agreement with the title chosen)
A good writing is when the title represent the content of it. The content of a
text should be relevant or equivalent and describe the title in complete. As stated
by Brown (2004: 73) the writing section measures the ability to write English,
including the ability to organize, develop ideas, to support those ideas with
examples or evidence, to compose response to one assigned topic in standard
written English, and to generate.
b. Organization (Paragraph unity, coherence, and cohesion)
It means that how the students organize their idea. Whether each paragraph
organize well or not. However, a good text consists of paragraphs which are
arranged well with some connecting words which can make the paragraph
c. Vocabulary (The precision of using vocabulary)
Rivers as cited in Nunan (1992: 11), vocabulary is essential for successful
study on the second language. In writing, a writer should use the appropriate
vocabulary to express what they want to write.
d. Grammar
The tenses and structure mastery are really necessary to have paragraphs
constructed. It‟s not important to use a long sentense, but the grammar that is used
is correct. It is difficult for students to arrange a good paragraph if they lack of
tenses and struture mastery.
e. Mechanic (Spelling and punctuation)
Paragraph is a combination of some sentences which needs good spelling and
punctuation. Whether the students master the role how to write and make only few
faults in the spelling.
All of the aspects above, content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and,
mechanic will be used to evaluate the writing result of the students in writing
descriptive text.
C. Write Pair Share
1. The Nature of Write Pair Share
Write pair share technique is one of the cooperative learning technique wrote
by George M. Jacob, at. al. (1995: 13). This technique consist of three steps. First,
Second, each learner discusses his or her result with a neighbor to solidify points of
mutual agreement, debate and resolve disagreements, and to flesh out inadequacies in
their original written response. Third, responses are shared with the whole class.
Write-pair-share exercises can take as little as 5 minutes or as long as 15
minutes. Write-pair-share also leads to wide participation in class discussion. The
students discuss their task in writing including revise their sentences whether it related
to the next sentences or not, check the grammar and misspelling, etc. The students
work cooperatively when constructing the sentences. So, it can be promoted self
confidence of the students. By pairing they have feedback from their pair about their
writing. So, they can construct the good sentences by revising their writing after
discussing with their pair. From the explanation above, the writer can conclude that
write pair share technique is the technique that teacher pose topics, questions or
statements to the students, then students write their answer in their note individually,
then discuss their work with their pair and finally, share their work in the whole class.
2. The Advantages of Write Pair Share
There are some advantages of write pair share technique (Mazda, 2013: 170):
a. Write pair share technique easily to be implemented in various levels of education.
b. Provide time writing to develop their own ideas before pairing.
c. Students become more active in discussion.
d. Students understand more about the concept of the topic for discussion.
f. Each student in pair has the opportunity to share his/ her ideas.
3. The steps in teaching writing through write pair share technique:
a. The class is divided into some pairs.
b. The teacher gives some topics to the students.
c. Each pairs choose one of the topic given.
d. Students write their answer in their note individually.
e. Each learners discusses their result with their pairs to solidify mutual agreements,
resolve disagreement, and to flesh out inadequacies in their original written
response.
f. Students share their final draft in front of the classes.
D. Basic Assumption
Most of the students in Vocational High School Muhammadiyah 1 Purwokerto
think that writing is the most difficult skill in learning English. It is caused by some
factors. They are not able to organize idea when making composition: they are lack of
vocabulary so their composition are unreadable; they do not master the grammatical ,
so that the students‟ composition are difficult to understand; and they are still
influence by their native language.
To make teaching writing successful, the teacher needs teaching techniqe
which will help the students to be able to write. Using write pair share technique
writing class. The students can discuss their writing activity with their pair and share
their final result in the whole class. By this learning technique students will be able to
decrease their problems in writing, because they will get discussion peer correction
with their peer when they write. So, the students will be able to write confidently.
E. Hypothesis
According to the problem and the aim of the research, the hypothesis of the research is
