B. Some Pertinent Ideas
3. The Concept of Writing a. Definition of Writing
Byrne (1990:1) defines writing is clearly more than prediction of the sounds. The symbols have been arranged according to certain in convention. As rule, however the students do not write just one sentence or a number of sentence as arranged in particular order and linked together in certain ways.
Nunan (Hamid: 2014) writing are physical and mental act. It is about discovering ideas, thinking about how to communicate, develop them into statements and paragraphs that will be comprehensible to a reader Writing has dual purpose are to express & impress the writers must select the most advantageous medium for their writing, each types has a different level of difficulty which determined by its objectives. Writing is a process and also a product. The writer creates, plans, w rites various drafts, revises, edits and publishes and also the audience reads is a product.
Nik et al (2010) states that writing is one of the most difficult skill for the students to acquire as writing requires a number of skill and conventions like organizing and developing ideas and information, choosing the right vocabulary accurately to eradicate the ambiguity of meaning and also the practice of accurate grammatical devices to focus and emphasize ideas.
According to Hyland (2000) argues that writing is a way of sharing personal learnings and writing courses that emphasize the power of the individual to construct his or her own views on a topic.
From the definition above, it can be understood that writing is a skill that can help the students think freely, creative and flexibility. Writing is also the way to share many ideas in a writing.
b. The Components of Writing
There are five main components of writing. They are content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics (Saputra, 2014).
1) Content
The content of writing should be clear enough for readers so that the reader can understand the messages and gain information in it. Besides that, it is content should be also well unfiled and completed.
a) Unity
The writing regards to have good unity, if it has some main ideas and sentences contained in it develop that idea. The main idea is stated in the topic sentence and each or every supported sentences and related to that idea of the topic sentences. If a writer wants his/her writing is unfiled, he/she should not include the sentences that do not support the main idea of the topic sentences.
b) Completeness
Writing is said to have completeness if the main idea have been explained and develop fully completeness. The controlling idea with develop thoroughly by these of particular information. It is
relative to know how complex or general the topic sentences by having a complete writing. Is it expected that the content of writing will be clear and understandable for readers.
2) Organization
In organization of writing concern with the ways the writer arrangers and organize the ideas or the messages in the writing. It could be chronological order, order of importance, general to particular to general order. There are two parts of organization in this case, they are below:
a) Coherence
Coherence means all ideas stick together. A coherence paragraph is one in which the ideas are part in the right order and it does not make reader confuse. This make the writer‘s thought easy to follow sentence and paragraph.
b) Spatial Order
If the purpose of the paragraph is to tell them something looks most effective organization pattern is usually spatial, if the writers write a recount text about ―Holiday in Bali‖ they want the readers know the writer‘s experience in Bali.
c) Grammar/Language Use
In order to have grammar in writing, writers should attention to the use of grammatical rules concerning tenses, preposition, conjunction, clause (adjective or adverb clauses), articles, etc. The lack of
knowledge of grammar will make the content of writing vague and can lead to misunderstanding.
d) Vocabulary
One cannot write anything if she or he has nothing to express. He or she should express the ideas in form of words or vocabulary, the lack of vocabulary makes someone fails to compose what they are going to say because he or she feels difficult to choose words, appropriate vocabulary will help the writers to compose the writing and also make readers are easy to understand.
e) Mechanics
The use of mechanics is due to capitalization, punctuation, and spelling appropriately. This aspect is very important since it leads readers to understand or recognize immediately what the writer means to express definitely. The use of favorable mechanics in writing will make readers easy to group the conveying ideas or messages to the written materials.
c. The Purpose of Writing
Purpose is the reasons why a person composes a particular piece of writing. Focusing on purpose as one writers helps a person to know what form of writing to choose, how formal or informal the writing style should be, and how much should be written (Copeland, 2012).
There are ten different types of purpose include: to express; to describe; to explore/learn; to entertain; to inform; to explain; to argue; to persuade; to evaluate; and to problem solve.
1) Writing to Express
In expressing writing, the writer‘s purpose or goal is to put thoughts and feelings on the page.
2) Writing to Describe
Writing to describe means to portray, places, things, moments and theories with enough vivid detail to help the reader create a mental picture of what is being written about. Description allows the audience to feel a thought they are a part of the writer‘s experience of the subject.
3) Writing to Explore/Learn
In exploratory writing, the writer‘s purpose is to ask key question and reflect on topics that defy simple answer. In those topics where intuition and reflection are more important than rational analysis or argumentation, writers focus more on their journey of discovery than on any definite answer.
4) Writing to Entertain
As a purpose or goal of writing, writing to entertain is to relax the audience and share some story of human foibles or surprising actions.
5) Writing to Inform
The purpose of informational or reportorial writing is to convey information as accurately and objectively as possible. Other example of writing to inform include laboratory reports, economics reports, and business report.
6) Writing to Explain
Writing to explain, or expository writing, is the most common of the writing purpose. The writer‘s purpose is to gather facts and information of the writing purpose. The writer‘s purpose is to gather facts and information, combine them with his or her own knowledge and experience, and clarify for some audience who or what something is, how it happened or should happen, and or why something happened.
7) Writing to Argue
It attempts to convince it is audience to believe or act in a certain way.
8) Writing to Persuade
Persuasive writing means to convince there a ders to accept the main idea, even though it may be controversial.
9) Writing to Evaluate
Writing to evaluate a person, product, thing, or policy is a frequent purpose for writing. It argues for the merits of the subject and presents evidence to support the claim.
10) Writing to Problem Solve
Problem solving is another specific type of argument: the writer‘s purpose is to persuade his audience to adopt a solution to a particular problem.
Divergent Thinking
Procedures Creativity
Brainstorming the Idea
Fluency of Thinking
Keep a spiritual Journal
Flexibility
Originality Write Freely
Create a Subject or Mind Mapping
Arrange the Idea
Writing C. Conceptual Framework
Every student has different ways of thinking so they have different levels of creativity. In this study the researcher will examine the use of divergent thinking to improve students' creativity in writing. The researcher will use divergent thinking as a method in the teaching and learning process, especially in writing skills. Divergent thinking is one way of thinking that can support students' potential so that someone can think creatively.
The ability of creativity can be improved through divergent thinking by following several procedures including brainstorming ideas, keep a spiritual journal, write freely, create visual subject or mind mapping, and arrange the
ideas in an innovative manner. Brainstorming is a tool to build upon ideas.
Keep a spiritual journal using capture and record the spontaneous ideas. Write freely to write everything that comes to mind as long as it is about the topic.
Create visual mapping or subject matter, students will write the brainstorming ideas in a visual map or picture. And the last ideas, the students need to apply the divergent thinking and convergence thinking because it is an important role in the process.
In supporting creativity, students must have or be included in the categories of some aspects of creativity including fluency of thinking, flexibility, and originality. Students must be fluent in thinking that it is easy to find ideas. Thinking flexibly can help students gather creative ideas. And the last is originality, students must produce creative ideas from their own thoughts so that their writing can be accounted for authenticity.
Therefore, to produce creative writing, students must be in the category or aspect of creativity and follow the divergent thinking procedure so students can easily write down and organize their ideas so that their creativity and writing abilities can be improved.