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TEACHING WRITING BY COMBINING PENS (Preview, Explore, Note, and See) STRATEGY AND POWER (Planning, Organization, writing, Editing and Revising)
STRATEGY FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
JOURNAL
ROSSY RIA FITRI NIM. 10040031
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
COLLEGE OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION (STKIP) PGRI SUMATERA BARAT
PADANG
2015
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TEACHING WRITING BY COMBINING PENS (Preview, Explore, Note, and See) STRATEGY AND POWER (Planning, Organization, writing, Editing and
Revising) STRATEGY FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL Oleh
ROSSY RIA FITRI *)
**) Yulmiati Pembimbing atau Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Menulis dalam bahasa inggris bukan hanya untuk kesuksesan academis, tetapi juga sebuah jalan keluar untuk mengekspresikan diri karena menulis adalah sebuah keahlian produktif dalam menghasilkan teks dan pesan yang bisa dikirimkan untuk pembaca. Dengan kemampuan menulis siswa dapat mengungkapkan idenya dan dapat menghasilkan sebuah tulisan yang bagus. Maka dalam penulisan makalah ini penulis mempunyai tujuan untuk membantu mengatasi salah satu dari sekian banyak permasalahan yang ada dalam pengajaran menulis (writing) di sekolah menengah atas (SMA). Selain itu makalah ini juga dimaksudkan sebagai masukan bagi guru-guru bahasa Inggris dalam melaksanakan pengajaran writing agar siswa termotivasi dan bisa belajar lebih aktif sehingga siswa mampu dan lancar menulis di kelas. Dalam makalah ini penulis membahas bagaimana mengajarkan writing dengan menggunakan dua strategy yaitu PENS dan POWER. PENS (Preview, Explore, Note and See) adalah sebuah strategi yang dirancang untuk membantu siswa dalam proses menulis. Sehingga memudahkan siswa untuk menyampaikan idenya dan menghasilkan sebuah tulisan yang bagus. Sedangkan, POWER (Planning, Organization, Writing, Editing and Revising) merupakan sebuah strategi yang membantu siswa untuk meningkatkan kelancarannya dalam menulis dengan waktu yang singkat. Perpaduan dua strategy ini sangat membantu siswa dalam pelajaran menulis untuk mengembangkan ide-ide mereka dan meningkatkan kelancaran dalam menulis sehingga menghasilkan sebuah tulisan yang bagus. Penulis juga mengharapkan agar pennggabungan strategi-strategi ini bisa menjadi panduan bagi guru dalam mengajar menulis (writing).
Keywords: Writing, PENS, and POWER Strategy
*Penulis
** Pembimbing INTRODUCTION
Writing in English is not only a key to academic success, but also an outlet for self- expression because writing is a productive skill that produces text and the message can be delivered to the readers. Being able to write well, it is probably the single most important skill that students learn during all years of school. Writing is not only something students’
need to do for school work. It will help students to complete all sorts of tasks with greater ease.
It is one of skills which is very important in English competence. Writing is also an activity to communicate because the writer can express their ideas, opinions, and feeling in writing form. That is why writing becomes the compulsory skill to be learned by the students in mastering English.
Meanwhile, as stated on School Based 2013 Curriculum, related to teaching writing states that the purpose of learning at Senior
High School is to develop students ability in oral or written language fluently and accurately in the form of transactional and interpersonal, functional text and short monolog, particularly, in descriptive, exposition, procedure, report, narrative, and recount text. It means that students are hoped to be able to develop and improve their ability and one of them is writing skill.
Based on the writers’ observation during the writers’ teaching practice at SMA N1 Basa Ampek Balai Tapan, there were some problems that were faced by the students in learning writing. In doing writing activity, most of them often got difficulties in developing their ideas. They could not express their ideas that their thought to be conveyed in written form. Next, the students could not organize their ideas about the topic. In fact, in developing ideas they had poor background knowledge about the topic, so they could not develop their ideas into good sentences. Then,
2 the students had poor ability in writing composition such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization and neatness were generally not accepted or neglected. Thus, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization must be considered to write a good written form that is appropriate with the context. In addition, the students just wrote everything that they want to wrote without thought about the processes of writing itself. Thus, they could not produce a good writing. Furthermore, the other problem was the students had less practice in writing.
Practice was really important in writing activity. More practice would make the students to be a good writer. It was impossible to be a good writer not doing practice. If the students often doing practice it would help the students to solve those problem. Moreover, the students’ writing achievement is still far from the target.
To solve the problems, the teacher should find a way or strategy to make the teaching and learning process run well. So, the teacher should use the appropriate strategy to increase the students writing ability.
Considering with the fact above, the teacher should adopt strategy that can increase students’ fluency in producing a good writing and increase student’s motivation in learning writing. There are some strategies that can be applied by the teacher in teaching writing such as DEFENDS strategy, TREE strategy, PLEASE strategy, PENS strategy and POWER strategy. Firstly, DEFENDS strategy is a kind of strategy for defending a point of view. It stands for Decide on goals, themes and audience, Estimate main ideas and details, Figure best order of main ideas and details, Express the position in the opening, Note each main idea and supporting points, Drive home the message in the last sentence and Search for errors and correct. Secondly, TREE strategy stands for Topic sentence, Reasons, Example, Ends. Thirdly, PLEASE strategy stands for Pick the topic, List information about the topic, Evaluate whether the list is complete and determines how to order the items in the list, Activate the writing by starting with a topic sentence, Supply supporting details in sentence, End with conclusion. Fourthly, PENS strategy stands for Pick, Explore, Note, and Search.
Lastly, POWER strategy stands for Planning, Organizing, Writing, Editing, and Rewriting.
In this paper the writer combine PENS strategy and POWER strategy, because they
can complete each other. It is purpose to help students to be more understand about what they are studying. And this strategy can help students in writing process and guides the students when they are writing so, it will make them easier to express their ideas into a good sentence.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Writing is one of the most important language skills that have to be mastered by students. By writing, students not only communicate with other people, but also they can express their idea, opinion, and feeling with choices of word into a sentence or paragraph.
There are many definitions of writing that are stated by the expert. According to Hyland (2003) states writing is a way of sharing personal meanings and writing courses emphasize the power of the individual to construct his or her own views on a topic. In other words, it can be said that writing is the way for the writer itself to deliver the views of a topic which he or she constructed. It can be explained or described by developing the topic to be a complete writing. The writing is purposed to concentrate the meanings which accompany the topic. It also creates the connection between the writer and his writing.
In conclusion, the writer can conclude that writing is a combination of process and product. Writing is a process of created some words become sentence, a paragraph and a text that has meaning. Through writing the people can share their thought, ideas, feeling and opinion to other people. In writing, the writer should be able to use good aspect of language such as: grammar, punctuation, spelling in order to message can be delivered to the reader.
Teaching Writing
Teaching writing is the responsibility of the teacher. Teaching writing is not easy because, in teaching the students need ideas to write on. If they don’t have idea they cannot write. Thus, the teacher should teach students to express their ideas by guiding them to the purpose of writing. In teaching writing, the teacher does not only teach about how to put words into pieces of paper, but also teach how to apply any elements in producing writing.
According to Caswell and Mahler (2004: 3) state that teaching writing provides
3 opportunities for students to develop clear thinking skills. It means that, the students are granted time to write and process their thoughts, they can develop a way to analyze their thinking. The students can share their ideas, feeling and thoughts if they can develop their thinking skill well.
Based on the explanation of the experts above, that teaching writing is not only conducting skillful lessons but also stimulate all students to become better writers. The teachers are as a function guide the students the way to express interest the writing. The way how they arrange become to the sentence and paragraph, using mechanics in writing. So, teaching writing can help the students to improve their ability in writing and become better writer.
Writing Process
In writing process, the students learn to produce cohesive discourse on their way to become self sponsor of writing itself.
According to Hyland (2003) that there are some stages in writing process. 1). Selecting of topic:
by teacher and/or students. 2). Prewriting:
brainstorming, collecting data, note taking, outlining, etc. 3). Composing: Getting ideas down on paper. 4). Response to draft:
Teacher/peers respond to ideas, organization, and styles. 5). Proofreading and editing:
Checking and correcting form, layout, evidence, etc. 6). Evaluation: teacher evaluates progress over the process. 7). Publishing: by class circulation or presentation, notice boards, website, etc. 8). Follow-up tasks: to address weaknesses.
In different ways in teaching writing process can be conclude that it can be done with following the steps: 1. Prewriting help the students to get ideas. 2. After that, they develop their ideas into their writing. 3. And then, they look content structure of their writing. 4. Next, students do editing to correct their writing. 5.
Publishing can improve their motivating in learning process especially in writing. Because their result of writing is published to classmates or the others.
Explanation Text
In the context of school assignments, the students are sometimes assigned to create a text that contains information about
explanations of phenomena, natural and non- natural. Explanation text is a text which tells about process relating to the natural phenomena, social, knowledge, culture, and etc.
Explanation text is to say ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the forming of the phenomena. According to Hyland (2009: 4) states that explanation text is a text that outlines how or why things occur, or how thing operate. In this case, the meaning of
‘how’ is the writer explains how do the something happen so, it will make the readers will be easy on understanding the text that the writer has written. The meaning of ‘why’ is the writer explains the reasons why does the something occur. In addition, explanation text can help the readers know about the processes of nature in the world.
Based on the experts explanation about definition of explanation text it can be stated that explanation is a text that tells about processes relating to forming of natural, social, or technological phenomena. Explanation text also is a text that outlines how and why something occur, or how thing operate. Thus, explanation text has function to inform the reader about something.
Generic Structure of Explanation Text Explanation text has some generic structures that should be known by the writers.
Thus, if the writers know each element in explanation text, automatically the writers will easy in writing explanation text. According to Hyland (2009: 4) explains there are three generic structures of explanation text are:
a) General statement
In this part, the general steatment or opening paragraph focusses the reader’s attention on the topic, and clarifies what phenomenon or process is to be explained.
Thus, the writer may choose to use a series of questions in the opening steatment, which will be answered throughout the text.
b) Sequenced explanation
In this part, tells about explanation of process why the phenomena happen or occur.
Thus, it is as an answer from the question
‘why’ and ‘how’ the writers when the writer makes an explanation text.
c) Closing
In this case, tells about an additional information to enhance the explanation can be provided in the form of graphs, charts, and illustrations.
4 Based on the experts explanation about the generic structures of the explanation text, the researcher concludes that there are three structure of explanation text; general statement, sequenced explanation and closing. General statement is a statement to introduce the topic of explanation. Sequenced explanation is to explain the phenomena happen or occur.
Closing is to give additional information about the topic.
PENS Strategy
PENS strategy is a strategy that used by teacher to make students interesting and easier in writing process. Nippold and Cheryl (2010) state that PENS strategy is designed to help students in the writing process. This strategy can make student easier in writing process because, the students can explore their ideas and make a good writing. Before writing students should think what they want to write.
Based on the previous explanations, the writer can conclude that PENS strategy is one of the strategies that can help students in teaching learning skill, especially in teaching writing. By using this strategy the teacher can create the passive students become active and creative. The students can develop their ability in writing without emphasis of the teacher or the other.
Procedures of PENS Strategy
According to Nippold and Cheryl (2010) explain that there are four procedures of PENS strategy. They are: 1). Preview ideas:
Think about what you want to say. 2). Explore words: Identify the key words you will need in the sentence. 3).Note words in complete sentence: Write out the sentence, be sure to capitalize the first word and punctuate the sentence. 4). See if sentence is okay: Make sure it makes sense, select verb or verbs, ask yourself who or what is doing verb/verbs, and check to see if sentence fits a formula.
Based on the procedures above, the writer wants to use step of PENS strategy by Nippold and Cheryl. Because they explain steps of PENS strategy can make students interest and give motivation to Senior High School students in writing that stand from Preview ideas, Explore words, Note words, and See if sentence is okay. It is can improve student
ability in writing, can improve student’s background knowledge in writing process and make easier to they understand about the material.
Advantages of PENS Strategy
PENS Strategy provides many advantages for the students in order to improve their writing. According to Nippold and Cheryl (2010) explained that the strategy can help the students in doing writing process. Because before write a sentence the students identify the key words that they need. The students will not bored, because the topic is appropriate with what students want to write. Next, the strategy is easy to apply in writing process. And the last, the strategy guides the students in improving students writing.
In conclusion, there are some advantages of PENS strategy that has stated by the experts such as guides the students in improving students writing, the strategy provides students in writing because before write student planning framework writing, the students can study about grammar (simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences), and to assist students in writing topic sentences, detail sentences, and a clincher sentences to form a paragraph.
POWER Strategy
POWER strategy is a strategy which helps students to organize and explore their ideas quickly as soon as it comes to their mind.
It presents several stages to lead students to manage their ideas. It will help students in arranging the paragraph, and can be develop into texts or essay. It can stimulate student’s prior knowledge to start writing. According to McLeskey et al (2014: 250) state that POWER is (Plan, Organize, Write, Edit, and Revise) strategy and self-questioning think sheets to evaluate writing during planning, composing, revising, and editing. It means that POWER strategy is the strategy that evaluate writing process from beginning until ending and the process will be evaluated are planning, composing, revising and editing.
From the explanation above, the writer concludes that in guiding students to write it need approach, method and strategy to involve student’s interest and participation in learning.
5 POWER strategy is available strategy to increase student’s ability in writing and this strategy is a way to improve students in expresses their ideas, feeling and opinion about the topic.
Procedures of POWER Strategy
As we know that a strategy have procedure of course, there are some experts give their point of view about procedures of POWER startegy. According to Welkes (2008:
46-55) mentions the procedures of POWER strategy are as follow: 1). Planning: the students are encouraged to focus or understand about their topic that they have chosen. 2).
Organization: the students organize their ideas on their paper. 3). Writing: the students write their ideas based on a draft that they have made before. 4). Editing: there are two aspects of editing. The first is editing for content, the second is editing for mechanics. The students correct their writing in pairs. 5).
Revising/Rereading: in revision step the teacher ask the students to revise their final draft and recheck the punctuation, capitalization, and spelling of their writing.
The process of POWER strategy above shows this strategy can improve student’s ability in writing. It will manage and compose student’s ideas into readable paragraph. It also can contribute student’s communicative competence in written form. Based on the procedures above, the writer wants to use step of POWER strategy by Welkes. Because he explains steps of POWER strategy is good, and suitable to Senior High School students. That started from, planning, organization, writing, editing and revising/rereading. It is can improve student ability in writing, can improve student’s background knowledge in writing process and make easier to they understand about the material.
Advantages of POWER Strategy
POWER strategy has some advantages for the teacher and also for the students in teaching and learning writing process.
According to Department of Educational and Training (2007: 99), there are some advantages of POWER strategy: 1). Straightforward, easy to explain and understand: can help the teachers easy to explain the material to the students and make the students will be easy to understand about the material, so the teaching process will
be interest. 2). Increase students’ motivation and fluency: this strategy can increase students’
motivation, because students enjoy in learning writing. 3). Help students to write quickly and easily: by using this strategy students can write quickly, because this strategy ask students to write as many word in short time, so students can produce many words in short time. 4).
Encourage creativity: through this strategy students can improve their creativity about what they want to write about, they can express their ideas because most of them often got difficulties in developing their ideas. 5). Builds confidence in independent work: this strategy expects students become independent learner, because this strategy allows students to work individually in making their own writing. 6).
The students can produce their writing easily:
this strategy have a complete steps to guide students in writing process, so this strategy is the best way to help students in produce their writing easily.
In conclusion, based on the experts explanation the writer conclude that advantages of PENS strategy are straightforward, Increase students’ motivation and fluency, help students to write quickly and easily, encourage creativity, and the students can produce their writing easily.
Combining PENS Strategy and POWER Strategy in Teaching Writing
The writer would like to combine the PENS strategy and POWER strategy in teaching writing, because these two strategies are complement and supporting one to another strategy. There are many steps that purpose by experts, the writer combines the steps by Welkes (2008) and Nippold and Cheryl (2010) these step of strategy good and easy to implementation in teaching learning process.
The strategy also can help students to think creatively and effectively in teaching writing.
1). Planning: the students are encouraged to focus or understand about their topic that they have chosen. 2). Explore words: identify the key words you will need in the sentence. 3).
Writing: the students write their ideas based on the key words that they have made before. 4).
Editing: the teacher correct about grammar from the students written before. 5). Revising:
the teachers revise the student’s final draft and recheck the punctuation, capitalization, and spelling of their writing. 6). See if the sentence
6 is okay: make sure it makes sense, select verb or verbs, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. Check to see if sentence fits a formula.
The procedures of combining strategies can help the students to understand develop their ideas and they can make a good writing with unity and coherence. In this case, the writer combined both of PENS strategy procedures and POWER strategy procedures.
The type of this combined is follow up combined strategy in which the procedures of on strategy is followed by procedure of another strategy. Here, the students have to explore their thinking process because in this strategy, the students try to develop their idea in element of writing. In this combining the writer did not use Preview ideas, Organization, Note words and Search. Because Preview ideas same with planning, Organization same with Explore words, Note words same with writing and the last Search same with See.
DISCUSSION
In this stage, some activities should be done during teaching and learning process, it consists of pre-teaching, whilst-teaching, and post-teaching activity.
Pre-teaching Activities
a. The teacher greets the students
b. The teacher check the students attendance list
c. The teacher prepares the students to be involved in teaching learning process physically and mentally
d. Teacher gives some pictures to brainstorm students background knowledge
e. The teacher asks some questions to the students
Exploration
1) The teacher explain about our topic today
2) The teacher explains about definition and generic structures of explanation texts.
Explanation text is a text which tells about process relating to the natural phenomena, social,
knowledge, culture, and etc.
Explanation text is to say ‘why’ and
‘how’ of the forming of the phenomena.
There are three generic structures of explanation text:
a. General statement
General statement is a statement to introduce the topic of explanation.
b. Sequenced explanation
Sequenced explanation is to explain the phenomena happen or occur.
c. Closing
Closing is to give additional information about the topic.
Elaboration
1) The teacher asks the student to plan and choose the topic
a. How the Earth quake happen b. Why Tsunami occur
c. How does the Rain happen 2) The teacher asks the students to
explore words or identify the key words that they will need in the sentence.
Example of key words:
a. Tectonic b. Volcanic c. Shaky d. Panic e. Shatter
3) The teacher asks the students to write their ideas based on the key words that they have made before.
4) The teacher check about grammar, verb from the students written before.
5) The teacher revises the students writing and rechecks the punctuation, capitalization and spelling.
6) See if the sentence is okay
7) Teacher ask the students to make exercise about the material today to make their more understand about our material today
a. How the Earth quake happen b. How does the Rain happen c. How do birds fly
7 Confirmation
a. The teacher check the students exercise
b. The teacher and students discussing about students’ exercise that has been write.
Post-teaching Activities
a. The teacher asks the students about the difficulties when teaching learning process.
b. The teacher asks the students to conclude the material
c. The teacher give feedback and appreciation for the students’ writing achievement
d. The teacher gives comment for the students and closes the class
CONCLUSION
PENS strategy is one of the strategies that can be used in teaching learning process.
This strategy can be done to increase the student’s motivation in learning. Then teaching writing trough PENS strategy suitable to Senior High School, because this strategy can make students easy in writing, and can make students more creative and active. POWER strategy is strategy to develop and improve student’s ability in writing skill that work through systematic process: Plan, Organize, Write, Edit, and Revising. Through this strategy students will be easy to memory all steps in writing activities. It is also very helpful in composing student’s ideas into paragraph, because this strategy provide the think sheet and edit sheet that lead students become an independent writer. From the conclusion above, the writer would like to give some suggestions for the English teacher. Teacher should found the appropriate strategy in teaching English. In this paper the writer combining PENS and POWER strategies. Teacher should use PENS strategy because this strategy can make students interesting in teaching writing and give motivation to the students in writing process.
And then, with POWER strategy the teacher guide student to good in writing, so the teachers also involved to help the students in writing process. These strategies can help the teacher to increase students writing ability and encourage the students to be active in learning activities.
References
Caswell, Roger and Mahler Brenda. 2004.
Strategies for Teaching Writing.
Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Department of Educational and Training. 2007.
Writing and Spelling Strategies.
Singapore: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Hyland,Ken. 2013. Second Language Writing.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hyland, Maureen. 2009. Writing Text Type: A Practical Journal. Australia: R.I.C Publication.
McLeskey, et al. 2014. Handbook of Effective and Practice. New York: Routledge.
Nippold, Marylin A and Cheryl M. Scott. 2010.
Expository Discourse in Children, Adolescents, and Adults. New York:
Psychology Press.
Welkes, Toni. 2008. SAT Strategies for Students with Learning Disabilities.
New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
