Promoting Academic Writing Students’ Skills through “Process Writing” Strategy

Abstract

Writing in a second language is complex, and complicated, mainly because of by the addition of new resources and norms (new structural elements of the new language, new rhetorical conventions, and some other things). Teachers therefore, whether they like it or not, have to select the most appropriate teaching methods and strategies in their writing classes, one strategy that teachers can apply in their Academic Writing class is Process Writing strategy. This study shows information on a teaching strategy named Process Writing which was applied to one group of Academic Writing class in Semester II, 2016-2017. Research took place from January to April 2016. This group was taught using Process writing teaching strategy, with the hope of helping students improve in both their reading and writing skills. There were 20 students altogether in this group. One central question to be answered in this study is: How effective is Process writing strategy when it is used to teach Academic Writing students? Instruments used were pre-tests, post-tests, direct observation, video-recording; and weekly journals that students had to write every time they passed a stage of the Process Writing. From the statistical analysis as well as from students’ perceptions, one main conclusion can be drawn, that is, Process writing is effective to teach Academic Writing. Another conclusion which is not less significant is that Process Writing can be used to teach any level of education, not to mention in tertiary education, provided that lecturers adjust the materials as well as level of difficulty. One last conclusion is that every strategy that teachers will apply in their classroom is very context-dependent. That is, it depends on the class situation, which varies from one class to another. The context, atmosphere, as well as situation of the class became the factors that contribute to the effectiveness and success of a strategy. This piece of research is hoped to benefit both lecturers as well as students of second language writing. Pedagogically, this research can enrich another source of literature in terms of teacher strategy in teaching second language writing.