Setiono Sugiharto, Jakarta
If a university student is asked what language skills he loathes learning, his answer is likely to be writing. If further asked the reasons for his dislike of writing, his answers would likely be ""I am not used to writing"", or ""I don't have any ideas what to write"". Other possible answers include ""I have difficulties in arranging words and sentences"", ""I don't know how to begin and end my writing"", or simply ""I don't know what to write"".
These answers may sound cliche, but we often hear them when students bemoan writing assignments given by teachers. Writing teachers may be irked upon hearing these testimonies by their students. Nevertheless, they will eventually surrender when asked to provide a remedy for students having problems in writing.
Despite the shift from a teaching approach that stresses writing products to the one emphasizing writing process in contemporary pedagogy, it seems that the huge amount of writing practice does not necessarily contribute to writing competence.
Stephen Krashen, an eminent linguist, confirmed this by arguing that writing frequency does not result in better writing. Those who write more do not write better.
The undetected problem that the students are facing in writing is that they are often not familiar with the convention of written language. That is, they have not yet developed a feel of convention that strictly governs the use of written language. The unfamiliarity with convention often becomes the main reason why students find it hard to express their ideas in a written form. Consequently if asked to write, their writing is characterized with typical spoken language features, which is hardly acceptable in writing.
Illogical and disorganized sequences of ideas found in students' writings are also attributed to unawareness of written language conventions.
How can then we acquire these conventions so as to effectively boost students' writing proficiency? One of the most viable and less tedious ways is to expose students to reading -- particularly light reading or reading for pleasure. This is a sort of recreational reading with assorted topics that students find enjoyable.
Empirical research in cognitive psychology has consistently revealed that reading is closely related to writing and can therefore contribute to someone's writing development. Both reading and writing involve a similar process of thinking and linguistic habits. Reading exposure can thus provide students with knowledge of how language is used in writing and how it is used differently from spoken code.
Further, reading can provide student writers with ample opportunities in learning the use of sentences for the different styles, different vocabulary and different discourse styles the writers use.
More than that, reading can stimulate students' schemata (their background knowledge) about the language, topics and the development of awareness toward different cultural modes of thinking in paragraph organization.
When frequently exposed to reading of any kind -- be it novels, comics, newspapers, academic journals -- in a pleasurable way, readers unconsciously acquire the language of writing (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, spelling), which will become necessary components for writing.
Once the background knowledge obtained through extensive reading activities becomes accumulated in the readers' minds, readers begin to develop a ""taste"" of written language conventions, and gradually become familiar with them.
A recent study conducted by my students attests to this argument. Curious about what writing strategies are used by the journalists (from this newspaper) in penning neatly constructed pieces regularly published in the paper, the students conducted informal interviews with them.
What the students found was that the writers -- most of them have no educational background in English -- rely much on what they read prior to writing. They acquired English grammar, vocabulary and other writing conventions not from formal education, but rather from what they frequently read.
Clearly, one will not be able to write in the newspaper unless he reads the newspaper and learn its writing conventions. Likewise, he will not able to produce a good novel unless he reads what the contents of good novels look like. Finally, a good grasp of how an academic article is written in academic journals is certainly necessary if one wants to write an academic article.
The implication for effective teaching of writing is clear. Teaching reading should become an integral part of teaching writing, and reading for pleasure should be encouraged and incorporated into the writing syllabus design. The more the students read, the more they acquire the language of writing, and ultimately the more likely they will become good writers. Indeed, good writers often start from good readers.
The writer is editor-in-chief of Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.
