Setiono Sugiharto , Jakarta - Opinion
Conventional wisdom advises this: "If you want your student writers to be able to write, have them write, and nothing else." Our tendency in teaching writing seems to reflect this wisdom.
The best we can do to assist our students of all levels of language proficiency in developing their writing skills is to give them writing instruction, to encourage them to do more writing practice and then to give feedback.
In addition, as writing entails ability in adeptly using language rules (grammar) and as students often find it hard to write using correct grammatical structures, teachers cannot resist the temptation to explain the rules as painstakingly as possible to their students. In this case, grammar instruction is considered necessary.
Both writing instruction and the mastery of language rules, however, are of little value in helping student writers acquire writing competence. Many published studies demonstrate that the effects of instruction on students' writing are weak, fragile and immediately wear off over time. Other studies show that instruction has no effect at all on writing development.
With research confirming that instruction has little or no effect on accelerating writing competence, it is pretty safe to conclude that writing competence cannot be acquired via either instruction or practice.
It is really unfortunate, however, that most teachers are not well-informed about what research on literacy has told us. Because, in their view, research is often incompatible with what they are experiencing in the classroom, they just ignore it.
While it is true that research often makes statements incompatible with teachers' experience, its importance in helping shape our teaching methodology cannot be overlooked.
We need a philosophical justification of what underlies our methodology. At this time, research helps us discern the extent to which our justification is consistent with the reality we are facing.
In fact, teachers' ignorance of research findings has prevented them from finding good solutions to the problems they are constantly confronting. Writing teachers, for instance, have enthusiastically endeavored to assist their student writers in bolstering their writing ability via writing instruction and practice, with little success.
Such a persistent problem can be solved, as long as teachers are willing to pay attention to the following suggestions based on current research, and then take the other alternative which offers much better and less tedious effort on the part of both teachers and students.
Writing instruction doesn't give students a feel of what good and acceptable writing looks like. Specifically, it doesn't help students acquire writing style, appropriate diction and correct spelling. Increasing writing frequency either through self-sponsored writing or classroom-instructed writing doesn't result in significantly increased proficiency. It must be emphasized that the ability to write is the result of acquiring written codes, not the cause of it.
Similarly, the mastery of language rules, which is the result of grammar teaching, doesn't necessarily contribute to writing development. It has been evident that students who are exposed to grammar lessons for many years and grapple with understanding and memorizing rules are still unable to display competence in writing.
A general conclusion then is that writing competence cannot be acquired via either writing and grammar instruction. Forcing students to write without sufficient competence is tantamount to forcing an engine to work without gasoline. This, however, doesn't mean writing and grammar instruction are of no use and should be jettisoned from the school curriculum.
Their relative usefulness can best be explained in terms of Stephen Krashen's dichotomy: writing competence and writing performance. The former refers to the possession of technical writing skills (i.e. grammar, vocabulary and spelling), while the latter designates the ability to write using efficient writing strategies (i.e. planning, drafting, revising and editing).
Writing instruction, it should be reiterated here, cannot make students competent in writing, but it does help equip students with efficient writing strategies. As these strategies are teachable, writing instruction is key to raising students' awareness of how to compose efficiently.
By contrast, writing competence can only be acquired via reading. That is, the ability to write in an acceptable manner using correct grammar, vocabulary and spelling is derived from reading, not from writing practice. It is reading, Krashen says, that gives the writer the "feel" for the look and texture of reader-based prose.
One might argue that language components such as grammar and vocabulary are teachable via instruction. However, it could be counter-argued that they are much too complex, not to mention tedious, to be taught. What is more, we need to invest more time and energy in making students understand and acquire them.
It seems then that the best and the only way of accelerating students' writing competence is to get students hooked on books and to make them fly to books, just as an opium smoker flies to his pipe.
The writer is chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and teaches English composition at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.
Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.
Source URL: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/08/23/books-not-instruction-key-creating-writers.html
I am actually one of those people that is not very keen of writing, it is actually one of my weaknesses. I love giving opinions or just sharing my thoughts and views on something with the world but unfortunately im not very good at composing or expressing those thoughts into words that will draw up anyone's attention. I never really felt comfortable or good enough to actually write down something and thinking that the whole world would read it. I guess it is caused by many reasons. One of it is that in highschool I never really had the chance to practice my writing skill by doing essays or reports of my studies, most of the highschool methods in studying are just taking notes, memorizing materials, tests, and so on but I rarely got the chance to actually write down opinions, or thoughts on something like that. Another reason to why I don't really enjoy writing is -like stated on this article- is because of my grammar skills. I'm not really a master at english, considering that english is not my first language, there will be people who are actually good at english, those "grammar nazis" that will judge my writings. Knowing that, I got a little intimidated. But now, as I grow older I realize that writing is important, wether you are a master or not. It doesn't matter wether you are just a student in highschool or junior highschool or even elementary school moreover if you're someone important, with a high ranked position. Because writing is about expressing. Expressing your feelings, thoughts and opinions. It has no rules, no right or wrong, no limitation. Everyone has their right to express their feelings, their thoughts and opinions about something. If they agree to it or if they don't. That's the beauty of writing. And I truly regret that I just realize this now. But, it's better late than never. So, from now on I will continue practicing my writing skills here in UGM and try to love and enjoy writing not for the EWS class or for Mr. Adrian or for anyone else, I will do it for me.
ReplyDeleteJasmine wrote: "I am actually one of those people that is not very keen of writing, it is actually one of my weaknesses."
DeleteThe expression is to be keen on something, and not "of". So we should write "Jasmine is not keen on expressing herself in writing", or "Some students are very keen on burning the midnight oil".
Jasmine wrote: "I am actually one of those people that is not very keen of writing, it is actually one of my weaknesses."
DeleteThe punctuation betweem "writing" and "it" should be either a full stop or a semi colon and not a comma.
Like this:
"I am actually one of those people that is not very keen of writing; it is actually one of my weaknesses."
There are some points that I agree with and some that I don't. First off, I understand that instructions may not effectively help on improving one's writing skill however, I believe that practice would improve one's writing skill. As the saying goes "practice makes perfect", I am very certain that if a certain individual keeps on writing and writing he/she will definitely improve their writing skill. Based on my own experience, learning english is always better or more effective through speaking and writing rather than learning in a classroom. However, most of the language rules (grammar) does have to be learned in class. I myself acquired my english skills from being forced to speak, write, and read english for 3 years straight when i studied abroad in China. While my friends in Indonesia which only took english classes twice per week is great in understanding about grammar however, they have problems in writing since they did not practice it as much. I also have to disagree with some of the points my classmate made about "writing has no rules, no right or wrong". It may be true that writing has no rules but, most people would not enjoy reading a broken english article or anything in broken english for that matter. It's true that writing is about expressing one's self and there is nothing wrong about it, nobody starts perfect, I've met some native english speakers who still write in somewhat broken english. So keep on practicing and you will get better, I promise. That is why I am very enthusiastic about this EWS class with Mr. Adrian because it really encourages us to practice our writing at least 4 times a week.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article, I came into a conclusion that I agreed on a lot of the topics that are discussed, especially how reading could increase your writing competence, which includes your vocabulary, spelling or grammar. In fact, I think that reading books is probably one of the most efficient ways for someone to increase their writing competence skills because not only they get to learn new vocabulary words, correct grammar and spelling, the reader also learn about new things that will increase their knowledge. For instance, if you read many fiction books, you can learn how to formulate a good story (that’s if you are reading the book that many people found fascinating) because you get to learn how to develop a character, setting etc. Where else, if you read non-fiction books, you get to learn new things, such as mind-blowing facts you haven’t even heard of or skills that can be useful in real life (again this depends on what type of non-fiction book you’re reading). However, besides the benefit you get from reading, I wanted to address that in order to acquire the full potential of writing competence, reading is not enough. It takes practice to be able to master your writing competence and that practice can be in a form of writing. Now, I’m not saying that you should just write and forget about reading, no, that’s just wasting your time since you will not be able to learn anything. What I’m saying is that you should read and practice what you have learned from reading (vocabulary, grammar, and spelling) in the form of writing, because that will refine your writing competence skill to the next level. Because for me knowledge without practice is useless.
ReplyDeleteWriting was not one of the strongest skills that I possess. I always felt that my writing was terrible. Every time I make a writing, I always felt unsure about my writing competence. However, that was a year ago, before I put reading into my routines. Over the past ten months, I’ve spent most of my time reading books. Most of the books that I’ve read are about self-help, business, and biography. I also spent some time reading novels when I’m in need of fictional writings. Based on my own observation, reading has played a huge part with the improvement of my writings. Especially with technical writing skills such as grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. Therefore, I do agree with the statement that said writing competence can only be acquired via reading. Unsurprisingly though, I don’t agree with the conventional wisdom stated at the start of the article. In my opinion, if you want to improve on something like writing, there are other things you should do and practice on. Let me take swimming athletes as an example. Swimmers don’t just train their swimming by swimming all day long. They also do what is known among swimming enthusiasts as “dryland” training, which is basically weightlifting. This is to improve their strength and fitness. As swimmers need to put “dryland” training into their routines, writers need to put reading and strategy making to compose efficiently into their routines to be a better writer. They are the “dryland” training for writing. By making writing students practice their writing all the time though, will set a habit of writing in these students’ life. And this will hopefully make them in love with writing. There is also one more thing that I consider as an important skill needed for a better writing. It is the ability to express everything which comes up in one’s mind into words. That is one of the skills that I am still lacking right now. I’m sure that all my classmates have skills that they think will need to be improved too. But, there is also another thing that I’m sure of. I’m sure that we, “the guinea pigs”, will all get better in this EWS class.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I agree with the article above. Reading is important to improve your writing skills. Actually, I've been super insecure with my writing skills, especially when it comes to English writing skills. Every time I spoke or wrote in English, I always worried about the grammar and spelling. It's kind of embarrassing, but as an IUP student, I have to admit that my English is considered super bad, compared with the others. To be honest, sometimes it makes me feel inferior and pressured. So, in order to improve myself, I think the fastest way to learn English is by reading a lot of books or articles in English. Luckily, I've always loved reading since I was just a child. Both in Bahasa or in English. For me, reading is a way to escape reality (besides sleeping of course). Doing a lot of reading helps me improve my speaking and writing skills because I can memorize a lot of vocabulary and got used to read some particular sentence structure. I just find that it's a lot easier for me to put my thoughts into words, since I've read a lot of books. But I do agree that writing theories (such as grammar, structure, vocabularies, etc.) are also important to make your writing pleasant to read.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I’m not fond of writing and I think that as an IUP student, my level of English is pretty bad. Every time I tried writing a journal or commenting on an article, I’m pretty unsure whether I write it correctly or not. I do agree that the fastest way to improve your written and spoken English Is to read a lot of literature regularly, by reading I also found out a lot of new vocabulary that I didn’t know earlier. I am not wholeheartedly saying that you should just read and not practice writing at all. I mean that reading will broaden your knowledge and writing will teach you how to express and show your feeling through words, practicing both will only be beneficial for you. As I said before, I’m not a good English writer and speaker. In fact this English writing skill class task is my first time reading and writing English article actively. Not that I don’t like reading nor writing, but I just felt ashamed if I write English in bad manner. As this is my first time doing so, I will try to do this as good as I could and I’m really sure that we will get better as time goes and it’s better late than never.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article, it increases my knowledge on how reading affects the most on our literacy and writing skills. It increases our knowledge about the topic we want the read especially of how to write in a good grammar and also vocabulary. On the other hand, this EWS blog helps me in both. Reading the article helps us in our English grammar while, the commenting helps me how to write comments in a good way and not to write in abstract or efficiency of writing. I also agree that nowadays teachers, that did not see the research of how reading really affects the grammar still favor the students in writing a lot of paragraph without reading any article. It will kill the student’s grammar and vocabulary but increases their writing skills about time management and putting the topics in order. So, it must be balance of writing and reading instruction so we can write in a perfect way ahead. Hopefully, as an IUP Student of FEB UGM I can improve all aspects of writing by reading and commenting through this blog.
ReplyDeleteIn all honesty i dislike lireature especially when it comes to writing. It’s something i’m capable of but not something i enjoy doing. Overall i agree with what the article above mentioned. I agree that writing skills and competency can’t be boosted or learned through pure writing instructions and grammar lessons which teachers emphasises in highschool in the hopes of increasing the student’s profficiency in writing. I do believe so because i experienced it myself. In my opinion, writing instruction and grammar lessons only gets us as far as the basics. Writing , on the other hand requires creativity, fluency and the student’s own writing style. I believe that this can’t be achieved through pure english grammar lessons. It requires the students to get exposure from various and different types of litreature styles. This is only possible through reading. Through reading, the students can experience firsthand different stylesof writing. As time passes by, people who reads will be able to immitate these well written litreatures or even develop their own writing styles. Furthermore, reading gives the reader new ideas and knowledge which cannot be obtained through formal education found in schools and University. Later on these knowledge and ideas obtained from reading can be used as a starting point or a focus point in which the students can train and improve their writing skills.
ReplyDeleteThe main point delivered in the article follows the age-old education maxim that it is best to learn by example. For as long as I remember, I learned most of my technical writing proficiency from the videogames I played on my PlayStation 2 when I was a kid. Whenever I came up with words or sentences I did not understand, I would always ask my mom or dad to translate for me, and this really helped with both my understanding of grammar and vocabulary since English instructions in videogames are often quite complex for a primary school student. The article also mentioned that reading is the best way to improve one’s mastery of formal writing skills like how to structure an essay or how to form a coherent paragraph. Agreeing with the point made in the article, I also learned most of these skills from reading English books my dad used to collect. I read everything he bought, from cooking manuals to flight instruction booklets, and I have to say that it really helped me gain an edge in writing. All in all, my personal experience forces me to agree with the article’s point that writing skills is best gained by learning through example.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article I think that the awareness of most students towards literacy is not in an adequate portion. Literacy in think is the most important thing in the learning system, it provides students with a skill which can be used to broaden their knowledge even further. Literacy consist of writing and reading, they are both well-connected to each other. Writing is important because if students want to express their ideas they have to be able to write their ideas. Expressing ideas is important because it gives you a hint of what these students thinking or knowing about anything they encounter. Reading also an important part in the learning system, it gives you a chance to know something new or helps you with problems you don't know how to solve. I agree with the article that reading helps you to correctly determine grammar that are being used, vocabulary, and also spelling. In conclusion, I think reading and writing are both essential for students if they want to thrive and to become a successful student.
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ReplyDeleteI think I am okay at writing, but writing is not one of my strength. First of all, my handwriting is terrible, it would be an achievement if you can read my handwriting. Maybe writing something, for example an essay or a comment like this would be something I could enjoy if it is in bahasa, but I am not that good at writing in english, because maybe english is not my first language and because I graduated from a local school. The next thing is, my grammar is bad, and my vocabulary is not that rich, I think these are the other reasons why my writing is not that good. On the other hand, I kinda like reading, but I am a little bit picky at reading, I like to read sports articles or sports news, and that is probally it. I don’t like reading novels or books, and I think these are the reason why my grammar and vocabulary are bad. For the future, I hope my time at FEB UGM would increase my ability to write and read.
This article accentuates the importance of reading on enhancing our writing skills and I couldn’t agree more to that. I’ve always put interest on the world of writings, particularly literature. I wrote my first well-crafted Indonesian poetry back when I was 9, and I think that was one of my biggest achievements back then. I started to realize why I was so keen on writing, it was because my parents were feeding me all sorts of books to read since I was so little. I loved it for a while, but I seemingly lost my interest on reading as I grow up. When I was given a task to write for a school assignment one day, I was stressing out because my brain couldn’t recall much words since it has been awhile that I read some book. I think that is also a major problem in my generation today, that students see reading and writing tasks as a burden, not something they do for enjoyment. And so, it is best to embody the reading habit from an early age, and by that, the writing habit may come to follow as well.
ReplyDeleteLike many others, I am not very keen when it comes to writing. However, I do enjoy reading and I am here to be a testimony to support the article above. As previously mentioned in my introduction, I used to live in Qatar. To be more specific, I moved to Qatar when I was in 6th grade. My English was terrible back then and I had a difficult time adapting as everyone in my school were speaking in either English or Arabic and I couldn’t understand both. Let me tell you this: I wasn’t a fan of reading at that time until my English teacher forced me to read a book and then things changed. In 7th grade, I moved to a different school but adapting to the new environment wasn’t as difficult as the first time round because I was becoming more fluent when speaking in English. That happened in the span of one year which could be considered quite fast and it's because of reading.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I said I am not very fond of writing, as a student I still have to write as per required by the subjects I have chosen in school. One of the subjects I did for my IGCSE is Bahasa Indonesia and the final exam involves writing an essay. My writings weren’t great; they were often under the minimum word limit due to the fact that my ideas weren’t fully developed as I often find myself running out of words. This became a problem because I could get penalized for writing under the word limit and I could lose marks and of course I did not want that to happen. So as exam time came closer and closer, I started reading more Indonesian writings such as arguments and descriptive writings that uses strong vocabulary. I have to admit that reading has helped me a lot with my writings because reading teaches me a great deal of new fancy words, proper grammar, and also punctuation which enables me to improve my writings. At the end, I got 39 out of 40 marks for my Bahasa Indonesia writing exam and I received an award from Cambridge International Examination for being the Top Achiever in the country for Bahasa Indonesia.
DeleteI hope my experiences truly emphasize the importance of reading and hopefully it could motivate you to read more.
The articles brings out the importance of reading and how it corresponds to writing. For most people the skill of writing comes naturally once they start to read, whether the literature is a simple children's book or something advanced such as plays from the european renaissance era. Many non native-english students considers writing as more of a chore rather than an opportunity myself included, because i couldn't think of the right words to write and often find myself giving up too early, but I had a change of heart when i first read the book "Hujan" by Tere Liye and found myself engrossed in the world that it portrays, after finishing that book i moved on to read more books and novels, and because I've read so much, that writing becomes easier for me because words form at the top of my head rather than have to think about them. So I can vouch that reading very much positively affects an individual's skill of writing.
ReplyDeleteI personally agree that to improve one's writing skill, they would also have to read more. I am also a type of person that sometimes has problems when I write. I have thought many things in my brain and planned what to write and all the ideas. But when I grabbed my pen and looked at the blank paper, sometimes I got confused. That's probably because my lack reading habits. I read a few books written by famous authors (e.g John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon), and I can conclude that a good writing can make a reader amazed. The amount of books that I have read is still to few comparing to many other people. I realize that from reading, we learn the ideal form of writing, various kinds of grammars and using punctuation correctly. By reading, we can also see another person's point of view so we can develop our own ideas and opinions. This method in EWS class is very effective. Because students are required to read many articles and write comments. Therefore, students read more and write more.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I quite enjoy writing fictional stories and sharing about my personal life on my social media accounts, people probably won’t count it as literature but I’m quite fond of sharing my personal thoughts online. When I was younger, English wasn’t really my strongest ability. It is not until my family moved to the States where I gain much knowledge in English. Since my siblings and I were younger, my dad always thought us to read many books and write book reports. I believe that is where I improve my skill in English literature. When I was in the US, my teacher also told students to read few books that meet the standard literature requirements and to be honest it was quite hard for me since my English was still moderate. I also had trouble understanding some words. The experience itself taught me to read more and challenge myself to gain more knowledge and understanding in English literature. I truly agree that reading can improve our literacy skills not only in English but also in Bahasa Indonesia. In able for us to write properly, we need to have good knowledge of the language itself.
ReplyDelete18 years of education with a constantly changing curriculum has not made me an expert in writing for both languages, Bahasa and English. Therefore, my mother always suggests reading as a daily habit in order to fix this matter. I have to agree with the statement “writing competence can only be acquired via reading” which can be found in the passage. According to my personal experience, the more I read the easier I depict the words or sentences that I am about to write before doing so. New vocabularies are also gained so when i am doing my essay or any other writing activity, I wouldn’t have to use the same words over and over again. It is also a lot easier to describe events as a part of writing activity. But looking into millennial nowadays, reading habit has started to become somewhat left out and forgotten. The irony though is that technology has provided an easier way to obtain more ability in literacy. But we can’t deny the fact that there are newer and more interesting ways to deliver all kind of information through interactive medias like videos with less literacy in it. However, this does not help the youth to intensify their ability to write. Books are still the main source for an individual to upgrade his or her competence in writing.
ReplyDeleteWritting, is one of the most basic skill for a person. People around us already taught us how to write eversince we're in the kindergarten or something. But later on, still, many people are still feeling the difficulty of how to write correctly. For example, i do, have difficulty on writting. Even my IELTS Writting test had the worst grade among four category that is tested by the department. As the article said, that giving instruction to children almost not increased his/her writting skill.but yeah, my IELTS teacher always gave me writting practices. I agree with the statement that reading is important. Because with reading, it adds more knowledge for us, and that knowledge can be our greatest weapon for our writting test or something, because if we don't have knowledge, we don't even know what to write, and what happened then, we only write some bullshits that we also didn't know where it comes from. It's just like we write all of the things that crossed over our brain. So actually, writting practices are not much develop our writting practices if we don't read. That's what i'm trying to say.
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ReplyDeleteWriting, always been my enemies for many years whether I'm not capable to composed those words or just lacking vocabulary. It always needed more time to think and exhausting for sure. But I do agree with you that reading is the key to be able to write beautifully. I always fell in love with reading, the words, the composition, the meaning it always makes me astonished somehow. But when it comes to writing down my opinion, to speak my minds up it's becoming the worst part. Nevertheless I still have faith in me, that when I accepted in UGM will bring me more responsibilities and we will get those chance to be the people on top, when the time comes and I still unable to write I will be embarrassed for life, moreover I'd like to thank you for encouraging us to write. It's been an honor to your student
For a person whose interest does not lie upon most activities which involve a very little amount of physical work, writing is not really something I am proficient in. I have made attempts to write in the past, but those were to no avail. In fact, it didn’t even deserve to be considered mediocre. This article reflects on how my writing skills in both English and Bahasa Indonesia during my days at the high school, and if there was any changes or improvements to it, I can say they’re not significant ones. Oddly enough, once I write, there’s no stopping to it, and I am aware of my initial statement that I attempted to write to no avail. It’s as if every word known in my lexicon are trying find their own ways to the paper and make themselves comfortable upon the paper, and I am at my full consciousness that they will probably become an addition to my arsenal of mediocre (not even close actually) writings in the end. Nevertheless, a long journey awaits, my lexicon will always crave for new knowledge of words, and rest assured I will surpass the mediocrity of my writing.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article, I really agree that reading a book is a lot more efficient than formal education in class regarding to writing skills. Don’t get me wrong, studying in the class when you are still a student is very important. But if we want to improve our writing skills, I do believe that reading a book will improve it effectively. I personally read a lot of books and truth be told, I feel like I could write an essay better if I read some book first, whether it’s a fiction or non-fiction book. And some of my friends feel the same as well. One of the example that happened in real life came from my friend’s experience, and that is when he took the writing test for IELTS. When his result came out, he got a 8.5 band for his writing test and we all question him, how did he do that? And his answer was simple, he just read a normal book and just follow the writing structure that was given to him.
ReplyDeleteI think, writing itself needs a beautiful concept within writer’s mind. There are some kind of methods as written on this post. Reading could help us to get use to writing certain topics. I define writing as an expression to express your feeling or thoughts. By writing, you could see or just simply see the “yesterday” part of yourself. Indeed, formal class doesn’t always reliable to help us writing. But, different point of views sometimes needed to writer so they have a new sight or simply new point of view. Students also tend to make mistakes in grammar and preposition. By reading book or taught in formal school class we could avoid this kind of mkistake. But, after all, I see writing as a skill or preference to showing or sharing thoughts or feeling. Even when, sometimes academic skills require this kind of skill. I think this is one of the reasons why Writing Skill / Language subject included in the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with most of the statement pointed by this article, because it is very accurate and i did experienced many thing related to it. For example, i remember when i was in middle school i used to be really bad at writing. My grammar were out of the place, i did not use punctuation correctly, and the flow of my writing was just really messy. No matter how much i practice on writing, i still couldn't improve (thats what my teacher said). Then in the late year of my middle school, for some reason i started to did a lot of reading (mostly novel) and movie streaming. I spent most of my summer day doing these activities, and there were about 20 up to 30 books and movies i’ve been read and watch at that time. Then when i entered highschool, miraculously i notice that i enjoyed doing writing. It might be happened because my habits on reading and streaming has improved my grammatical knowledge, my flow of writing, and it gave me a whole new perspective about writing.
ReplyDeleteIn this article, I do agree with the idea that reading improves your writing skills. Honestly, even though I suck at writing, I have to admit and ensure you that reading will benefit your writing ability. In my first days of senior high school which is the 10th grade, I always prevent reading. I always thought that reading is boring and is a waste of time. Then time gone by, I started to realize, that all my friends who receive good grades in English especially in writing do read books quite a lot. After that moment, I started to read books. I started to read books at the end of 11th grade and I read books in Bahasa Indonesia. I started from reading short-length book until the long-length book. In the end of 12th grade, I started reading books with English Language. I knew I was so late to read books, but I think instead of feeling in some kind of way that could bring myself down, I chose to stay on the lane so I can improve my writing skills. For now on, I admit that my English writing skills are still utterly suck, but I hope by improvements I could reach or even pass the goal of the writing skills standards I made.
ReplyDeleteThis article brings up a good point that I think most English teachers refuse to accept or learn. All throughout high school and middle school, my final assignment for English would always be something related to writing. The teachers would always tell us to do our best, as it is for the sake of practicing our fluency in English, all the while as they held a red pen and crossed out every grammatical mistake they found in our essays and reducing our score with every flaw they found. It didn’t help my grammar mistakes at all, as I would focus more on my terrible grades rather than my corrected paper. My grammar (and my grades) only started improving when I began reading habitually, all the extensive vocabulary I ended up reading and the grammatically correct sentences I familiarized myself with improved my writing greatly.
ReplyDeleteWith that being said, I don’t think that instructed writing is all that bad either. It teaches students to write out of their comfort zone, experiment their writing styles, and improve their writing strategies. While being grammatically correct in your writing is great, the writing style of a written piece is just as important. I propose that teachers reevaluate the way they grade instructed writing. To grade, and only grade, based on the content and writing strategy used when it is an instructed writing assignment. If the teachers want their students to improve their grammar, they may instead give a reading – related assignment.
I agree that reading will improve our writing skill. Because I did experience it myself. I didn’t like to read a book and prefer to watch movie instead. One day I got a writing task. I found it hard to write because I got no inspiration. But then I saw my brother was really good at writing and even now he is a writer. I realized that how could he become such a good writer because he read a lot. To be honest I hate reading a book because for me it seemed boring. But I encouraged myself to get out from my comfort zone so I started reading a book and turned out It was actually fun. By reading, it made me understand more about good form of writing, the right structure, the punctuation and etc. It becomes easier for me to write something now even though I am still sucks at it but at least I make an improvement. I am still working on it now because one of my dream is to be a writer so I think that I need to improve my reading first so that my writing will be improved automatically.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I don’t really like writing plus I’m not so good with it either. That’s why I only write when I have to. And after reading this article, I think that what was written above is true. I do believe that reading can improve our writing skills, as it can widen our choice of words, which add values to our writing. By reading, we can find new words that we have never heard, which adds up to our list of vocabularies. Furthermore, reading can widen our perspectives and therefore, our ideas about what would we write. It is useless if we know the format of the writing, or grammar/language rules, but not knowing the idea of what to write on the paper. Surely we should have known at least the basic language rules, but to add values for our writing, we should read more. In conclusion, reading is really important for improving our writing skills.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion this article is really good at explaining and showing what the problem with the way we study writing. I especially the quote” Forcing students to write without sufficient competence is tantamount to forcing an engine to work without gasoline” it’s so true to me. I always have a hard time writing something and I never like writing in the first place, so when there is assignment from teacher to write and essay with minimum of 2000 words I just goes crazy. I always think it’s just cruel to force student to work like that. But I don’t really thing student willing to read anything in the age of internet, most children more likely play video games with their friend rather reading when the teacher ask them to read some book. I think that one of the reason why teacher do not use reading as a way to improve the student writing skill. Other than that, in some rural area where books are limited its almost impossible for student to read a book without sharing it with other.
ReplyDeleteMuhammad Hassya Santoso-Thursday Class
ReplyDeleteThere is a common saying that goes "Reading is a window to the world" and I say that I agree with this saying. Reading is such a critical skill to have as it expands our knowledge of the fictitious and non-fictitious world. As a person who likes to read as a hobby, I have personally felt the positive effects that it has on a reader. From my personal experience I have felt that I could connect to more people than I have before. This is because when I talk to other people there are more subjects that we can relate to, especially things regarding life. If to be seen from an academic perspective, it sure has aided me when I am given an assignment. In a way reading has helped me to breakdown my ideas, and following that matter it has also helped me to manifest my ideas in various ways. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that reading is important not just because we need it to perform in our academic career but to also improve other aspects of our life.
I agree with the article that reading does improve our writing competency skills. I myself, have at least tasted the effect that reading has on my writing. Although my writing skills are still far from perfect, this merely proves the need for me to read more and more knowing that there is one crucial point that everyone often overlooks before enthusiastically grabbing a book with the hope to improve one’s writing skills, which is the fact that each progress that you make every time you finish a one hour reading session or more is never as significant as you think it is. When writing something, one’s own diction rarely finds its time to shine only after a few hours of reading. Most of the time, the words that we took note of in our list of “New Vocabularies That I Found Today” don’t actually find their place in the text that we are about to write. Sometimes we forget what the words are, and some other times it just feels that these words won’t sound good when put in a sentence we already prepared in our mind. However, I can say differently about the way you structure your words after a few hours of reading. When you read a lot, your brain unconsciously adapts to the different writing styles of the authors whose books you read, and make them your own. This benefit, is something that you’ll notice immediately the next time you write something. Therefore, if a person planned on improving all aspects of his/her writing, he/she would have to read every time one had the chance to read. For the writing practice part, make it less frequent than the times you allocate for reading.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, i’m not a huge fan of writing. I only write if I wanted to or I was asked by my teacher, back in High School I used to write tons of sociology essays ranged from 4-6 pages and even 10 pages during exams. I did not 100% agree that do much writing is not effective to improve the writing skills of an individual, since experience is what matters most in this case, if u write a lot and varied amount of essays or passages, it will expose you to lots of different types of writing and you will not having any difficulties writing essays when necessary. To be honest, I do enjoy reading. However my bookshelves at home were full of comics and so little amount of novels since I don’t really like to read novels. Eventhough that my dad is a bookworm since he reads a lot since his university years and he keeps on encouraging me to read novels I would still prefer to read comics. Eventhough that exposure to lots of literature works are going to improve individual’s english skills, however, me myself do prefer writing essays and given feedbacks from experts or teachers that’s more effective to improve my writing skills. Despite the fact that my writing skills are not perfect, at least it’s better than when I was before.
ReplyDeleteI have heard about this article since I was in high school. My English teacher in high school always command the students to read any kind of books that we like, then give it a little review; same as what Mr. Adrian told us to do for the comment task. Personally, I am agree upon this statement that reading does improve our writing skill, because I prove it by myself. Before entering high school, I came from a regular junior high school that didn’t thought me a lot about English language, so no wonder why my TOEFL test score was very ashamed in that time. Throughout high school, I was insisted to read some of English books that I never heard before. Surprisingly, after read some of the books I felt like it ease me a lot in order to understand English language. Besides, the review that I always made after reading the books also helps me a lot in my writing skills. That’s why, I can assure that this comment assignments will certainly benefits for every students.
ReplyDelete"It seems then that the best and the only way of accelerating students' writing competence is to get students hooked on books" (Sugiharto), I couldn't agree more to this particular claim. Not to be a hypocrite, but I personally don't read as much as how I understand the importance of reading. The way I perceive the importance of reading and its effect on writing is like how an NBA athlete trains. The way they train to be better isn't necessarily to always train in a five versus five training matches, but instead they take example from the better ones (in this case are the coaches). Exactly just like reading books and writing− to become a great writer, one has to take example from others. Because no matter how much focus you put into writing, if one doesn't know which is a good or bad final product, they could never improve. All in all, I think the article is a very insightful one especially to teachers or lecturers who are still figuring out the best way to teach in efficiency and of course, to students themselves.
ReplyDeleteI had a hard time trying to encourage myself to write. However, writing is something that I should overcome since there is no way I am going to graduate without completing my thesis. One thing that I have learned over the year is to write what you love. For example, I despise snakes. It may be hard for me to write about snakes since just thinking about it terrifies me. However, I love cats and I would write pages about how lovely and cute my cats are without realizing that I spent hours which result in pages of me complimenting my cats. This may sound very simple, but I have implemented this habit in nearly every assignment. Writing something you love will actually induce your curiosity towards the topic, hence you won’t mind spending a couple of extra hours to conduct more research, or collect data that will support your argument. I also believe that practice makes perfect, and always be open to critics since criticism may actually help you.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article above, I do agree that by reading you can increase your ability to write. First of all, by reading I do think it will enrich your vocabulary. When you read a lot of books, you will certainly find new vocabulary that you can use to write later on or in other words you can say that reading helps us to improve our language and grammar. Second, by reading it will challenge our mind and morals and also it teaches us how to weave a story together. What I mean by teaches us how to weave a story together is that by analyzing how the writer set out the story, you can learn it and then adapt it on your own writing. Other than that, by reading books it offers us inspiration. Sometimes you can get to the point where you are stuck when you write or usually called ‘writer’s block’, and the best way to overcome it is by picking up some books and start to read it and let that creativity kicks in. In conclusion, both reading and writing are equally important because they are related.
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ReplyDeleteI have to admit that i don't really like to read books that much, and my skills in writing isn’t as great as I’d liked it to be, and i agree with this article that writing competency is a hhard thing to master and although teaching students to write and read would somewhat help increase the writing competency its not as effective if the student itself does not have interest in the subject. When i was younger i had a little interest in reading books, i preferred watching movies, so my writing skills never developed as good as i want it to be. After reading this article, it reminds how important reading is, and i’d like to learn more about writing from reading books that suits my interest. I also believed that teachers has an important role to help kids to develop their writing competency but the problem is the way that teacher tries to develop their skills is by forcing them to read and write things that they have no interest about, so in my opinion the best way to make kids love to write to give them reading materials that they have an interest on and are still educational so that they could first increase they’re reading competency and in turn increases they’re writing competency as well.
I wrote on my introduction paper on the first day of college that if I didn’t take economics I would take literature as my major, especially Indonesian literature because I wanted to be a novelist. When I was a kid, I didn’t really read books, not even magazines for kids. I was only admiring people who read a lot because then they would surely have travelled a lot to many places through pages and times they spend on reading. My turning point was when I discovered a fictional series titled The Heroes of Olympus by the infamous Rick Riordan. I was brought to new experiences and journey to unknown places and I really was captivated by the stories and humours in it. Some adventurous part of me even wondered if this story was real, and Greek gods were really out there disguising themselves among the humans (oh and there was a time when I wondered if I was a Half-Blood). I’ve read the series multiple times, and each time I was always absorbed by the words and the way it portrayed things. After a moment of hesitation, I began to write for fun. As the time passes, I realize that people who write must read a lot, but people who read aren’t necessarily able to write. Also, the way we write things are influenced by the materials we usually read. If we’re used to read academic papers or newspapers, then our writings tend to be more academic with heavy and intelligent words. If we’re used to read novels, then our writings tend to use words that are easy to understand. With that being said, I really agree that the ability to write is started with continuous reading beforehand.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, books are important for many reasons. I truly agree on the argument that books improve the writing skills and the language of the people. When I was in primary school, my teachers forced me to read books in Spanish and in German, and of course, I hated it. Nevertheless, I am now so thankful because this was one of the reasons why I can now speak both languages fluid. Books also help Kids to improve their creativity and imagination. Unlike the tv shows, Books normally do not show any images, therefore, Kids have to use their imagination to picture the story on their minds. Sadly, now a days Kids prefer to spend their time watching videos on youtube and playing with their phones than enrich themself with some books. In the case someone is trying to learn a new language, watching some documentaries or movies is also really helpful. This will improve the pronunciation and the speech fluency.
ReplyDeleteI personally can relate to the "learn to write by practicing your writing" teaching method that is used in my junior and senior highschool. There's a saying "Practice makes perfect" which my senior highschool Teacher always said when She gave us a long writing assignment on certain topics that we don't really understand. But in My personal opinion, the way to earn mastery in something is not only by simply practicing it over and over again, But We should practice efficiently in order to learn something. Sometimes, the efficient way of doing something is not always trying to do it multiple times after getting told how to do it. In the case of writing skills, I personally think that this article is really true. We can't just make writings based on the theory. We should also read more books, articles, magazine, etc. By reading, we learn how other people which is more experienced in writing, writes an article. We may also learn some writing styles, the use of punctuation, and also enrich our vocabularies. Thus, if we really want to practice our english writing skills, the first step to be able to write better is to learn from other people, which is done by reading.
ReplyDeleteSir Richard Steele, a famous Irish writer and politician once stated “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body”. The reason why our body needs a routine exercise is because it is important for the health and balance for our body. Same goes for reading and its benefits to the mind. In psychology, I learned that reading improves overall brain function, increase memory capacity and is associated to slowing mental decline.
ReplyDeleteI have always been interested to the world of literature since I was a kid. I used to read comic strips and fictional novel when I have free time. Ever since high school, I started reading more nonfiction books to further broaden my perspective about the world. Most of my high school assignment requires a good writing skills from argumentative essays, scientific reports, extended essay and other forms of written assignment. Driven by these obligations, I felt the benefit of reading as I don’t find that much difficulty pouring my thoughts into words. I believe that the unwillingness to read is one of the biggest obstacle in acquiring knowledge especially within formal education. Furthermore, I also believe that reading must be reinforced since early age.
Reading affects our writing skill so much. When we read, not only can we improve our grammar, but we can also get more vocabulary from it. It is true that if we want to be a good writer we still need to write, but reading is one of the knowledges that we can get for our writing skill. Not only our writings, reading can also improve our speaking ability since it also involves both grammar and vocabulary. Not only grammar and vocabulary, reading can also increase our knowledge in general depends on what we read. The only bad thing about reading is that people usually read it too close to their eyes. This can hurt their eyes and that is why there are so many people that wear glasses because of books. If people are too lazy to read novels, they can read comic books as a starter. With picture, people will be more interested to read.
ReplyDeleteFor me in person, I’m not the type of reading and writing guy, but I realized that reading and writing can make me acknowledgeable. Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better equipped you are to tackle any challenge you’ll ever face. The more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they’ll inevitably make their way into your everyday vocabulary, When you read a book, you have to remember an assortment of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions, history, and nuances, as well as the various arcs and sub-plots that weave their way through every story. That’s a fair bit to remember, but brains are marvelous things and can remember these things with relative ease and the last benefit of reading you can have stronger analytical thinking because many books have a plot twist that makes you think how is the storyline goes
ReplyDeleteI do agree with the article above. To create writers, it needs books than instructions of how to be a good writer. I Found this article is supporting my own experience that lead to a finding of how reading a book may increase your communication skill or ability. The communication skill contains speaking ability and writing ability. From a book, we may learn new vocabularies and how to use an appropriate grammar. Me myself is a type of person who has ordinary communication skill. Then I realize that I have to increase my skill by getting used to it. Then I found that reading a book could increase your communication skill. But in the other hand instruction is quite important to as stated at the article above. The reason is, the instruction could be a guidance through the process. Then it can be concluded that books are important to those who learn to have good communication skill and especially to those who learn to be a good writer.
ReplyDeletePersonally I agree with this article, because I understand how hard it is to properly learn to write only from memorizing grammar at school. Reading help me to understand how to use the grammar correctly. I read on another article, reading exposes us to other styles, other voices, other forms and genres of writing. I think teachers at elementary school until high school have to change their methods of teaching. They need to make students interested on reading, so by reading they can learn new vocabulary and get used to with proper grammar, and of course in the fun way. Listening to someone speak in english also can help to understand more English grammar. In addition, we could get used to some slang and pronunciations. But I think the most important still to teach the basic grammar to student and encourage them to write as a practice for their grammar, and give them feedback when they make mistakes when writing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea of the article. From reading, we can improve our ability to understand foreign language as well as our skill in writing. Not only that, you can have so much more benefits from reading.
ReplyDeleteReading is important because it develops the mind. Understanding the written word is one way the mind grows in its ability. This can help you to develop your language skill. Other than that, you can also develop your imagination. This might sound childish, but imagination is actually as important as knowledge. Back then, human can only imagine if they could fly from an island to the other. And now there is airplane that can take us everywhere to the other part of the world. I believe it was all started from human’s imagination.
I totally agree with this article that reading is important and affect your writing quality. Reading could open up your mind about new stories or information thus there will be more idea to be written down. There will be reading materials from a lot of resources, which enables you to see things in a different perspective –could be presented in your writing as well. It also makes you able to insert examples or accurate data as it makes the writings look more trustworthy and professional. Another benefit is that reading makes you exposed to new vocabularies and idioms. This could create the variety of diction in your writing to avoid repetition in order to make it more interesting to the reader. If some might say that this is teachable via instruction, this is not a hundred percent true. Instruction might make you remember the grammars, but not understanding the whole meaning and usage. You need a legit example on the real writings to know exactly when and where the word should be used.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we could improve our writing competence by reading a lot. Reading could increase our vocabulary, spelling, grammar, etc. By reading a book we could find new words and increase our knowledge about writing. We all know that there are a lot of book authors and each of them have their own characteristic of writing that could help us improve our writing skills. Personally, I don't really like to write. I like to express my opinion but I'm not confidence enough to write it. As a college student I have to improve my writing skills. In order to improve our writing skills, I believe that reading is not enough. Even though by reading we could increase our writing skills but still practice makes perfect. We have to practice what we have learned from reading by write it. If we get used to practice writing then we will see a great significant change in our writing. I believe that by practicing it will increase our writing and reading skills.
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