Developing writing skills from childhood

Developing writing skills from childhood

By A. Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): The response by readers of this paper (three
letters and one article) to my article Writing needs more
attention (July 10, 1999), raised issues which included writing
as an art, nonacademic writing, feedback on student's writing,
and government policy on publications.

Their concerns and arguments confirm that writing is the most
complex constructive act human beings are expected to perform. At
the macro level, the habit of writing and an individual's
competency to write are dependent on public support, including
the government's publication policy.

In our daily life there are many complex constructive acts
that require talent, such as designing buildings, carrying out
experimental research, composing or conducting music, maneuvering
a supersonic jet, presiding over court cases, organizing a
company, and so forth.

However, most people are not expected to perform these
difficult jobs, they are left to a talented few. But schools and
society seem to expect that everyone, especially educated people,
can write. Even if we say that writing is an art, we should not
equate it with the art of choreographing a ballet sequence.
Writing experts believe that writing is a teachable and learnable
art, provided it is taught and learned in a correct manner.

Writing should be developed as early as possible. Parents are
often annoyed by their children's scratching on the walls with
crayons, which is, in fact, an act of genuine and natural
writing. Such children should be encouraged by providing them
with a pen and note pad, on which to copy simple drawings and
letters. Simple drawing develops the simultaneous coordination of
the mind and the hand. Children who are encouraged to draw are in
effect being trained to verbalize thinking and feeling in a
systematic manner.

First-grade children will write if we let them. It is usual
for parents and teachers to overlook an abundance of energy for
an expression that is waiting to be tapped. If only children's
supervisors would allow their charges to lead and observe and
follow and help them intelligently, who knows what writing we
would be privileged to read.

A first-grade respondent to my research wrote the following
authentic, original, and creative piece: Saya pulang dari pasar
terus melihat ada pemilu sekarang. Saya melihat banyak partai PAN
dan PDI. Saya suka melihat partai-partai PDI, PAN dan PPP. Aku
pulang dari rumah nene pas di jalan banyak partai. Mamah saya
mencoblos PAN papah saya mencoblos PNI. (I was on my way home
from the market when I realized it was the election period. I saw
many PAN and PDI campaigners. I love to see PDI, PAN and PPP. I
went home after a visit from my grandmother and I encountered
many campaigners on the street. My mom voted for PAN, my dad
voted for PNI.)

In my opinion, elementary students would have no problems
expressing what they saw on the polling day. In the citation
above, we notice how truth and reality reside in the child
writer's mind. This is an example of a natural approach to
writing pedagogy. Parents and teachers have a moral obligation to
show appreciation by giving feedback, by writing sincere
comments, impressions, and by showing interest -- an
instructional step very much taken for granted. Research shows
that young writers find such comments encouraging and rewarding.
They feel that their achievement is recognized, and thus their
self-confidence is assured.

Teachers of all school subjects in secondary schools should
function as "unofficial" or volunteer writing instructors. By
assigning students the task of reporting on the 1999 General
Election, for example, social science teachers teach politics,
while at the same time help to develop writing skills. Students
realize they learn politics, but they do not realize that they
are as matter of consequence acquiring writing skills.

Research by Applebee (1981) revealed that in American
secondary schools, English teachers were more likely to provide
help with writing tasks, while teachers of science, social
science, and mathematics were more likely to be concerned with
the accuracy of the information and soundness of the conclusions.
The concept of writing across curriculums (WAC) embraces an idea
that writing should be acquired subconsciously as a byproduct of
learning all school subjects. Non-language teachers should be
alerted to scrutinize both the content and language when
evaluating the writing assignments.

As a productive skill, writing presupposes receptive skills.
Through reading for pleasure, students themselves are prompted to
write for pleasure accordingly. Students are assigned to read a
work of fiction and write a response to it. In literary circles,
students are encouraged to share their aesthetic experiences.
Under no circumstances should students be taught a structural
approach to fiction -- characterization, setting, plot, and
demographic information of the author. This approach has been
responsible for relegating literature to the object of formal and
intellectual exercises rather than aesthetic appreciation and
evocation.

Through WAC programs, elementary and secondary students
practice general writing or nonacademic writing, such as keeping
diaries, writing correspondence, and writing for pleasure. These
constitute personal and imaginative writings, a genre of writing
almost everybody can perform, where individual experience rather
than subject-area information is stressed. Such practices
discourage the learning of theories of writing and lay the
groundwork for professional or academic writing.

WAC strongly believes that over the years students take on a
specialization and profession congruent with their talent.
Engineers, medical doctors, architects, and politicians, for
example, build professional circles, an activity for which
reading and writing are an absolute necessity. Many of them,
however, have no skills in nonacademic writing, partly because
they did not obtain general writing skills in their precollege
years. Seminar papers, research reports, and journal articles
constitute a specific kind of writing that presupposes general
writing skills.

Meanwhile universities are often criticized for establishing
an "ivory tower" orientation, where they tend to communicate
among themselves, and are detached from the public. Ideally,
college professors share their ideas, knowledge, and research
findings not only with peers but also with laymen. Journal
articles are as significant as textbooks, and research reports
are as important as newspaper articles. These different genres of
writing should be accomplished by intellectuals, especially
college professors.

Viewed from linguistic and teaching perspectives, the above
explanations partly explain the paucity of textbook writing in
this country. Nationally, there should be political will from the
government to encourage publications. The policy of inflicting a
15 percent tax on a writer's royalty is discouraging, and
indicates that the government is not serious about improving the
population's literacy. By way of comparison, in other developing
countries such as Malaysia textbooks are nontaxable items.

From the explanations above, some guidelines for developing
writing skills follow.

* Writing skills should be developed from childhood. There
should be a massive campaign for developing a literacy attitude
among parents. Early literacy and writing skills grow at home and
gradually develop outside.

* The formal teaching of writing in school is not and should
not be intended to train students to be poets, novelists, or
playwrights -- a common erroneous belief among parents and even
teachers. High school graduates should develop a reasonable level
of writing competence to enable them to communicate in daily
activities.

* The early years of schooling are responsible for developing
general writing skills, which constitute the foundation for
developing specific or professional writing skills. Appropriate
ways of teaching general writing skills should be emphasized in
precollege education.

* College writing should be handled in professional ways.
College graduates have received professional skills in various
fields of life. On completion of college training, they should
develop not only general writing skills, but also specific or
professional writing skills, so that they are capable of
communicating not only with their professional peers, but also
with the general public.

* Through WAC programs, teachers or professors work in a team
to develop writing skills through learning content areas.
Teachers and lecturers of all school subjects and content areas
should realize that each of them is responsible for developing
their students' writing skills.

* Existing government-sponsored institutions such as Pusat
Pembinaan Bahasa (The Center for Language Development) and Pusat
Perbukuan (The Center for Textbook Development), do not render
significant contributions to the development of textbook writing
in particular and literacy in general. It is high time to
establish a national center for research in writing, where
related research is coordinated and research findings are
documented. Unless the methodology is research-based, we will
never be sure of the state of the art of writing, and how it
should be taught.

Bearing all the above in mind, I respectfully call for a more
professional attitude toward the teaching of writing. Writing is
a medium for perpetuating civilization, and is an indicator of
being civilized. The proper teaching of writing is the surest way
to develop civilized Indonesians.

The writer is a lecturer at the graduate school of the
Teachers Training College (IKIP) in Bandung.