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.