Writing needs more recognition

By A. Chaedar Alwasilah

BANDUNG (JP): The language skill often reported as most wanted by our students from elementary to graduate school is writing. Compared to other skills -- listening, speaking and reading -- writing is perceived as the most difficult to acquire for some reason. Naturally, writing is acquired later than speaking. A newborn baby cries not writes, suggesting that while speaking is practically a skill possessed by all, writing is possessed by a few.

Anthropologists would agree that tribes exist today which do not recognize writing, yet it would be a big mistake to say they do not have culture. It is indisputable that writing is a modern phenomenon through which culture is passed on from one generation to another. Writing, no matter how simple it is, represents culture and civilization. Further, in academic circles, writing is an absolute necessity.

Let us consider bibliographies from Indonesian university student papers, theses or dissertations. How many Indonesian references are listed? How many college lecturers are active in writing? Very few, I guess! Hypothetically speaking, college faculties are generally staffed by lecturers without adequate competence in writing. Most of them are just consumers rather than producers of civilization's commodities; thus they are less competitive in terms of publications. It is estimated that in the last five years Indonesia has published around 6,000 titles. This figure is obviously much lower than Malaysia with 8,000, Singapore with 12,000 and Japan with 60,000 new textbooks.

A longitudinal study of writing process involving 29 graduate students revealed that 62.1 percent of the respondents believe that Indonesian education -- from elementary to college -- has failed to provide them with writing skills. Only 24.1 percent and 17.2 percent believed their education had provided them with reading skills and critical thinking skills respectively. Regarding college writing, the respondents identified four major weaknesses as depicted in Table 1.

Table 1: Perceived weaknesses of college writing (percentage of respondents)

1. Students get no feedback from instructors 68.9

2. Students are taught more theory than practice 55.2

3. Students do not realize the importance of writing 37.9

4. Instructors are not competent in teaching writing 34.4

As Table 1 shows, feedback in the form of corrections and comments by instructors on students' writing is virtually neglected. Writing is in fact written speech that requires feedback from the audience. Without such feedback students are not motivated to write and rewrite, very much like talking to inanimate objects. Students find comments such as "Aha, you find the way out", "I enjoy reading this part", "Put it in passive voice", or "You should be more specific here" encouraging and rewarding.

Likewise, marking particular aspects such as mechanics, grammar, vocabulary, rhetoric and content is helpful for revising. Students are led to rectify specific errors in their writing. Writing is an exacting endeavor that involves many aspects both linguistically as well as nonlinguistically. Meanwhile, writing instructors are often blamed for committing the error of "rubber stamping" -- namely giving too general comments such as "That's good" or "Rewrite".

As is always the case, there is a dichotomy between theory and practice. Writing instructors prefer one to the other, the ideal being to strike a balance between the two. The language curriculum traditionally comprises listening, speaking, reading and writing. While writing is the most difficult skill to acquire, instructors unfortunately tend to emphasize theory and overlook practice. Students are by definition eloquent in stating theories and principles of good composition and its proper teaching. However they do not know how to write themselves.

Given all the considerations above, it is a certainty that writing lessons should be handled in a professional way. The respondents believe that the following recommendations are worthwhile for improving college writing.

Table 2: Suggestions for improving college writing (percentage of respondents)

1. Instructors as writers themselves 65.5

2. Emphasis on practice rather than theory 51.7

3. To be taught by Indonesian teachers 27.5

4. Responsibility of all lecturers 20.6

Apparently students hope to be taught by a writer-instructor, who knows not only how to teach writing, but also has first-hand experience in writing. Nonwriter instructors, lacking empirical experience, tend to emphasize theories of writing. Consequently, neither the instructor nor the students have pieces of writing to show off.

From Table 2 above, it would seem respondents do not think that Indonesian lecturers should teach college writing. It has been common practice that some subjects like those in MKDU are taught by young and inexperienced lecturers. This two-credit MKDU or mata kuliah dasar umum (general subject) is rated as a boring and a second-class course. Students take the course just to fulfill credits requirements for their degrees.

Curriculum-wise, the teaching of writing is left to Indonesian or foreign language lecturers who often become the scapegoat when students fail to write properly. This erroneous attitude is prevalent even among college professors and should be corrected accordingly for the following reasons.

* All lecturers are in fact language users and automatically function as models that all students may want to emulate. Therefore one could say that they should be held responsible for developing writing skills in students. This implies that all lecturers should be reasonably proficient in writing to avoid a situation where, what the students have learned from professional Indonesian instructors, would be unlearned subconsciously as they are incorrectly taught by non-Indonesian lecturers.

* Almost all courses require students to write assignments on topics such as research, chapter and book reporting. Their writing skills are understandably expected to develop. However, as the maxim says, quantity does not guarantee quality. Those assignments do help them master the subject matter but do not improve writing quality. What most lecturers do is simply "rubber stamping". The students do not get any feedback from them. In most cases the assignments are not returned, as though they are "gone with the wind".

Improving writing instruction is not a one-man show of language teachers. It needs a collective commitment of many parties involved. Dwelling on the findings aforementioned, I submit the following as a guideline.

* Common to all is the change of attitude. Developing writing skills for students should be the responsibility of all teachers, no matter what their subject matters are. This implies that high proficiency in writing should be inherently part of the teaching profession, especially at college level.

* Writing instruction should be repositioned in the context of mutual interaction, in which students are treated as human beings that need rewards, encouragement and motivation. Returned assignments with comments, corrections and advice for improvement are indicative of professional writing instruction.

* It is high time to adopt the policy of writing across the curriculum, where writing is used as a central learning tool in classes outside language departments. Rather than relegating writing instruction to language or literature classes, the policy promotes collaboration between language teachers and nonlanguage teachers.

Research in developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom shows that this policy works well. It leads to a high degree of proficiency in writing as well as in specialization. It is apt to envision the situation where our intellectuals are not only masterful in their specialization but also competitive and prolific writers.

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