Writing needs more recognition

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.