THE APPLICATION OF IMITAIVE WRITING TASK USING BROWN’S MODEL

CONTAINING ON STUDENTS ENGLISH TEXTBOOK “WHEN ENGLISH RINGS

A BELLS” PUBLISHED BY PUSAT KURIKULUM DAN PERBUKUAN
KEMENTRIAN DAN KEBUDAYAAN

Sakina Noviandani W.P

English Department Teacher’s Training and Education Faculty Universitas Pekalongan

sakinanoviandani.w.p@gmail.com

Abstract

English writing is an important language skill that college students have to acquire, but is
also the weakest link in English learning. Applying comprehensive imitative writing
strategy into teaching can help students’ master vocabulary, syntax, structure, discourse,
and develop a linear logical thinking model. Therefore it is of great significance to the
improvement of writing ability. There are some types of imitative writing assessment such
as, (hand)writing letters, words, punctuation, spelling tasks and detecting phoneme
grapheme correspondence Beside, there are some types of assessment task of writing, such
as imitative writing task, responsive writing task , and extensive writing task. This research
discussed about the kind of imitative writing task that used in English textbook When
English Rings a Bell for seven grade of Junior High School. On the other hand, the
researcher used content analysis to reveal the accuracy of application of imitative writing in
When English Rings a Bell for seven grade of Junior High School.

Keywords: Writing, Imitative writing task, When English Rings a Bell textbook.

Introductions

Assessment is important part in learning assessing part. Writing, as well as

activities. It’s difficult to measure the speaking, is a productive skill. It means

ability in language mastery. English that people tend to produce language

writing is positionized in vital point in rather than to receive it. Therefore, it is

assumed that learning writing and
learning speaking are more difficult than
learning reading or listening, which is
categorized as receptive skills. However,
many people say that learning writing is
more difficult than learning speaking,
although writing and speaking are
similarly categorized as productive
skills. Learning writing is more difficult
than learning speaking because writing
has its own features and conventions that
differentiate it from speaking (Brown,
2004). Nunan (2001: 88) defines writing
as a process of thinking to invent ideas,
thinking about how to express into good
writing, and arranging the ideas into
statement and paragraph clearly. Celce-
Murcia (2001: 142) states that writing is
the production of the written word that
results in a text but the text must be read
and comprehended in order for
communication to take place. Ghazi
(2002: 1) says that writing is a complex
process that allows writers to explore
thoughts and ideas, and make them
visible and concrete. Raimes (1983: 56)
states that writing is a means of
communication between reader and
writer. Farbairn and Winch (1996: 32)
state that writing is conveying meaning
by using words that have been selected
and put together in a written or printed
form. Trible (1996: 1) defines writing as
a process of producing graphics symbols
which have to be arranged according to
certain convention, to form words,
arrange words into sentences, and
sequence the sentences into particular
order and linked together in a certain
way to form a coherent whole, which are
called text. Ur (1996: 163) states that
writing is the expression of ideas and
conveying a message to the readers.
According to Harris (1993: 10), writing
is a process that occurs over a period of
time, particularly if we take into account
the sometimes extended periods of
thinking that precede creating an initial
draft. Even in the more immediately
focused stage of constructing a text
(actually writing the words down), the
writer pauses, thinks, writes, pauses,
thinks, revises, and so on. Meyers (2005:
2) states that writing is an action - a
process of discovering and organizing
ideas, putting them on paper, reshaping,
and revising them. Hedge (2005: 10)
explains that writing is more than
producing accurate and complete
sentences and phrases, but it is about
producing whole pieces of
communication to link and develop
information, ideas, or arguments for a
particular reader or a group of readers.
Hyland (2002: 5) states that writing is an
attempt to communicate with readers - to
better understand the ways that language
patterns are used to accomplish coherent,
purposeful prose. He also adds that
writing is a socio-cognitive activity that
involves skills in planning and drafting,
as well as knowledge of language,
contexts, and audiences.
Based on some definitions, writing is an
ex- tremely complex cognitive process of
expressing ideas, thoughts, and feeling to
convey meaning by producing graphics
symbols which have to be arranged
according to certain convention, to form
words, arrange words into sentences, and
sequence the sentences into particular
order and linked together in a certain
way to form a coherent whole, which are
called text as a means of communication
between a reader and a writer. As
mentioned earlier, the type of writing
performance in junior high school is
responsive writing. It means that the
students have to perform various types of
genres such as descriptive, recount,
narrative, procedures, report, and various
short functional texts. After the students
finish writing the final draft of the text,
the teacher has to score the student’s
work to know the ability of the students
in writing. There are three types of
scoring method for responsive writing.
They are holistic, primary trait, and
analytical scoring (Brown, 2004).
According to Brown (2004) there are
some types of writing assessment,
a. Imitative writing, to produce written
language, the learner must stain skills
in the fundamental basic tasks of
writing letters, words, punctutions,
and very brief sentences. This
category includes the ability to spell
correctly and to perceive phoneme-
grapheme correspondences in the
English spelling system. It is level at
which learners are trying to master
the mechanics of writing. At this
stage, form is the primary if not
exclusive focus, while context and
meaning are secondary concern.
b. Intensive (controlled). Beyond the
fundamentals of imitative writing
skills in producing appropriate
vocabulary within a context,
collocations and idioms, and correct
grammatical features up to length of
a sentence. Meaning and context are
some importance in determining
correctness and appropriateness, but
strictly controlled by the test design.
c. Responsive. Here, assessment tasks
require learners to perform at a
limited discourse level, connecting
sentences into paragraph and creating
logically connected sequence of two
or three paragraphs. Tasks respond to
pedagogical directives, list of criteria,
outlines, and other guidelines. Genres
of writing includes narratives and
descriptions, short reports, lab
 reports, summaries brief responses to
reading and interpretations of charts
or graphs. Under specified
conditions, the writer begins to
exercise some freedom of choice
among alternatives forms of
expressions of ideas. The writer has
mastered the fundamentals of
sentence-level grammar and is more
focused on the discourse conventions
that will achieve the objectives of the
written text. Form-focused attention
is mostly at the discourse level with a
strong emphasis on context and
meaning.
d. Extensive. Extensive writing
successful management of all the
process and strategies of writing for
all purposes, up to the length of an
essay, a term of paper, a major
research project report, or even a
thesis. Writers focus on achieving a
purpose, organizing and developing
ideas logically, using details to
support illustrated ideas ,
demonstrating syntactic and lexical
variety, and in many cases engaging
in the process of multiple drafts to
achieve a final product. Focus on
grammatical form is limited to
occasional editing of proofreading of
a draft.
According to Weigle (2002), holistic
scoring is used to judge the students’
writing by assigning a single score after
reading the overall text. In other word,
the teachers score the students’ writing
based on their personal assumption as a
reader about a text. It means that this
scoring cannot diagnose the students’
ability in writing because the teacher
cannot rate the aspects of writing such as
content, organisation, vocabulary,
language use, and mechanics. Primary
trait scoring can be used to know “how
well students can write within a narrowly
define range of discourse” (Weigle,
2002:110). It means that this scoring
assesses writing based on its function
(Brown, 2004).
In this research, the researcher focused to
reveal the applications of imitative
writing task in English textbook when
English Rings a Bell for seven grade of
Junior High School.
Methodology
Research design used in this research is
content analysis. Content analysis is a
research tool used to determine the
presence of certain of words or concepts
within text or sets of texts. Text can be
defined broadly as books, book chapter,
essays, interviews, discussions,
newspaper headline and articles,
horizontal documents, speeches,
conversations, informal conversations or
really any occurrence of communicative
language. The writer used content
analysis since the data is from writing
task, and it’s form of words which
cannot be counted like numbers. In this
research, the researcher will analyze
kinds of responsive writing that used in
the When English Rings a Bell. The data
of this research is divided into two,
primary and secondary data. The primary
data of this research is the researcher
instrument and the When English Rings
a Bell’s book that contains some
exercises. The researcher will analyze
kinds of responsive writing.
secondary data, the researcher used
library online and online journal to
support the primary data. The researcher
not analyzed all the responsive writing
assessment in the text book, because the
researcher limit, so here the researcher
used sampling technique named random
sampling. Random sampling means the
researcher does not take all of the
materials, but only some of them after
chosen randomly that can
representative from the chapter 1, 2,3
and 4.
In this textbook there are 8 chapter/ unit
such as in this table:
No. Unit Unit Title
1 Good Morning,
How are you?
2 It’s me!
3 What time is it?
4 This is my world
5 It’s a beautiful day!
6 We love what we
do
7 I’m proud of
Indonesia!
8 That’s what friends
are supposed to do
Finding and Discussions
The Brown (2004: 246) states five aspects of
writing as follows: content, organization,
vocabulary, syn- tax, and mechanics.
Johnson and Johnson (2002:75) state
that to evaluate a composition, the com-
ponents are: organization, cohesion,
vocabulary, sentence structure, and
spelling and punctuation. Hedge (2005:
10) mentions that in writing, the writer
should consider a high degree of
accuracy, complex grammar devices, a
be careful choice of vo- cabulary, and
sentence structures in order to create
style, tone, and information appropriate
for the readers of one’s written text.
Hughes (1996: 91) mentions five aspects
of writing: grammar, vocab- ulary,
mechanics, fluency, and form
(organization).
Hughes (1996: 91) explains the five successful writing involves: mastering
aspects of writing as follows: (1) the mechanics of letter formation, mas-
grammar, that is an element of writing tering and obeying conventions of
which deals with a set of rules to have a spelling and punctuation, using the
writer construct sentences that make grammatical system to con- vey one’s
sense and ac- ceptable in English; (2) intended meaning, organizing content at
vocabulary, it deals with a list of words the level of the paragraph and the
and their meanings; (3) mechanics, that complete text to reflect new information,
is the convention in writing, which is publishing and revising one’s initial
related to punctuation, spelling, and efforts, and selecting an appropriate style
capitalization; (4) fluen- cy, which refers for one’s audience. Raimes (1983: 6)
to the ease and the style of the mentions that the writing aspects are
composition; and (5) form syntax (sentence structure, sentence
(organization), that is the logical boundaries, stylistic choices, etc.),
sequence and cohesion, or the flow of content (relevance, clarity, originality,
ideas being put into written language, to logic, etc.), the writers’ process (getting
make uni- fied contribution to whole idea, getting started, writing draft,
paragraph. Heaton (1990: 2) states that revising), audience (the reader), purpose
the aspects of writing are: grammar, (the reason for writing), word choice
cohesive devices, conceptual and judg- (vocabulary, idiom, tone), organization
ment elements. Kitao (1996: 2) states (paragraph, topic and support, cohesion
that the abil- ity to write involves the and unity), mechanics (handwriting,
components of writing as follows: spelling, punctuation, etc.). Madsen
grammatical ability, lexical abilities, me- (1983: 10) states that there are great
chanical, stylistic skills, organizational numbers of factors (in testing writing)
skills, and judgment appropriateness. that can be evaluated: mechanics
Nunan (1998: 36) states that writing is an (including spelling and punctuation),
extremely complex cognitive ac- tivity in vocabulary, grammar, appropriate
which the writer is required to content, diction (word selection), and
demonstrate control of number variables rhetorical matters of various kinds
which include: control of content, (organization, cohesion, unity;
format, sentence structure, vocabulary, appropriate to the audience, topic, and
punctuation, spelling, and letter occasion).
formation. Nunan (1998: 7) states that
 The objective of the research is to find vocabulary for seven grade junior high
out the application of imitative writing in school students.
English textbook. This book published
In chapter 3, the content and the
for seven grade of junior high school that
organization of writing assessment got
consists of eight chapter. The researcher
total 90% in all aspect in above, the
take all chapter. So, here the result of the
chapter one there is some mistake in
analysis. The whole analysis is shown in
syntax,, and the vocabulary in writing
form of the table as follow :
assessment there is some difficult
vocabulary for seven grade junior high
Speaking Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch school students.
Assessmen 1 2 3 4 5
t In chapter 4, the content and the

Content 20 20 20 20 20 organization of writing assessment got

total 90% in all aspect in above, the
Organizati 20 20 20 20 20
chapter one there is some mistake in
on
syntax,, and the vocabulary in writing
Vocabular 20 15 15 15 15
assessment there is some difficult
y
vocabulary for seven grade junior high
Syntax 15 10 15 15 15
school students.
Mechanics 20 15 15 20 20
Total 95 80 85 90 90 Through the textbook there are many kind
% % % % % of activities of writing assessment that
emphesized writing skill handwriting
letters, words, and punctuation marks,
In chapter 1, the content of writing
listening closze selections tasks, writing
assessment got total 95% in all aspect in
numbers and abbreviations to words,
above, the chapter one there is some
multiple choice-reading-writing tasks.
mistake in syntax, and the vocabulary in
writing assessment is good enough. Conclusions

In chapter 2, the content of writing
assessment got total 80% in all aspect in
above, the chapter one there is some
mistake in syntax, and the vocabulary in
writing assessment there is some difficult
Based on the result on the table above, the
researcher find that the writing assessment
in English textbook “When English Rings
a Bells published by Pusat Kurikulum dan
Perbukuan Kementrian dan Kebudayaan,
the writing assessment, especially the The result be concluded and decided that
imitative writing assessment is “good” the writing activities or task in this
enough, because the content, the textbook are good as writing assessment.
oraganizations, the vocabulary, the syntax,
and the mechanics is suitable with the
writing assessment criteria.
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