CRITICAL JOURNAL REPORT

“PRODUCTIVE WRITTEN LANGUAGE SKILLS”

LECTURER : RIKA S.Pd M.Hum

by :

Indah Ramahati Br Bangun / 2192421004

Tasya Gaby Paulina Saragih / 2193121031

ENGLISH EDUCATION
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ART
MEDAN STATE UNIVERSITY
2019
 PREFACE
Praise us for the presence of God Almighty who has given grace and guidance to all
of us, so that thanks to the gift of error we can complete the Critical Tasks of the Riview
Journal. Writing this Critical Riview Journal is one of the assignments given in the productive
written language course in Medan State University.

In writing this Critical Journal Review I feel there are many shortcomings in both the
technical writing and the material, given my abilities. For this reason, I sincerely hope that
criticism and suggestions from all parties will be made in order to improve the work that I
do.

In this writing, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who helped in
completing this Critical Riview Journal, particularly to Ms. Rika S.Pd M.Hum. The supervisor
lecturer in this productive written language skills course who had given assignments and
instructions to us, so we can complete this task.

Medan, September 2019

TABLE OF CONTENT
ABSTRACT
English is getting more crucial to be mastered since its important part in the world
nowadays. It is not only as a means of communication but also a means transferring
knowledge, news, and technology around the world. There are four basic skills in English
such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing, every students must have problem in
learning and mastering those skill. But writing is the main issue to be discussed in this
article. In writing, some of the writer‟s students feel difficult to determine the topic when
they want to write, they are hardly to complete a writing paper because they run out of
idea. In this case the students need to absorb some information to understand a word,
including how to combine a word with the other words.

Therefore the teacher should have a strategy to get the students understanding and
overcome their problems.Teaching is about just how to encourage the learners to achieve
their goals and other times it requires that we actually facilitate resources and foster
experiences so students can learn, continue learning and love the process. It is an art of the
teacher to know how to make the students able to create knowledge of their own.
Brainstorming is one of the teaching techniques in writing that can encourage the students
to think about the topic as many as possible.

This technique is help the students to enrich their vocabularies then create an idea
become a writing composition. By using this strategy the students will be able to improve
their writing skill. Brainwriting is an alternative method to brainstorming that tries to
encourage a more uniform participation within a group. Like brainstorming, it is designed to
generate lots and lots of ideas in a short amount of time.
 BAB I

PRELIMINARY
A.BACKGROUND

Writing is a means of communication that the writer consciously learn and part of
what makes it hard to learn is that written words usually have to express the writer meaning
in the writer absence have to ”speak” all by themselves. When someone speaks face to
face with a listener, the speaker can communicate in many and different ways. The speaker
can raise or lower the pitch or volume of the speaker voice to emphasized a point; the
speaker can grin, frown, wink, or shrug; the speaker can use their hands to shape out a
meaning when the speaker quite have the words to do it. The speaker can ever make their
silence mean something. But in writing the writer have to communicate without facial
expressions, gestures, or body language in English of any kind. The writer has to speak with
words and punctuation alone.

B.PURPOSE
Through writing we can Inform everything, be it facts, data or events including
opinions and views of facts, data and events so that the reader can gain new knowledge and
understanding of various things that can or happen on this earth.

C.PROBLEM FORMULATION
1. What Is To Note In Writing ?
 CHAPTER II
JOURNAL ANALISIS
A.THEORITICAL OFFERINGS

Writing is a productive skill that involves producing language rather than receiving it.
Very simply writing involves communicating a message (something to say) by making signs
on page. To write is to put down the graphic symbols that represent a language one
understand, so that others can read these graphic symbols if they know the language and
the graphic representation.

THE NATURE OF WRITING

Writing is a method of representing language in visual or tactile form. Writing
systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and may also have symbols
for such things as punctuation and numerals5.Writing" is the process of using symbols
(letters of the alphabet, punctuation and spaces) to communicate thoughts and ideas in a
readable form6. As the most visible items of a language, scripts and orthographies are
'emotionally loaded', indicating as they do group loyalties and identities. Rather than being
mere instruments of a practical nature, they are symbolic systems of great social
significance which may, moreover, have profound effect on the social structure of a speech
community7.

1. The Elements of Writing

In order to be able in making a good writing, there are some elements of writing
which is useful and it is very important to be attending with us to make a good writing.
There are main elements of a piece of writing such as8:
1) Ideas which maybe in the form of opinion, experience, feeling, knowledge.
2) Expression. It may be in the form of narration (a form of writing which retells events in
the framework of time sequence giving an impression that a story start from the beginning
to the ends) exposition and argumentation
3) Organization
4) Means or vehicle of expression such as vocabulary, grammar and style.

2. The Functions of Writing

There are some functions of writing such as9:
1) A tool for self expression i.e. when a person is so impressed with a certain thing or event,
he tries to express it in various ways. Some people yelp another jump and shout and others
express the feeling, ideas and emotion they feels in short paragraphs or essays so that other
persons will be able to feel and understand what they are experiencing.
2) A tool for understanding. When a person is about to write any discourse, he thinks,
elaborates and rethinks the ideas before he write it so that he gets better understanding on
the material content he wants to write.
3) A tool to help developing personal satisfaction, pride, and a feeling of self-worth. The
feelings of satisfaction, pride and self worth is a natural consequence of successful work
either in writing or in any kind of field. In the final end these feeling encourage the writer to
be more creative to produce a much better writing.
4) A tool for increasing awareness and perception of one‟s environment. In order to be able
to produce multitude of written work, a person develop physical and mental readiness or
sensitivity to observe, internalize and portray any state, events or happening in his
surrounding to yield better writing.
5) A tool for creative involvement, not passive acceptance, by writing a person is actively
involved in. expressing and in creative process with the subject he is writing.
6) A tool for developing an understanding of and ability to use language to express thoughts,
ideas, feeling and emotion to other people.

3. The Teaching of Writing

Ur state that the objectives of teaching writing is to get learners to acquire the
abilities and skills they need to produce a range of different kinds of written texts similar to
those an educated person would be expected to be able to produce in their own language.
Teaching how to write effectively is one of the most important life-long skills educators
impart to their students. When teaching writing, educators must be sure to select resources
and support materials that not only aid them in teaching how to write, but that will also be
the most effective in helping their students learn to writing.

4. The Characteristics of Good Writing

In order to be able to make a good writing composition, a person needs some basic
characteristics of written language.
There are nine characteristics of written language viewed from the perspective of a reader
such as:
a) Permanence: written discourse is fixed and stable so the reading can be done at whatever
time, speed and level of thoroughness the individual reader wishes.
b) Explicitness: the written text is explicit it has to make clear the context and all references.
c) Density: the content is presented much more densely in writing
d) Detachment: the writing of a text is detached in time and space from its reading, the
writer normally works alone, and may not be acquainted with his or her readers
e) Organization: a written text is usually organized and carefully

5. The Advantages of Writing

Scott (1990: 69) Writing is an interesting activity, it can give students some
advantages although basically there are difficulties in writing but it is still a useful, essential,
integral and enjoyable part of the foreign language lesson because:
1) It adds another physical dimension to the learning process. Hands are added to eyes and
ears.
2) It lets students express their personalities even guided activities can include choices for
the students, like the copying the story about something.
3) Writing activities help to consolidate learning in the other skill areas, balanced activities
train the language and help aid memory practice in speaking freely helps when doing free
writing activities. Reading helps students to see the „rules‟ of writing, and helps build up
their language choices.
4) Particularly as students progress in the language, writing activities allow for conscious
development of language when we speak, we do not always need to use a large vocabulary
because our meaning is often conveyed with the help of the situation.
Lots of structures in the language appear more frequently in writing, and perhaps most
important of all, when we write we have the time to go back and think about what we have
written.
5) Writing is valuable in itself. There is special feeling about seeing your work in print and
enormous satisfaction in having written something which you want to say, never
underestimate the value of making students‟ work public-with their consent, of course13.

6. Definition of Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a teaching technique by which a teacher utters a particular problem
for the learners to respond or to comment on without worrying of making mistakes so that
it becomes fruitful learning process. This technique is quite useful to generate as many as
ideas as ones can from a group of persons.
Another definition of brainstorming is a way to discover ideas about the topic and it will
help the students to focus more clearly on a particular idea which best support the topic. A
variation of brainstorming is to ask questions about the topic, such as “Who?” “What?”
“When?” “Where?” “Why?” and “how?”

7. The Objectives of Brainstorming

There are some main objectives of brainstorming as follow15:
a) To dig up the learners ideas for the problem proposed by the teacher.
b) To provide the learners with the predetermined problem
c) Stimulate as many ideas as the learners to comment on the truth of their answer.
d) Let them do what they can and gives any evaluation.
e) Give the learners chance to comment, respond and to give further problem and try to
conclude.
f) It can be encouraged and stimulated so they are willing to express their ideas and are
deeply absorbed in the class activity.
g) It involved the teaching learning process actively.

8. The nature of Brainwriting

Brainwriting is primarily used in groups. The special feature of the brain writing
against the brainstorming is that each participant can collect and ideas alone. The
boundaries between brainstorming and Brainwriting is blurred. Brainstorming similar to
Brainwriting by contributions are recognized in writing.

9. The Phase of Brainwriting

There are two phases of Brainwriting to be conducted16
1. The first phase is the development of ideas and the creation of associations. In this phase,
a review of foreign as their own ideas is prohibited as this lead to internal censorship by the
participants and would make it difficult to find new ideas.
2. The second phase, the results are then subjected to detailed criticism and pulled out the
best ideas.
There are some bernefit of brainwriting there are:
1. Ideas are not likely to be lost in the discussion because they are written down.
2. It is not necessary to keep a log. Therefore, a secretary deleted.
3. The anonymity of the participants can usually be maintained. Participants are therefore
not personally vulnerable.
4. There is equality in the group.
5. Introverts participants have the same chance to bring their ideas as extroverted.
6. The position of the participants does not affect the discussion of ideas, provided
anonymity prevails.
7. In the discussion of ideas, for example, the department head will then have their place of
reverence by the critics.
8. very straightforward method and therefore is easy and quick to learn. In addition to this,
no particular training for the supervisor is required

10. The Banefits of Brainwriting

1. The optimum application of the technique would require 6 participants, as too many
would make the session unmanageable, however sessions may be carried out also in teams
of 4, 5 or 7 and the number of ideas generated would respectively be 48, 75 and 147
2. It is fundamental to assure that all participants share a deep background knowledge on
the topic of the brainwriting session since even a single not well informed individual can
significantly affect the quality of the output. In addition to this, it is recommend that
through a preliminary discussion, the group focuses on identifying the problem to be solved
or the aim to be pursued. This can either occur through as independent initiative of the
group or guided by the supervisor.
3. Once the topic of the session is narrowed down to a problem statement, this is
announced and written on top of the Idea Form. This is a worksheet that has to be handed
out to each participant and consists of a grid where the heading of the columns are Idea 1,
Idea 2 and Idea 3 and
the rows identify the name of who has contributed to that particular suggestion. At this
point, the session is ready to start and participants are given 5 minutes to complete the first
row and write down the first ideas working in silence. These may be expressed in any
graphical form: written, drawn, through a symbol or however the author prefers.
4. The supervisor signals the end of time, and the sheet is passed on to the right participant
as shown in the picture below. Now the process is repeated and each participant is free to
get inspired from the idea he reads on the sheet written by his neighbour and contribute to
them by integrating or completing them, or decide to ignore them and start a new one from
scratch.
5. The process goes on until the worksheet is completely filled in but if the supervisor deems
it necessary, the time for each round may be extended to a maximum of 10 minutes.
6. The conclusion of the brainstorming session is a preliminary screening of the ideas that
have been gathered where exact duplicates are deleted, and a team evaluation
perhaps using the Nominal Group Technique or Prioritisation Matrices to select 1 to 3 ideas
the group can focus on.

B.COMMENTS

1.ADVANTEGES
In the journal it has also been explained with clarity as to the title or theorizing,
although this also includes defiencies because it is not too deeply discussed from the results
of the results of the experience conducted. this journal contains a lot of understanding. in
terms of theory this journal is very good.

2.DISADVANTAGES

CHAPTER III
DISCUSSION