Graphic Organizer Versus Sentence Combining: Determining a Strategy for Text Writing

Abstract

BACKGROUNDRealizing that the demand of English as an international means of communication as used in education and career grows rapidly in Indonesia, it is reasonable that our government places English as a crucial subject in our education system. The government has also made a lot of attempts to make the students successful in learning English. The books are prepared, the teachers are trained, and the teachinglearning process is monitored. However, in some cases, the students still have difficulties in learning English.In the smaller scope of educational setting, i.e. at schools, most of examinations require students to use their writing skill. In short, students' success at school is also determined by their writing skills. Furthermore, it is commonly understood that good writing will foster good thinking and vice versa.Writing presents a challenge; both writing in the mother tongue and the foreign language one. Nunan (1999) argued that the most difficult task to do in language learning is to produce a coherent, fluent, extended piece of writing, which is even more challenging for second language learners. In line with Nunan, Richard and Renandya (2002) realized that productive skills might be more difficult to be mastered than receptive skills. This due to the fact that the productive skill -particularly writing -is not just producing the product of writing, but it needs some cycles and process to produce the sophisticated product of writing. Furthermore, if just focus on the product, the EFL learners are only interested in the aim of a task and in the product. The process of writing is more complex; it includes various stages of drafting, reviewing, redrafting and writing (Tribble, 1997 cited in Harmer, 1999.