Preparing Before Writing: Planning the Writing Activities and Language Learning In Classroom

The 7th International Seminar 2013 “Language Policy and Planning: What are the Issues?” Salatiga, November 20 – 21, 2013 ; p. 286 – 297The paper aims to describe a study conducted in a vocational high school in Bandung, implementing an approach established by David Rose in Australia, Learning to Read: Reading to learn. It is where Language Teaching on reading is also connected to teaching writing (Rose, 2008, Rose & Acevedo, 2006). In Australia, this program has successfully increased students’ literary skills at twice the expected rate with integrating teaching of high level skills in reading and writing with normal classroom program across the curriculum (Cullican, 2006). There are some phases on this approach, however this paper will only describe the two phases, Preparing before Writing and Joint Rewriting. The phases will show some preparations and planning in teaching English language and reading which lead to learning writing. Where Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) or Vygostkyan social learning theory as its basis, the observations of the activities in the study show that the students could finish the task successfully and improve their writing skills in the level of structure and elements of the text. In addition, the reasons lying behind this findings are that students are shown how to do the task (scaffolding) and teacher makes the appropriate preparation and planning for the activities in the classroo