Reading Literary
Texts: A Starting Point for Learning Writing
Ani Windarti
Teaching writing is a demanding job.
There are several aspects which should be considered, such as content, unity,
coherence, structure and choice of words. Thus, during the writing process, the
students have to divide their concentration among those important elements.
From my observation, I found that most writing textbooks provide the students
with familiar topics in a paragraph or an essay. This, in my opinion, will
impede the students’ interest in writing. This paper, then, tries to offer a
technique in teaching writing intending to encourage the students to express
their ideas more freely on familiar topics.
Literary work is the reflection of a
given society. Therefore, it talks much about human experience including love,
injustice, arrogance, courage and other emotions and conditions. Poems and short
stories are the most suitable genre to be used as the supporting materials,
considering that, relatively they are shorter than novels and plays. In this
case the literary text functions as a stimulus to encourage students to convey
their thoughts. After the students read the literary text, they are given a
task dealing with writing activities such as paraphrasing a poem, arguing about
the theme, describing a certain character or characterization, describing the
setting, etc.
This technique will hopefully create
a more relaxing situation in the classroom which in turn will smoothen the process of learning and teaching writing.
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Windarti, A. (2003, November). Reading literary texts: A starting point for learning writing.
Paper presented at the 38th RELC International Seminar,
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