An Empirical Study on Reading-Writing Connection - Research Insights for the Classroom

Penulis/Peneliti : Setiono Sugiharto in Katharina Endriati Sukamto (Ed.).

Bidang Penelitian : Membaca -Menulis/Reading -Writing

Jurnal : Linguistik Indonesia

Volume : Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 63-80

Tahun : 2005

It is often hypothesized that the effective way of fostering the acquisition of writing competence (the output-based) is through the exposure of reading materials of the target language being learned (the input-based). Doubts are, however, cast over whether student‘s writing competence can be best supported and enhanced by students engaging in writing and reading simultaneously. Despite the fact that reading input approach may seem to be intuitively beneficial for the acquisition of writing, it would be risky to adopt such an approach in the absence of confirming research. The study of reading-writing approach was therefore undertaken to investigate the extent to which such an approach would yield significant gains in the writing acquisition and the extent to which such an approach is more effective compared to the conventional writing approach. A group of Indonesian learners at the university level, each consisting of 23 students, was divided into control and experimental groups. They received different treatments of writing instructions. The former was taught writing using traditional approach, while the latter was taught writing by exposing them to reading materials. The results showed that the students who were exposed to reading materials of the target language outperformed those who were not in terms of overall writing proficiency. 

Key words: writing competence, reading-writing approach, conventional writing approach