CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION
1.1.
Background of the Study
English as an international
language has an important role to develop science and technologies many
countries in the world use English as a medium of communication among people in
different countries, and also of writing many kinds of books in which those are
spread in different countries. In Indonesia there are many kinds of foreign
books written in English, whether they are medical, Economical, Botanical, or
other books, they claim Indonesian students to be able to learn and to use
English in schools or in society in order that the books they read can be
applied in various fields so that the development of science and technologies
in Indonesia can be obtained.
For many years, English has
been the most important foreign language in Indonesia, Which is taught from
elementary school to university. However, in senior high school, English is
taught as main subject in
which the government has changed the curriculum into
Curriculum Based on Competence 2004 to be KTSP in 2008. According to Departemen
Pendidikan Nasional (2003: 36).
“The competence-basing language curriculum
is a systematic draft and strategy which build the communicative competence or
the competence of contextual. It means that it builds all the basis of
competences themselves. They are like linguistics competences, social culture
and strategies to make the benefit context.”
From the statement above, it is clear that Curriculum
Based on competence 2004-2009 tries to develop and achieve the communicative
competence or discourse competence and has perspective that is comprehensive to
the discourse. The learners must be able to master the four skills, they are:
listening, speaking, reading, and writing, also English components such as:
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
Among the four skills above, writing is the most
difficult one. Because it requires demonstrating the control of a number of
variables simultaneously; they are control of content, format, sentence
structure, vocabulary, punctuation spelling, etc. Nunan (1989: 35) points out,
“It has been argued that that learning to write fluently and expressively is
the most difficult of the macro skills for all language users regardless of
whether the language in question is first, second, or foreign language.”
Another opinion comes from Heaton (1989: 138). He explain that \