THE IMPORTANT THINGS TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS IN WRITING CLASS

Writing is one of the basic soft skills in language learning besides listening, speaking, and reading. Most people believe that it gives us a lot of advantages, especially to earn much money by writing a book or an article in the newspaper. Someone can be a successful writer because he or she knows the tricks how to write correctly. The students in English Language Education Study Program also have to know it because the students are always related to this skill everyday. There are many ways to achieve success in writing class, such as reading a lot, mastering the basic writing skills, and managing the time in a disciplined way.

Reading a lot is one of the elements to achieve success in writing class. Most students think that reading is a boring activity because they have to face a lot of sentences and need many hours to do that. Thus, it makes them feel tired. However, it is not absolutely true because reading can arouse their creativity, intelligence, and innovation. Those elements are needed to get a new brilliant idea. Reading many various books will enrich their vocabularies because they can find many words which they have never known before. It will encourage them to find the meaning of each word then their brain will keep the new vocabularies directly.

To compose a good writing, the students have to master the basic writing skills, such as grammar and minimum requirements (punctuation marks, spelling, and diction). They do not only have to know the basic writing skills but also mastering it. It will make their writing more professional. Thus, the people really want to read the students’ writing because they can learn and get the new information through reading. Using the appropriate grammar, punctuation marks, spelling, and diction will make the idea or the information more understandable for the reader. Sometimes, confusion comes when the students are not fluent in English. They write without considering the grammar such as using an Indonesian grammar while writing an English sentence. The students also have to make sure their sentences grammatically and semantically correct.

Managing the time in a disciplined way will help the students to achieve success in writing class. This important principle should be embedded in the first meeting to make the students accustomed to finish their writing on time, based on the lecture’s deadline. A good time management in writing class can be formed by implementing the writing steps; they are choosing the mastered-topic, making an outline and a draft, then revising the draft to be the final writing. This habit will help the students become professional writers or journalists. The students can also build their writing career from now by working as freelance writers or journalists.

Those are the three important things to achieve success in writing class. Reading a lot helps the students to improve their vocabularies. Mastering the basic writing skills will make their writing more professional. Managing the time in a disciplined way makes them accustomed to finish their writing on time. Those will really help the students to pass their writing class with a good mark and improve their ability in writing.