2.8 The effectiveness of peer assisted writing to teach writing viewed from students’ creativity

People from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers helping each other to learn and learning themselves by teaching. Those helping their peers to learn are from similar social groupings to the learners (although not necessarily from the same course or year of study) and are not themselves professional teachers or ‘experts’ in the subject. PAL tutors therefore typically have less expansive knowledge of subject matter, less developed teaching skills and less authority than ‘expert’ tutors. Other terms used: Peer appraisal; Peer assessment; Peer tutoring; Peer teaching; Student teaching/tutoring/ mentoring; Peer assisted writing; Study advisory schemes; and Peer supported learning.

The researcher prefers to conduct this study on writing ability because Writing is known as an important skill for multifarious reason in education and bussiness. Raimes states that the purpose of writing is for improving, training, and practicing language in early stage of learning to communicate fluently and accurately at intermediate and more advance level. Certainly, writing is a complicated process through which ideas are created and expressed. Learning to write in a foreign language is even harder and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to write skillfully.

Hyland states writing as the productive mode of language is a vital skill for the L2 learners to develop their language knowledge and the teaching of this skill in second language classrooms. Writing skill, to some students, is considered as the most difficult and complex skill in mastering English. Considering observation in the class revealed that to able to write well, students indicated that they should have a lot of knowledge about language and about the world. Not to mention the numbers of exercises he/she should go through [25, p.94].

According to Alwasilah, writing is the most difficult skill to be acquired by students and to be taught by teachers. Writing skill becomes one of important skills that need to be mastered by the students. Mastering writing skill is a long process, so it is a long way to become a good writer. This assumption makes many people not fond of writing. They are afraid to express their feelings or opinions in written form. Since written language can be easily evaluated, people are scared that readers will find the mistakes they made in their writing. They underestimate their own writing skill even before they scratch anything.

Successful writing teaching is also based on teaching technique used by the teacher. Teaching technique is important to make students interested in learning writing, so they can master their writing. The teachers’ techniques to teach writing are important factors that may affect the students‘ writing ability. The students always write and read the material from the board or book. After doing the exercise in the book, they will get a quiz. Therefore English lesson is not attractive for the students. The researcher makes the conclusion that students need teaching technique which is more interesting. There are some kinds of techniques that can be applied by English teachers to develop their students’ writing ability. One of technique that can be used in teaching writing is Peer-assisted writing, a kind of technique of collaborative writing.

Scarcella states Peer-Assisted writing is a technique that emphasizes teachers' explicit instruction on both meaningful communication (such as content and organization) and specific features of the English language (such as grammar and mechanics). Many existing peer response writing activities, students are expected to proofread and edit each other's writing on their own without the teachers' intervention [26, p.52].

Topping defines Peer-assisted writing as most commonly form of Peer-assisted learning. Peer-assisted Learning (PAL) can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge and skill through active helping and supporting among companions who are matched or equal in status. It involves people from similar social groupings, who are not professional teachers, helping each other to learn and learning themselves by so doing. Based on explanation above, this technique allows the students to help each other, correct, and edit students‘ writing related to content, organizational patterns, grammatical structure and appropriate word choice without teacher‘s intervention. Another factor that also determines the success of teaching writing is the students’ creativity.

Creativity plays important role to produce a good and understandable writing. In this case, as stated by Franken, creativity is defined as a tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problem, communicating with others, and entertaining others and ourselves. Considering this situation, it probably happens to the student when the students are studying in the class. The students need any special stimulation to encourage their writing skills and to what extent they can improve their skill in writing. In the classroom, there are students who high creativity and low creativity. Their creativity can appear when they produce or apply something new such as writing activities [27, p.43].

According to Sternberg and Kaufman state that creativity is the activity to convey something new. In other words, creativity involves thinking that is aimed at producing ideas or products that relatively novel and that are, in some respect, compelling.