Information Transfer Technique in Teaching Writing

Writing is one of the language skills that plays important role in human communication. It is used to communicate with other people in society and also to express our opinion in writing form. The teaching of writing requires the students to write accurately. Have a good competence in English does not only mean to be fluent speakers of the language, as many people have in mind but in writing as well; a lot of varieties of occupations require skilled people in English both in speaking and writing. There are some factors that influence the students' ability to write; they are the vocabulary, the interesting topics were given the interest of students in learning writing such as picture, map, graphic, etc and the time to teach writing in English course or inappropriate technique. Among these factors, technique is an important factor that should be given a special attention because by applying a good technique, the students can improve their ability to organize their ideas into a good writing. This research is intended to find out the improvement of the students' writing ability by using Information Transfer Technique at first semester students' of Muhammadiyah University of Makassar. The method will use a Pre-Experimental research with the one group pretest and posttest design. The sample is only one class that consisted of 40 students which were selected by using Purposive sampling technique. The data were obtained through writing test.

According to Palmer (1994:15), Information Transfer is an activity that reproduces either from a full linguistic form into diagrammatic or semi diagrammatic form, or vice versa during the transfer activity, the information remains the same, but the form of information changes for instance, from nonlinguistic form to linguistic form.
For those, we must think the word 'transfer' directly. The word of transfer means change position or made from one position to another. So, information transfer is an activity reproduction from one form into another form. In addition, Short, et al. (1977:144) state that Information Transfer technique is the transformation of instances discourses from one type into another but these instances of discourse can also be derived from a non-verbal mode of communicating." It is different from Nation in Husain (1994:15)  Furthermore, information transfer exercise can also be used productively, that is the learners look at the diagram or table and then they use it as basic of writing.
In this research, the writer will apply productive skill during teaching and learning writing by using information transfer. It requires students to develop ideas or thoughts and it can reinforce their grammatical structure, idiom and vocabulary so that the students can improve their ability to organize and formulate ideas into a good writing.
c. The Advantages of Using Information Transfer Technique Palmer (1991:52) gives some advantages of information transfer technique as follows: 1) It can give variety of teaching technique including four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
2) It can be used from very wide range of texts.
3) It can be arranged or organize easily that develops learners' ability to organize information.
It is clear that writing by using information transfer technique is more interesting and easier to be taught for students. And it can motivate and stimulate the students in learning English writing.
Writing is one way to recognize our ideas and help us to absorb and process information that can be transferred for the others. Bell and Burnaby in Nadwiah e. Write on a subject makes us be active learners rather than passive learners of information.
Raimes (1983:3) also states some reasons about the importance of writing.
According to him, Writing is used to help the students in learning process. The reasons for that are as follows: a. Writing reinforces the grammatical structure idiom and vocabulary that have been taught to the students.
b. When students write, they also have a chance to adventure with the language, to go beyond what they have learned to say, to take risks.
c. When the students write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language to express ideas or thinking in paper. Organization (judgment skills) is the ability to write in an appropriate manner for particular purpose with a particular audience in mind together with ability to select, organize and order relevant information. In organization, the writing concerns in the ways of writer to arrange and organize the ideas or the messages in the writing.

Kinds of writing
According to Heaton (1974:138) that judgment skills or organization is the ability of writer to write in an appropriate manner for a particular purpose with a particular audience in mind, also to select, organize and order relevant information. Organization of writing concern with the ways, the writer arranges and organizes the ideas or messages in the writing. It could be chronological order, order of importance, general to particular order, particular to general order.

c. Language use ( Grammar )
Language use is the ability to write correct and appropriate sentences.
Grammar plays important roles in the writing. It govern utterances that we produce to be right and orderly. It concerns with tenses, preposition, conjunction, clause (adjective or adverb) and articles.
According to Thomas (2000:21), grammar means the rule which structure our language. In this part also the writer should care about vocabulary.

d. Vocabulary
Vocabulary (stylistic skills) is the ability to manipulate sentences and paragraphs and use language effectively. They should express their ideas in the form of word that is understood by others.
It is clear now that people cannot write and express their idea if they do not have vocabulary. Therefore, they cannot understand the writing passage without having a lot of vocabulary (Mark, 2007:70).

e. Mechanics
Mechanical skills is the ability to use correctly those conventions peculiar to the written language. The use of mechanics is due to capitalization, punctuation and spelling appropriately. This aspect is very important since it leads readers to understand or recognized immediately what the writer means to express definitely. The use of favorable mechanics in writing will make reader easy to understand the conveying ideas other message sated in the writing (Thomas, 2000:23 This is similar to writing to reinforcement, but writing for training rather the purposes of training in initially presents with patterns of linguistics and theoretical that might be new to them and gives them practice in using and manipulating these new patterns.

c. Writing for imitation
The purpose is to make the students familiar with theoretical and second language classrooms use model of content or form as stimulus for writing, their pedagogical purpose differs from that of using writing for reinforcement or for training syntactic form by following carefully chosen models.

d. Writing for communication
The main purpose is to make the students to write in the essential element of writing communication is; of course, there is feedback from the readers.

e. Writing for fluency
Writing assigned for the purpose of developing fluency than demonstrating accuracy f. Writing for learning The purpose is comprehensive enough to include the other purpose in it.
When writing for the purpose of learning, it provides the framework for teaching.