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8. Teaching Writing Skills in Higher Education
Writing skill in the EFL settings was the most difficult skills in practice

(Hasani, 2016, Suriyanti & Yaacob, 2016). Students need not merely the linguistic
knowledge but also more than that knowledge. In EFL context, students faced

obstacles to write because of lack of structural knowledge, insufficient dictions,

limited vocabularies, and cultures (Lee, 2016, Alessio & Riley, 2002). Lack of
linguistics knowledge and cultural insight made students feel uneasy to shape and

create texts. Linguistics knowledge of English helps students to operate the
language into texts and the cultural insight of English is more helpful to see and

value the texts that students produce.
In English language program in higher education such as university, the

writing subject matter has been taught in different semesters. The writing subject

starts from second semester (writing 1) until advanced writing (writing 3) in the
fourth semester of English department in common Indonesian colleges in which

the level is labeled writing I, II, III, and academic writing. Some universities of

English undergraduate program use another terms for the writing levels such as
phrase writing, sentence writing, essay writing, and paragraph writing. Giving

various levels of English writing is done because the writing subject is assumed
the most difficult skill to teach. Writing skill is a developmental and flexible

process (Sharp, 2016: 77-78). Therefore, it needs the scaffolding instruction.
Writing is intertwined with mental processes and it contributes to develop

many skills such which it can help to extend students‘ thought, organize students‘

knowledge, use language, and improve mental dictionaries (Berk & Unal, 2017:
238). Writing is not more than just picking up a pen and writing a paragraph or an

essay from beginning to end. It should need a long process to be mastered. In
teaching writing skills in a university level from basic to advance level, there are

some general sub-skills involved in writing such as spelling, punctuation,
capitalization, grammar, and mechanic. Other writing sub-skills which usually

form part of later education processes are organizational features, such as sentence

and paragraph construction, link words such as ‗although‘, ‗nevertheless‘, and
such as cohesive devices like demonstrative pronoun and etc.

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