Category: NCOLLT 1

Author:

Rahmad Hidayat, Fajar Susanto  (fajarsusanto@unipasby.ac.id)

Abstract:

The lack of reading and writing habit becomes common phenomena among English
department students in Indonesia. This leads them to face many difficulties to explore their
ideas to write in English. For the reason, the search of materials to increase writing skills
for students needs to be explored as means to encourage the students to write English.
Therefore, stimulating the students by giving alternative materials to develop their writing
is very important. This paper describes the use of popular literature as the alternative
material to trigger the students to develop their cognition to write critically in writing class.
As part of mass culture, popular literature has some benefits to be used as material in
teaching writing because it has specific characteristic that is widely favored or well liked by
many people. Different from serious fictions, popular literature hence offers pleasure for
students. Interestingly, there are various genres in popular literature such as adventure,
romance, science fiction, detective, and mystery, readily available in book stores. In
addition, there are many popular fictions adapted into film such as Harry Potter, The Lord
of the Rings, Twilight, and many more. The movies also can be used as supported materials
in teaching since they give many advantages for the education process. Using reader
response approach, students could learn to appreciate popular literary work and write their
reading critically. Critical writing will be a fun process since students could choose the
genre they want and develop it based on their interest. It is expected that the practice is able
to develop studentsÂ’ writing skill as well as their reading skill.

Keyword :

popular literature, critical writing, reader response approach

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