indirect feedback in writing
DESCRIPTION
using indirect feedback in correcting student writingTRANSCRIPT
USING INDIRECT FEEDBACK IN CORRECTINGSTUDENT WRITING
PAPER
Submitted as a partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Strata One (S1)Degree at the English
By:Seng Rianto
06040142
ENGLISH DEPARTEMENTCOLLEGE OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
2010
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A .Background of the Problem
Nowadays, in modern society, English becomes more important as a tool of
communication. English as a global language sets the important role in teaching English at
school from elementary school until senior high school and even in university. From these facts,
students are not only expected to speak English fluently but they also have to be able to fulfill
four language skills; speaking, writing, reading, and listening. These four skills are integrated
and related to each other.
Based on KTSP, all skills in teaching and learning English that are integrated each other
must be learnt and taught by students and teacher, including writing skill. Writing will help
students mastering the other skills and of course in mastery English completely. The students are
sometimes afraid and shy to speak what they want to say but they can tell what they think and
what they want to say into draft or writing before speaking. Thus, if students are having problem
in expressing an idea, he/she can write it down. Then, student itself or possibly the reader will
understand it.
There are still some teachers who haven’t given their attention on this case completely. If
teacher want to help the students to be a good writer in English, he / she must be able to teach
writing effectively in the classroom. Teaching writing is always related to how to give feedback
directly or indirectly on writing in a good way, especially by the teacher.
Roger (2001) tells that some feedback from teacher serves unhelpful feedback to student
they are too generalized or unclear, subjective and focused on some aspect of performance that
make the students cannot change. That is why giving feedback to students’ writing is important
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skill that is seldom taught. Through feedback, we can help students compare their own
performance with the ideal and to diagnose their own strength and weaknesses.
B.Limitation of the Problem
There are so many Assessment that can be used by the teacher in teaching writing ,
for example: Self correction, pair correction, Interactive, direct feedback., Indirect Feedback
and others assessment.
Based on the background above, the limitation of the problem in this paper is limited
in using Indirect feedback to develop senior high school students writing ability in
reproducing a descriptive text.
C .Formulation of Problem
The problem can be formulated in the following question “How to use teacher’s
indirect feedback to improve student ability at senior high school.
D.The Significance of papers
For teacher, this paper could be a valuable contribution in how to correct students’
writing using teacher’s indirect feedback. Meanwhile For students, is hoped to be able to
correct their own writing independently.
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CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
A. Nature Writing
1. Definition of writing
Writing is one of important skills that language learners need to learn as an
essential component not only for their academic practice but also later in their
professional life. Teaching or learning how to write successfully gets even more
complicated and challenged for both language teachers and students. However, many
teachers agree that in the classroom, writing should get much attention as reading,
speaking and listening. Yet many teacher and students alike consider writing to be most
difficult subject of language skill to learn. ( Hasyim, 2002).
The teaching of writing is a matter of prescribing a set of predetermined tasks or
exercises to the students. When teachers teach writing course not only teach about how to
develop ideas in writing, but also need a serious attention of how to write English
sentences grammatically and systematically. So, teaching writing will be good if depends
on the teachers' ability how to teach writing effectively which can make the students’
ability being improved.
According to Lee (2005), in improving the effectiveness of writing, there are
some important notes must be noticed in teaching writing and assessment. In teaching
writing, the teaching should engage students in peer /self-evaluation. When they apply
the criteria, they become better informed about the requirements of good writing (for
specific genres) and Provide students with a language for discussing their writing. In
assessing writing, teacher should respond to writing based on criteria that have been
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communicated and taught to students and responses to errors. To respond the error
teacher can use a feedback that contains specific criteria for the writing task and criteria
that have been taught and communicated to the learners.
2. Writing process
Gardner and Johnson (1997) describe the stages of the writing process:
"Writing is a fluid process created by writers as they work. Accomplished writers move
back and forth between the stages of the process, both consciously and unconsciously.
Young writers, however, benefit from the structure and security of following the writing
process in their writing”. Additionally, as Campbell points out, "there is no single writing
process" (1998), there are three basic stages writers go through: prewriting, drafting, and
revising.
Besides, three basic stages in writing also delivered by Ron White (1987) states
that the stages of writing process consists of planning, drafting, and revising. Planning is
a series of strategies designed to find and produce information in writing planning is any
orderly procedure used to bring about a desire result. In this stage, the author/writer just
builds basic of a topic that should depends on the writer/author’s knowledge, ideas and
experiences.
Drafting is a series strategy designed to organize and develop a sustained piece of
writing. In here, the writer can explore and improve his/her idea. This stage also
concentrates to the content tan punctuation, grammar, or spelling. Revising is a series of
strategies designed to re-examine and re-evaluate the choices that have created a piece of
writing. The revising always comes up after giving feedback to the writing. The feedback
is important to tell which the words/sentence should be changed or need correction.
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Revising writing can be started by making decisions about how you want to improve your
writing, looking at your writing from a different point of view, and picking places where
your writing could be clearer, more interesting, more informative and more convincing to
the reader.
Appelebe in Mappe (2000) states more complete stages, that “there are different
views on the stages that the writers go through in producing a piece of writing, but a
typically through model identifies four stages: pre-writing, drafting, revising and
editing”.
The description of each stage is shown as follows:
1 Pre-writing
In this stage, students involve the activities, such as reading, brainstorming, mind
mapping, discussing, fast writing, questioning, interviewing, encourage them before they
write their sentences in the first draft. A typical pre-writing activity in the process approach
would be for learners to brainstorm on the topic being provided. By this way, students
would get motivation to write because they feel that they have something matter to say.
(Richard & White in Mappe, 2000).
2 Drafting
In this stage, students would select among ideas during pre-writing and structure.
The result of brainstorming session to provide a plan of description of topic. The content
might be written without considering the grammatical aspect first.
3 Revising
In this stage, the students review a draft to check content and organization based
on the feedback from him or herself and teacher or peers. Biaael in Mappe (2000)
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emphasizes that revision is a process in which writers not only polish their style, but also
develop their ideas. In this stage, the teacher help the students through the revision to
shape and reshape the text into final form, and it’s focused more on audience, mood,
voice, length, clarity, completeness and consciousness.
4 Editing
This is where the role of teacher in giving indirect feedback will be applied. In this
stage, the students check their final text for some mistakes they have made based on the
feedback given, such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, and all presentation. Shih in
Mappe (2000) classifies three stages of editing for grammar: editing at discourse level,
sentences level and word level”.
Editing at discourse level is meant the writer needs to make changes in one
sentence, such as making the subject plural instead of singular. Editing at sentence level is
to find out the errors in sentences, such as: phrase, clause and sentence pattern. Editing at
word level, editing morphological errors require checking to see that affixes and
grammatical function words, such as: auxiliary verb, articles and preposition correct. The
writer needs to focus his/her special attention on the ends of words in order to catch the
missing of an incorrect ending: s/es, d/ed, -ing as well an awareness of different points of
view.
B. Feedback
1. Definition of feedback
One of the ways to make students be able to create good writing is the teacher
should provide constructive feedback to their writing. In this section, the writer wants to
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explain what kind of feedback that important to students’ writing, the advantages and
disadvantages of the feedback itself.
Feedback is kind of assessment that concern to the giving information about
students’ writing performance. Ur (1996) says that “in the context of teaching general,
feedback is information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of the
learning task, usually with the objective of improving their performance”.
In addition, Roger (2001) says “Feedback is not just about weaknesses. Student
will respond if teachers are encouraging as well as allowing mistakes, emerging
capabilities, and give ideas for directing further learning”. From these definitions, it is
clear that feedback is very useful in teaching and learning process, besides students will
learn how to evaluate their self (self-evaluate), it also help students to take greater
confidence of their learning and increasing the students’ performance.
In providing feedback, teacher should encourage students to continue writing, in
order students feel good with their writing and carry the activity through completion
(Grabe and Kaplan). So, in process writing teacher must motivate students to do more
toward their writing.
2. Type’s of teacher’s feedback
Feedback consists of some types. One of them is teacher’s feedback/correction.
Feedback from teacher on the students’ writing could play a vital role especially in
teaching process. In this case, teacher recognizes that teachers’ feedback is essential
element in helping students improve, and an essential part of the teaching process
(Anderson, 1982). It indicates that under teacher’s feedback, students will know the
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appropriate of the language feature for their composition, how their composition should
be arranged and their composition will be better.
There are two kinds of teacher’s feedback; they are direct and indirect feedback.
Direct feedback is a technique of correcting students’ error by giving explicit written
feedback. While, indirect feedback is when the teacher/tutor alerts students to error using
general comments, but gives students the opportunity to fix errors themselves Ferris,
(2002 ). Lee (2005) defines Direct feedback is provided when the correct form is written
on student’s paper whereas indirect feedback is provided if the teacher indicates the
location of the error indirectly on the paper by underlining, highlighting or circling, or
indirectly by indicating in the margins that there is an error on that line but without
providing the correct form.
3. Direct feedback Vs indirect feedback
Although there are some types of feedback, there must be the difference when
using direct or indirect feedback on students’ writing. Frodesen (2001) says that indirect
feedback is more useful than direct feedback. Students are able to express their ideas
more clearly in writing and to get clarification on any comments that teachers have made.
Similarly, Fulgor (2006) states that in indirect feedback, students appreciated its
beneficial effect on their learning and direct feedback to be more helpful when revising
syntax and vocabulary, whereas they felt that indirect feedback was useful in encouraging
them to reflect on aspects of their writing and to develop improvements.
Moreover, some research evidences suggest that indirect feedback is more helpful
on students’ long-term writing development than direct feedback (Ferris, 2002). The
results showed that indirect feedback with student self-editing contributes to accuracy
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more than direct feedback. Others have reported that indirect feedback may be more
beneficial to students than direct feedback in editing, because indirect feedback can guide
learning and help the students solve problem by themselves (Lalande, 1982).
From those statements, the writer believes that indirect feedback will be more
increasing the students’ ability in writing and students who get indirect feedback will be
preserved in his/her brain in a long time. While, direct feedback will be kept in their mind
in a short time. If the students are only provided by direct feedback, the student will not
have opportunity to reflect and correct the errors for themselves; they only note the note
of the errors from the teacher.
To make indirect feedback is more effective, Lee (2004) state that indirect
feedback can be done by a symbol representing a specific kind of error (T=verb tense,
Sp=spelling) and to reduce student confusion, teachers can consistently use a standard set
of symbols or markings to indicate place and type of error and train the students in what
kinds of corrections to make based on each symbol. Furthermore, teachers should
familiarize students with the system so they will not be surprised when new symbols are
occurred.
Hasyim (2002) gives the symbols or code that can be used to indicate error in
indirect feedback can be seen as follows:
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Table 1 Correction codes used to indicate error types in indirect feedback
No Code Meaning Kinds of errors
1 WC Word choiceThe words are inapplicable with the
sentences/ meaning
2 PREP Preposition Wrong preposition
3 VT verb tense or GR = more
general grammar problemsWrong tense/ use another tense
4 S/V A subject verb agreement subject and verb don’t agree
5 SP spelling errorWrong spelling/punctuation your
spelling
6 ART ArticleUse article a, an or the for singular
noun
7 N.P new paragraph Unorganized paragraph
8 ^ missing word There is a missing word need to insert
9 ? question mark) unclear
meaning
I can’t understand this. The meaning is
not clear. Write in another way to
make the meaning clearer.
10 Good Good idea, good detailYou have something good here: a good
word, idea, detail, etc
11 WO word orderthe words in this sentence are in the
wrong order
12 NN Not Necessary Word The word is not necessary
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C.The role of teacher in providing indirect feedback to Students’ writing
The students cannot write alone and writing also not only a single step but a process. To
pass the process , they need guidance, supporter to make their writing better. Therefore, they
need someone to check about the mistake that they made. It could be from teacher or peer
because writing usually involves one person for another to help them in expressing their ideas in
writing form. Even though peers feedback is more advantageous, the teacher’s feedback is
eventually needed to provide a whole class impression before they are engaged in an individual
writing as practice. Here, teacher can be as describer when he/she gives feedback. But before
that, teacher should be a reader and as advisor for them.
The patterns of feedback and responses given by the writing teacher depend very much
on the teacher’s conception of the composing process and his/her understanding of learner’s
errors. Teachers may, on the one hand, present themselves as helpful facilitators offering support
and guidance; on the other hand, they may act as an authority imposing critical judgment on
writing products, Ferris ( 2002).
Teachers can offer self–correction opportunity for their students by providing indirect
feedback on student’s grammatical errors ,Chandler ( 2003 ). The assistance and feedback given
by the teacher should not be confined to the last stage of the writing process. The marking of
products should always open more opportunities in which students can redraft their work. By
depriving them of their opportunity for redrafting and reassessing, the students cannot have the
chance of correcting the wrong behavior and re-practicing the correct behavior.
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In addition, students are able to express their ideas more clearly in writing and to get
clarification on any comments indirectly that teachers have made to their writing, because here
the teacher as advisor that can help them to improve their writing
D .Procedure of giving indirect feedback on students’ writing
The procedure in application of indirect feedback as follows:
1. Teacher explained about the descriptive text in general and explains the codec error that
was given in their composition.
2. Students draft and ‘monitor’ their texts
3. Students write their composition
4. Teacher responded by giving feedback of all aspects but more concentrate on the body of
text in area of language use and organization .
5. Teacher used indirect feedback to correct students’ composition,
6. After the teacher give feedback to students, the students rewrote their compositions and
corrected their own mistakes.
7. The teacher provided grade and praise to students’ final draft.
D. The Assessment Technique of Students’ Writing
In assessing the students’ writing Quality, Jacob (1981) suggests five components or
criteria to evaluate the students’ writing quality: content, organization, vocabulary, language use
(grammar) and mechanics.
Content of Writing must be knowledgeable, substantive, , relevant to assigned topic.
Organization of Writing must be fluent expression, idea clearly stated/supported, well-
organized, logical sequencing, . Vocabulary of Writing must be sophisticated range, effective
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word/idiom choice, and usage, word form mastery, and appropriate register. Language use
(grammar) in writing activity, the students will create the sentences based on their ideas and the
words in the sentences must be arranged grammatically which deals with tenses and agreement.
The last is Mechanics of Writing which consists of Spelling and Punctuation (Capital letter,
Period {.}, Question mark {?}, Exclamation mark {!}, Comma {,}, semi colon {;}, Apostrophe
{‘}).
E. EVALUATION
In evaluating the students’ writing the researcher used the ESL composition profile proposed by
Holly Jacobs, et al (1981), in which the evaluation of writing consist of four component but the
writer only focused on two component of writing, they are language use and organization. Here
are the criteria of ESL composition:
Aspect of Writing Criteria
Organization and
Language use(grammar)
1 Excellent to Very good ; fluent
expression, ideas clearly stated/ supported,
, well organized, logical sequencing and
few error in
grammar ,punctuation,article ,pronoun and
preposition.
2. Good to average; several errors in
grammar, punctuation , article .loosely
organized but main ideas still stand out.
3. Fair to poor; no fluent, ideas confused or
disconnected lacks logical sequencing and
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development , frequent errors of negation,
agreement, tense, number, word
order/function, article, pronoun,Preposition.
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CHAPTER III
DISCUSSION
In this chapter the writer discusses how to improve students’ writing ability by using
assessment of Teacher’s indirect feedback. The teacher starts the learning process by giving
students copies of model text. Then the teacher instructs students to learn the model of text. After
that, teacher asks students to discuss about the generic structure and language feature of the
model text.
In discussing about introduction, the teacher asks the students’ opinion about the pattern
of descriptive text. Here students give the respond to teacher’s command by delivering what they
read in the text. They mention that the generic structure which provided in the text consists of
orientation, description, and re-orientation/conclusion. After that, the teacher explained what
should be written in each part of descriptive text.
Teacher explains to the students that in descriptive text, the subject of writing could be
ordinary or extraordinary. It means that they have to make it as interesting as possible by
emphasizing what makes it interesting or new and unusual. The teacher continues the
explanation about the organization. The teacher tells them, when they want to create a clear
pattern of descriptive text, the introduction should be started from general to specific description
It has several paragraphs that is developed and described the topic and then in conclusion, The
teacher also notices them that they can use their sense to describe the subject.
After discussing about the characteristic of descriptive text, the teacher then explains the
language feature in descriptive text. in discussing language feature, teacher asks some students to
identify and show what these that the text model use, for example the teacher says “can you tell
me what tense does the text use?” some students respond by saying “simple continuous tense”,
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“passive voice present” and other students say “simple present tense”. After that, teacher clarifies
the wrong answer by showing the sentences taken from text and teacher himself. Teacher say “if
you want to describe about something or the person activity or condition in the present, you have
to use simple present tense and the characteristic where Do, Does, V1, Vs/es, to be”. The teacher
also gives some related example (he eats banana every day, I go to the market every Sunday, he
goes shopping twice a week) and the adverb frequency (sometimes, usually, always, never, etc).
After discussing about the organization and language feature of descriptive text and also
give them the model text, the teacher asks students to write a descriptive text. Some topics are
prepared by the teacher, such as “my favorite thing”, “the most important person in my life”, and
“my favorite place”. Their composition consists of 3 or more paragraphs and each paragraph can
consists of 3-4 sentences. Then the teacher explains kinds of feedback will be used. In here, the
teacher explains what indirect feedback is, the function of indirect feedback , and how later the
teacher will give indirect feedback to their writing then The teacher explains about each symbols
are used in part of language use and tell them in part organization the teacher will comment the
introduction, description and conclusion. So the students can correct their writing and add their
knowledge.
The teacher takes note about students’ questions, their strength and their weaknesses
during the process. After explanation of the material to the students, the teacher asks them to
write their composition about the topic they have chosen before,
The teacher monitors the process during students composing and the teacher sometimes
helps them when they have problem with the vocabularies or words in English. The teacher
collects the student composition and chooses one of them and the teacher asks one of the
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students to write down his /her writing in front of class and discusses it together by using indirect
feedback like below.
My brother
I have brother.(PUNC) But one that I’m very(NN)like. He have name is Ramadhan (S/VA).
He is policeman.. He live (S/VA) in jl. Ir. Soekarno number 42T . he is the most important
person in my life because he that(NN) always to(NN) pay me to school. He already have (S/VA)
family now.
He have (S/VA) one boy . He very (WO) like (S/VA) to play by her boy . Bedidest(SP) he also
like ( S/VA) sports . Sports that he likes is badminton, football and table tennis ( GR). Although he
often sports (WC) but her person very biggest and fat (GR) . He don’t(S/VA) like if see peoples (WC)
that always to(NN) play dice(PUNC) he always (NN) teach( S/V)A me about lessons, that I don’t know.
So(PUNC) he don’t(S/VA) like if I don’t go to school one day. His always angry to me about
it(?????).
From the example above ,the writer can correct some mistakes by giving a code that is made by
student and ask the student to recheck their composition . Finally the teacher give score to the
student writing
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BAB IV
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A .Conclusion
Based on the discussion, it can be said that the implementation of teacher’s indirect
feedback in assesing writing can improve students’ writing quality. It can be seen on students’
progress during the process. In the first draft, the students started to make a composition by using
descriptive text pattern and they produced disorder organization and lack in language use
although they had been taught about the generic structure and the language feature of the text.
And they started to write a composition by using descriptive text. In here they were already able
to produce good organization after the teacher gave them indirect feedback that showed their
problem in writing, even tough, they were still lack in language use aspect. Then, they were
taught about the language use more intensively and the result is in the third draft, students had
produced good organization and correct language use. This result shows that the students did
improve in their practices.
B .Suggestion
After conducting this paper, the writer offers several suggestions for further writer as
follow:
1. For the next researcher who wants to conduct the same design, may conduct the study in
the same level by using different kind of feedback. The researcher also may take the other
aspect of writing of descriptive text because this study is focused on organization and
language use aspect of writing.
2. The next researcher who wants to take the same approach for the same level, she/ he may
take other kinds of genre because in this study, the focus is descriptive text.
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3. For teacher, especially teachers of senior high school, it is better for them to apply
indirect feedback in assessing teaching writing.
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REFERENCES
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Chandler, J. (2003). The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in the accuracy and fluency of L2student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(3), 267-296.
Dunsford, Deborah W. 2006. Feedback Follow up: The Influence of Teacher Comment on Student Writing Assignments. NACTA Journal June 2006. Retrieved on April 28th, 2010, www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa/
Ferris, D. R. (2002). Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press.
Fregeau, L. A. (1999). Preparing ESL students for college writing: Two case studies. The Internet TESL Journal [On-line], 5 (10). Retrived on June 5th, 2010 Available: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Fregeau-CollegeWriting.html
Frodesen, J. (2001). Grammar in writing. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.) (pp.233-248). Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle.
Gordon William, J. 2003. Providing Feedback on ESL Students’ Assigment.Okayama, Japan.
Grabe, William & Robbert B. Kaplan. 1996. Theory and practice of Writing. United States of America. Addison Wesley Longman.
Hasyim. 2001. The Effect Of Teacher’s Correction Toward Students’ Writing Ability. Unpublished Thesis UNP
Hopkin, D. 1993. A Teacher Guide Classroom Research. Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Jacob and Heaton. 1981. Testing ESL composition Profile: A Practical Approach. Rowley MA. New Bury House.
Kepner, C. G. (1991). An experiment in the relationship of types of written feedback to the development of second-language writing skills. Modern Language Journal, 75(3), 305-313.
Lalande, J. F. (1982). Reducing composition errors: An experiment. Modern Language Journal, 66(1), 140-149.
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Lee, Icy. 2005. Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teacher Feedback in the Secondary Writing Classroom. Chinese University of HongKong. Retrieved on July 8th, 2010. http://sba.edu.hku.hk/new_sba/doc/conference_ppt/Dr%20Icy%20Lee.ppt.
Mappe, Syahrir. 2000. A Comparative Study of the Teaching of Writing to Indonesian University Students under Two Instructional Modes. Singapore: Dissertation. SEAMEO Regional Language centre.
Nunan, D. 1988. The Learner-centred Curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roger, Jenny. 2001. In Adults Learning; Buckingham: Open University Press (online). Retrieved on June, 23 2010. www.findarticles.com/ articles/feedback/.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Alhamdulillah, praise to ALLAH SWT because of the mercy the writer can finish this
paper with the title “ Using Indirect Feedback In Correcting Student’sWriting ”. It’s written to
fulfill one requirement to get “Sarjana” Degree in English teaching at the English Department .
The writer would like the deepest gratitude to the advisor Shanti Octavia S.PD for her
enormously valuable inputs, comments, and guidance for the writer to finish this paper. Also,
thanks to as my academic advisor for her suggestion and advice during the study. Then, thanks
to as the chairman of English Department. Finally, thanks to all of the lecturers who taught and
gives me advice and suggestion during the study at
The writer further would like to express her grateful thanks to all of friends who have
supported him in completing this paper. His sincere gratitude addressed to my parents, my
beloved brother and sisters who have sacrificed for my success in finishing this paper.
Finally, the writer is sure that the paper is not perfect yet. It still has much weakness in
substantial material technical writing and other aspects of writing. Therefore he invites some
critics and suggestion from the reader.
, 10 August 2010
Writer
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