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their summary, using no bullets in their compositions, using right pronoun, making introduction paragraph and creating body paragraphs.
4.2 Solutions to Overcome the Students’ Problems
Based on the classroom observations and the interviews with both the teacher and the students, it was found out that the teacher and the students
employed several ways to cope with the students’ problems in order to improve the students’ writing ability. They were teacher’s self-initiated solutions, student’s
self-initiated solutions, and students’ peer-feedback.
4.2.1 Teacher’s self-initiated solutions
In line with Nation 2009: 139, the teacher did several ways to solve the students’ problems. She gave different feedbacks. She sometimes gave feedback
to individuals, to small groups, or to the whole class in written and spoken forms.
4.2.1.1 Written feedback
The teacher gave the students different written feedbacks. Nation 2009: 137 says that positive feedback on the content of the learner’s writings can do a lot to
increase the amount of writing that learners do and to improve their attitude to writing.
She sometimes gave feedback to individuals by correcting their works, to small groups when there were group works, or to the whole class when she
corrected the students’ writing written on the white board, especially where there
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are common problems in the class, feedback to the whole class can save a lot of time.
The activities above were seen in the classroom observations. The teacher did those activities alternatively during the observations.
Since the students had common weaknesses and strength in their writing, the teacher used written report that was handed out to the class. It was an efficient
way of giving feedback. The report could detail what the best pieces of writing were like, what the common errors and weaknesses were, and what to do about
them. Nation 2009: 140 defines that the teacher may also make individyal written comments on each piece of writing but these need not to be so extensive if
they are accompanied by a class handout. The sheet also provides a useful record that can be looked at again by the
teacher for later pieces of writing or for other times to see if the strengths and weaknesses are the same or have changed.
4.2.1.2 Spoken feedback
Nation 2009: 140-141 states that a very effective way to give feedback on writing is to get permission of two or three students to put their pieces of
writing on the overhead projector transparency and then go through them orally with the whole class. In effect, the students watch the teacher when she marks a
piece of work and this can help the students see what the teacher is looking for and what the teacher values in a piece of writing. The teacher can also ask the
students to comment and can interact with them on points in the piece of writing.
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This obviously has to be done tactfully and with praise for the writing playing a large part in the commentary. The name of writer could be kept
confidential, but this is unlikely to be successful in a small class where students know each other reasonably well.
Besides, when monitoring students’ works both individual and group works in the class, the teacher also gave spoken feedback to the students. Spoken
feedback works more when the teacher gave feedback to the whole class. While being given the feedback, the students always paid full attention to the teacher’s
explanation. It is worth remembering that when the good points and bad points are
mentioned, it is better to end with the good points so that the writer is left with a positive feeling about a piece of writing.
4.2.2 Student’s self-initiated solutions
