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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents and discusses background of the research, identification of the problem, limitation of the research, formulation of the research,
objective of the research, and significance of the research.
A. Background of the Research
As one of language skills taught, learnt, and specifically categorized as one of productive skills, writing is described as a skill including many exercises to develop
and not as a completely gifted skill.
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It means that the ability to write well can actually be achieved through many repetitions, trials and errors, and also
reinforcement. However, writing does not seem to be as easy as it is said. When we speak,
using our body movements or managing our voices may easily help us explain what we are intended to say. However, though we would like to say the same words we
produce orally, we need some practices in writing as we can only use some mechanisms, such as punctuation, word order, etc., to help us deliver what we
mean.
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Thus, our ability to use those mechanisms can be very important as we do not want our readers to misinterpret what we write.
In Indonesia, there are several types of writing that should be learnt by senior high students, such as, procedure, descriptive, narrative, recount, report, review,
news item, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, spoof, explanation, and discussion.
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It means that there are so many kinds of text that should be taught in senior high level. Specifically, from four types of text narrative, explanation,
review, and discussion taught in the third grade, discussion text is one of the types that should be learnt. Discussion text is a kind of texts that provides two contrastive
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Alan Meyers, Gateways to Academic Writing, New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2003, p. 2.
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James C. Raymond, Writing is an Unnatural Act, New York: Harper Row Publishers, Inc., 1980, p. 3.
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Standar Isi Untuk Satuan Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah: Standar Kompetensi dan Kompetensi Dasar SMAMA, Jakarta: BSNP, 2006, p. 126.
arguments about the topic and allows reader to have two contrastive viewpoints.
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Thus, readers will not be persuaded to be at one side before informed about another side.
However, discussion text is a difficult material to learn. The results of interview with the teacher showed that in writing discussion text
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, the first problem mentioned by the teacher was that the students sometimes had not yet been interested to find
out the data to support the arguments soon; they preferred talking and joking with their friends until the class ended. They argued that they were depressed while
working under pressure, and needed a lot of time to get the inspiration and the data needed. Those are why they found it hard to collect their work in the end of the
meeting. Thus, the teacher sometimes were sometimes hard to directly correct their work. Secondly, after the writing tasks became a homework, the teacher found that
the students had not yet put their best performance in their writing. They put little attention about what they wrote which led to some problems such as, grammatical
errors. It is true that they had not yet interested in writing because of its complexity. Thus, there were so many students that were hard to achieve Minimum Mastery
Criterion KKM made by the teacher. Lastly, the teacher said that it had been so hard when her students asked her to give them reasons for their score since she just
gave them the score without any comments or feedback. Moreover, she argued that it took a lot of time to give them comments to each work since she taught more than
three class a week. As a result, students became unmotivated since some of them felt like they were hard to have clear direction about how to write well, and some
others felt like their teacher had not yet found appropriate techniques to improve their skills.
Moreover, while doing pre-observation, findings showed that some students sitting in the first two front rows seriously did the test. However, those sitting in the
next rows should always be supervised. Besides of that, four students in the right corner preferred to play games on their smartphone than to do the test. Moreover,
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Th. M. Sudarwati and Eudia Grace, Look Ahead: An English Course for Senior High School Students Year XII, Jakarta: Penerbit Erlangga, 2007, p. 122.
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See Appendix 2.
five female students sitting in the third and fourth row near the door liked to chat during the test. Lastly, some students tended to do the test with their friends in group
rather than work individually. In conclusion, generally, they are diligent enough in doing the test though some of them really needed supervising.
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In addition, after conducting pre-action test, twenty students failed to meet the KKM.
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It means that students’ achievement in writing needed increasing. For all those findings, the writer considered that students’ writing skills should be
increased through appropriate techniques. As teacher said that she did not provide students revising activities, then
students did not have chance to enhance their writing. Thus, providing feedback is hoped that it may help students improve their skills. A study by Ferris also proved
that, in helping students enhance their writing skills, almost all students believe that teacher feedback is really helpful as it provides information related to their writing.
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However, giving feedback by putting comments to writing assignment is seemed to be so hard for the teacher since it is going to consume time as she teaches
more than two classes which consist of, at least, 30 students per each. Thus, teacher indirect feedback can be one of the solutions to solve the problems of, firstly, the
teacher as it takes less time, and of, secondly, students’ writing skills. To make it clear, some previous studies have proven the benefits of teacher
indirect feedback. For example, Lalande’s study shows that the number of students
from experimental group, who believes that the technique enhances their writing skill, is more than those of control group provided direct correction. Besides more
than fifty percent of the students in experimental group agree that revising their writing increase their writing skills.
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Moreover, Chandler’s study, using the terms of “Correcting” as direct correction and “Underlining” as indirect correction, shows
that indirect correction is useful to improve more to students’ accuracy, benefits
teacher for the time to provide feedback, and makes students be more engaged in
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See Appendix 4
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See Appendix 5
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Dana R. Ferris, Student Reactions to Teacher Response in Multiple-Draft Composition Classrooms, TESOL QUARTERLY, 291, 1995, p. 46.
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J. F. Lalande, Reducing composition errors: An experiment, Modern Language Journal, 662, 1982, p. 145.
learning.
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Lastly, the study, conducted by Ferris as cited in Purnawarman shows that
students’ success in revising their essays is greatly influenced by the feedback indirectly given by the teacher.
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Based on the preceding studies above, the writer believed that teacher indirect feedback could help students solve the problems in writing discussion text. Thus,
from all the explanation above, the writer conducted research on the title: Improving Students Discussion Text Writing Skills through Teacher Indirect Feedback
Technique.
B. Identification of the Problem
