Symbols feedback helped the students find their weaknesses in writing
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learn from their mistakes to get better result. Since there was progress in their writing, the students deserved to get good marks as what they were expected. Based on the data, 90
students said that symbol feedback could help them get good grades. Students felt that symbol feedback helped them get better grade and it was very
important for them because they could achieve their expectations :
Extract 8 Ema
“Symbol feedback has an impact to my grades, it helps me get better and better grades, because
when I write something I try to be more careful to avoid the mistake. ”
Extract 9 Mela
“Symbol feedback can make my writing better, so I can get better grades. Yes, I think that’s the important point.”
These statements showed that the students understood the impact of symbol feedback to their grades. They felt that they could get better grades because they could improve their
writing. Based on the participants‟ experiences, symbol feedback was not only focus on grammar, but also on the idea and how to use the words and language appropriately. One of the
participants said that, “I received symbol feedback that identify wrong punctuation, idea, organization, and also word choice”. Therefore, there were many aspects that the students
needed to pay attention on in order to achieve their expectations. This result was supported by Nicole 2006 as cited in Wingate 2010 who thought that feedback which encouraged the
students do self-corrections enabled students ‟ goals and device action to achieve these
goals”p.529. If there were more efforts from the students, as it was experienced by the participants that they needed to pay attention on their writing liked grammar, word choice and
etc, it was believed that the students could minimize the errors and reach their expectations.
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Gibbs 2004 as cited in Murphy 2010 stated, “Feedback produces the most powerful
single effect on achievement”p.42. It meant that feedback influenced students‟ achievements in learning, but if I related it to the use of symbol feedback, I found that symbol feedback had
very big impact on the students‟ improvement as this feedback provided more aspects to be corrected. According to
Cavana 2009, “Feedback is a process that guides students to close the gap between their current and desired per
formance”p.2. When the students realized their current positions, in this case were their abilities in writing, then the students made a target
how much they needed to improve the quality of their writing. By using symbol feedback, all of the students had the same expectation that was to decrease the errors, so they could receive
the papers without any mark on it. Indirectly, this expectation could encourage the students to make their writing better as they wanted good grades.
Every student wanted to be able to write properly or to be better writer. They also wanted a good result so they could pass the subject and took the higher level of writing class.
In order to get good result, the students had to be able to write as good as they could and showed their improvement of their writing through the semester. This finding was similar with
the previous research by Erel 2007 who found that students who received indirect feedback perform better that the group with no feedback in self-editing the writing p.400. Other
previous research by Ferris 2000 as cited in Erel 2007 also found that students who received primarily indirect error feedback make fewer errors in subsequent writings than the students
who received mostly direct feedback p.400. Since symbol feedback could encourage the students to write better, it was believed that symbol feedback could help them achieve their
expectations. Therefore, they could identify the improvement of their writing and the results or grades after they received it.