Students were motivated to be better writers

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b. Students felt comfortable with the use of symbol feedback

Symbol feedback was simple as it could help the students found the clues directly. Symbol feedback was easy to understand because the students only read their papers and corrected the errors based on the symbols given. When they forgot about the meaning of the symbols, they could see the meaning on their notes. When they found the meaning of these symbols, they could find the clues how to correct the errors. Students did not have any difficulty in finding the meaning of symbol feedback because the teacher explained the meaning of those symbols at the beginning of the class. Therefore, the students could learn the meaning of those symbols from their knowledge, experiences, or by analyzing the sentences. According to Chandler 2003 as cited in Erel 2007, “Students want error feedback and think that it helps them improve their writing skills in the target language ”p.398. This statement showed that the students really needed error feedback because they believed that they could improve their skills by dealing with it. When the students said they wanted a certain kind of feedback, it meant that they found this kind of feedback was useful and they must feel comfortable with it. From the interview, 66 students showed their pleasure in dealing with symbol feedback. Students found symbol feedback as a simple feedback which was easy to be corrected and regarded it as teacher‟s care as they believed that the teacher read their writing carefully : Extract 13 Ema “Symbol feedback is good, I think symbol feedback is easier to be corrected. Yes, I think it is just not complicated because the teacher gives the clues, so I can correct it directly.” 26 Extract 14 Mela “I’m very happy when I find there are some teachers use symbol feedback in here. I think native teachers like using symbol feedback, that’s why I take native teacher in writing class so I can find symbol feedback on it.” “I like symbol feedback, especially when I find many symbols on my writing. It seems like my teacher cares with my writing.” These statements showed that the students felt comfortable with the use of symbol feedback. The students liked symbol feedback because it was simple, practical, and easy to understand. Moreover, a student took a class with a certain teacher in order to get symbol feedback as the student thought that it was important for her. This response represented how good symbol feedback was as the students really wanted to deal with it. There was previous study by Chandler 2003 as cited in Erel 2007 which found that students wanted error feedback and thought that it could improve their writing skill in the target language p.398. It meant that the students liked learning from their mistakes and believed that it could be an effective way to write better. If students wanted a certain kind of feedback, it meant that the students felt comfortable with the use of this feedback. Therefore, it was found that the students felt comfortable with the use of symbol feedback.

c. Students had negative feelings toward the use of symbol feedback

Symbol feedback could not only motivate the students from its strengths, as if simple, easy to understand, and other things that made the students really felt comfortable with it. On the contrary, symbol feedback also had negative side. According to Mahfoodh 2011, “The students expressed some negative affective reactions toward their teachers‟ feedback. The students‟ negative reactions included „dislike‟, „disappointed‟ and „surprised‟p.18. Mahfoodh 27 2011 also found that the students feel frustrated when they find their drafts full of error marking p.21. Based on the interview, 6 from 18 33 students said that symbol feedback could make them down. The word down here meant that the students felt disappointed with themselves. They judge themselves that they were not good enough in writing. However, this feeling was not their problems, even it encouraged them to improve their writing. Some of the students found symbol feedback could make them disappointed with themselves. Surprisingly this feeling could motivate them to write better : Extract 15 Rena “When I see many symbols in my paper, I feel so disappointed because I make so many mistakes. Actually it makes me feel that my writing is not good, so next time I should delete all those symbols. I mean make my writing better, so there is no more symbols.” Extract 16 Stefani “I feel so disappointed because there are too many errors in my writing. So, I just disappointed with myself.” The statements showed that the students actually did not like to see any symbol in their papers, even the students who liked symbol feedback had the same feeling. The students needed symbol feedback, but when they received it, they wanted to clean it. That was the reason why symbol feedback could motivate the students to improve their writing through negative feeling. This finding was supported by Lee 2003 as cited in Cavana 2009 who stated, “Negative feedback does affect students‟ engagement and motivation”p.2. This statement gave clearer evidence that symbol feedback could motivate the students in dealing with any difficulty in writing since it was not only deliver positive feeling, but also through negative feeling. However, there was another finding by Mahfoodh 2011, who found that