Students’ Perception on Student-Teacher Consultation

50 responses to the consultation. The result of the consultation encouraged the students to write the essay because they got more suggestions, opinion and information to improve the academic essay. Moreover, the consultation helped them to know what they should write on their academic essay. Students’ feeling when they were having the consultation will also influence how they interpreted the consultation process. As stated by Robbins 2001, the stimuli or situation from the environment also gave influences for their acceptance and feeling. The questionnaire showed that the students felt comfortable with the individual consultation in AEW class. By giving them chances to discuss their essay and to ask questions in order to improve and develop the ideas, the lecturer has created comfortable ambiance and made the students felt relax. Since the students felt comfortable, it would also influence their motivation to do their essay. Feedback from the lecturer has a big part of the students’ motivation in writing. As stated by Vygotsky 1978 as cited in Hyland 2003, students’ cognitive skill is enhanced through the guidance and response to the other expert or the lecturer. By consulting their essay, they could find a place to discuss and get ideas to help them write. In addition, the students could find their partner to exchange the ideas or information. As stated by Sokolik as cited in Nunan 2003, one of the principles of teaching writing is the students need to get helpful and meaningful feedback form the lecturer. It shows that the consultation could be the students’ and the teacher’s vehicle to learn and to teach. The researcher identified that the students needed to consult their essay to make sure whether their writing was getting better. Besides, they needed to be 51 appreciated since they have made a progress for their essay. It was strengthen by the interview and questionnaire. The students stated that they usually had some questions to be asked when they were having the consultation beside grammar or minimum requirements, such as the topic, the ideas, the thesis statements, the theories to support the essay and the organization of the idea and paragraph. Then, the students believed that through the consultation they could improve their writing proficiency, not only in minimum requirement but also in language usage, structure and grammar. As stated by Zimmermar and Rodrigues 1992, essay writing should be appropriate for the purpose, audience, content, organization of idea, sentence structure, word choice and information within it. The researcher concludes that the students had positive perception on consultation. There are some points that shows the influences of the students ’ positive perception, they are: a the students agreed that they were comfortable when they were having the individual consultation, b the students did the consultation more than once in a week in the classroom and outside the classroom, c the students believed that the consultation helped them to improve their essay, d the students were motivated to write their essay, and e the students believed that their writing proficiency was improved. As stated by Altman et al., 1985 perception is influenced by the stimuli. In this case, the stimuli came from the situation, the feelings, the lecturer’s 52 response, and the academic essay. Therefore, the students’ positive perception came from the situation when they were having the individual consultation, the information from the lecturer ’s feedback and the students’ academic essay.

2. The Influences of Student-Teacher Consultation on

Students’ Writing Proficiency Since the students had positive perception on student-teacher consultation in AEW course, it showed that the consultation gave positive influence for the students’ writing proficiency. As stated by Hyland 2003, writing is one of the skills in English language that indicates the ability to produce well-form sentences and draw a meaning of the writing. Meanwhile, student- teacher consultation is aimed to facilitate students to discuss and to solve their problems and difficulties in writing Harrison, 2004 Brown et al, 1996. It showed that student-teacher consultation helped the students to overcome their difficulties in writing. In order to write a good writing, the students and the lecturer should notice the criteria of writing proficiency. Hyland 2003 states it should include content of writing, structure of text, and language usage. Furthermore, Brown 2004 states that the criteria of writing proficiency are organization, the logic, development of ideas, grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics and style. It showed that the lecturer needs to lead the students to achieve those criteria to improve their writing proficiency. The consultation tends to clarify the written feedback from the lecturer by discussing about the stu dents’ problem in writing. As stated by Vygotskian 53 concept of scaffolding, feedback that is delivered through the dialogue between the teacher and the students can be used by the writer to develop hisher text and writing ability Williams, 2002 as cited in Hyland, 2006. This concept supported the implementation of consultation in writing class. The consultation was considered as an activity which supported the improvement of students’ writing proficiency. As stated by Tiedt 1989, consultation is an activity that is done by the teacher and the student in order to have a discussion and to get feedback to improve the students’ writing proficiency. The result shows that the students had chances to discuss so that they could improve their proficiency in writing. Based on the finding, the writing improvement which could be seen by the students are: a Language Usage As stated by Hyland 2003, language usage consists of language control, diction, the grammar, and the writing style. After analyzing the data, the researcher identified that more than 90 of the students improved their ability in grammar and diction. Thus, the researcher focused on the improvement of grammar and diction. “Grammar is the total structural system of a language that enables native speakers to communicate meaning” Tiedt, 1989, p. 223. The diction and the grammar influenced the meaning of the sente nces and the readers’ understanding to the content of the academic essay. The consultation opens chances for the lecturer to evaluate the diction and the grammar in the students’ essay and guides the students to be more aware of the diction and grammar usage. Furthermore, the grammar also influenced the meaning of the sentences. The appropriate grammar helps the readers to understand the aims or the 54 information included in essay Heffernan Lincoln, 1990. It indicates that grammar helps the readers to understand the content of the essay. The consultation allowed the lecturer to explain how to choose the appropriate diction and the grammar for academic essay, so that the students understand the tenses that should be used and the appropriate diction to clarify the information that should be delivered to the readers. Therefore, both grammar and diction are the criteria of writing proficiency that should be noticed to present the appropriate ideas or the meaning of the essay. In order to make it clearer, the researcher provided the example of the finding from one of the student’s essay as follow: See Appendix. 9.2, p. 103. Figure 4.3 Example 1 of Student’s Draft of Essay From the example above, the researcher identified that the student wrote some grammatical mistakes on the first draft. The student wrote “...student are 1 st Draft