The students’ perception of the teacher’s feedback in general

12 In order to explore the students’ perception toward teachers’ oral and written feedback, I conducted the interviews for students’ in Narrative and Descriptive class. The interview was conducted using Indonesian in order to get more data and reduce misunderstanding. Yet, in this discussion I translated the interview results into English to make it easy to follow the discussion. Based on the interview, the students said that the definition of feedback was any corrections Miss Blue, Enyok, Ice-Cream, Turtle, Enyak, Interview, 2012 or revision Nyo, Lista, Nyi, Interview, 2012 or comments Feragamo, Interview, 2012 given by the teacher on their writing compositions. Only one student presented different point of view about feedback. according to Suri: Extract 1: Interview with Miss Suri October 26, 2012 “Feedback is a two-side communication between the teacher and the student.” This student perceived that feedback should be a two-way communication, which meant that whatever corrections, revisions, or comments given by the teacher, they should be communicated clearly to the students and then the students should be given opportunities to explain their ideas. In my analysis, this communication would not only help the teacher to understand the students’ ideas, but also would help the students to comprehend the feedbacks given by their teacher. The students’ understandings of feedback were seen to be an important aspect since they would be useful to answer how helpful feedbacks were for their writing. The finding showed that teachers’ oral and written feedbacks were very helpful to improve students’ writing. This finding was supported by the students’ perception toward teacher’s feedback in Narrative and Descriptive class, for example: Extract 2: Interview with Miss Nyoo October 23, 2012 13 “The feedback that my teacher gave is useful for me because it helps me to revise my writing” Extract 3: Interview with Miss Nyii October 24, 2012 “I think it is very helpful because I can know which part that I make mistakes.” Extract 4: Interview with Miss Suri October 26, 2012 “In my opinion it is helpful because from the feedback I know what is wrong in my assignments and I can improve it perfectly” Extract 5: Interview with Miss Blue October 30, 2012 “Feedbacks from my teacher are really helpful to lead me when I write so that I am not confused to write” From the students’ opinion above, we could see that the students see the helpfulness level of the feedbacks from how those feedbacks could detect the students’ errors so that they could revise them accordingly. In addition, they also said that by receiving feedbacks, they got guidance on what to write or how to correct their writing. Feedback provides a students with information on hisher performances attempt at an assessment task Hester, 2001. In this respect, feedback could help the students to know what was wrong in their writing and got examples on how the correct sentences should be. Additionally, when asked whether feedback was important or not, all of the students answered yes. All of them stated that they always read every feedback given by the teacher and used them as a valuable source to improve the quality of their writing compositions. They also claimed that their teacher had given them sufficient amount of feedbacks so that the results of their writings were improved significantly. In conclusion, from the students’ opinion, teacher’s feedback was considered important, helpful, and sufficient enough to improve the quality of the students’ writings. By using feedback from their teacher, they could know which part had rooms for improvements so that they could do better writing in their final drafts. Students think feedback on 14 assessment as being important in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, enhancing motivation and improving future grades Hyland 2000.

2. The relevancy and effectiveness of teachers’ oral and written feedback

There are many kinds of feedbacks. From the way feedback is given, there are written feedback, oral feedback, teacher-students conferencing, and computer-delivered feedback Hyland Hyland, 2006, pp. 185-187. In this study, the feedbacks which were found in Narrative and Descriptive writing class were oral and written feedback. Below is the illustration:

a. Teachers’ oral feedback

Presented below are the students’ perceptions of oral feedback: Extract 6: Interview with Miss Blue October 30, 2012 “Oral feedback is relevant because it is more specific and my teacher directly showed the wrong part in my draft. It also effective because it helped me to correct my mistakes” Extract 7: Interview with Miss Lista October 28, 2012 “I think it is relevant and effective because I think if my teacher gave oral feedback it is clearer, for example when I did not understand her feedback, I ask her and she explained it clearly.” Extract 8: Interview with Miss NyakOctober 27 2012 “Yes relevant and effective. My teacher explains more detail in oral feedback and I can also ask directly about the feedback” Most of the students said that oral feedback was relevant and effective. From the extract 6, 7, and 8, it could be seen clearly that teacher’s oral feedback was relevant and effective. In extract 6, Miss Blue said that oral feedback was relevant since the feedback was specific and to the point to the errors. Similar to Miss Blue, Miss Lista and Miss Nyak 15 believed that oral feedback gave them opportunity to ask the teacher directly about the part that they did not understand. Nevertheless, there were two students who stated the opposite: Extract 9: Interview with Miss Turtle October 23, 2012 “Yes, it is relevant and effective for me because the teacher’s feedbacks gave me so many inputs, so it was so important for me. However, if the feedbacks were delivered orally, I sometimes forgot what the teacher said” Extract 10: Interview with Miss Nyoo October 23, 2012 “It was relevant but less effective because I often forgot what the teacher said” From the two extracts above, there it was found that teacher’s oral feedback was relevant but less effective since some students could not remember what the teacher said and therefore could not revise their writings accordingly. This finding showed that there was a problem entitled with oral feedbacks that should be overcome.

b. Teachers’ written feedback is relevant and effective

The following extracts from some of the students’ perception toward written feedback: Extract 11: Interview with Miss Feragamo November 3, 2012 “Relevant. I think because in written we know directly my wrong part and also effective to revise my draft” Extract 12: Interview with Miss Suri October 26, 2012 “For me it was relevant and effective. As a student, I really need feedback, to make a good writing, for example my sentence or word is wrong and with feedback I know how to revise it because the feedback is clear and understandable.” Extract 13: Interview with Miss Ice-cream November 5, 2012 “In my opinion it is relevant and effective, when she reads my draft she gives me suggestions about how to correct it and usually she gives the solution too” Bationo 1992 said that feedback using the written word in combination with sound is more effective than feedback using one channel only. However, according to students’