IMPROVING STUDENT’S GRAMMAR MASTERY BY USING TEACHER’S FEEDBACK (A Classroom Action Research in SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in Academic Year 2009 2010)

IMPROVING STUDENT’S GRAMMAR MASTERY BY USING TEACHER’S FEEDBACK

(A Classroom Action Research in SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in Academic Year 2009/2010)

Written by Written by: ARIF NUR SIDIK

K2203002

A THESIS

Submitted to Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret University as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement

for the Undergraduate Degree of Education

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY

SURAKARTA

commit to user ABSTRAK

Arif Nur Sidik. K2203002. MENINGKATKAN PENGUASAAN TATA BAHASA SISWA MENGGUNAKAN UMPAN BALIK GURU (Sebuah Penelitian Tindakan Kelas di SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta Tahun Ajaran 2009/2010). Skripsi, Surakarta: Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Universitas Sebelas Maret , Januari 2010.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan sejauh mana umpan balik guru meningkatkan penguasaan tata bahasa siswa dan kelebihan dan kekurangan umpan balik guru yang diterapkan dalam kelas di SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta.

Pendekatan yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian tindakan kelas. Penelitian tindakan dilaksanakan dalam dua siklus. Tiap siklus terdiri dari empat langkah: perencanaan, tindakan, pengamatan dan refleksi. Untuk mengumpulkan data, peneliti menggunakan pengamatan, catatan lapangan, gambar, percakapan, daftar percakapan, dan tes. Tes yang diberikan merupakan pre-test and post-test. Kemudian, peneliti menganalisa skor rata-rata tes. Tes nya digunakan untuk menemukan peningkatan pengusaan tata bahasa siswa setelah penelitian dilaksanakan.

Hasil dari penelitian menunjukkan bahwa umpan balik guru dapat meningkatkan penguasaan tata bahasa siswa dan umpan balik guru memiliki kelebihan dan kekurangan. Peningkatan penguasaan tatabahasa siswa direfleksikan dalam skor tes. Skor rata-rata dari hasil pre-tes adalah 53,9, untuk post-test 1 adalah 58,78 dan 68,48 untuk post-test 2. Kelebihan umpan balik guru diantara nya adalah (1) umpan balik guru membuat siswa lebih akurat dalam menulis. (2) umpan balik guru membuat siswa lebih memperhatikan tata bahasa pada tugas menulis. Sementara, beberapa kekurangn nya adalah (1) penerapan umpan balik guru membutuhkan banyak waktu, (2) siswa mendapat kesulitan dalam menghafal semua kode umpan balik kesalahan.

Berdasarkan hasil kajian diatas, peneliti menyarankan bahwa guru Bahasa Inggris lebih baik menerapkan umpan balik guru di kelas agar supaya membantu siswa meningkatkan penguasaan tata bahasa.

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MOTTO

“DREAM BIG and TAKE RISKS.” (Ron Clark)

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DEDICATION

With deep profound love, this thesis is dedicated to:

 My beloved Father and Mother, no words can represent how grateful I am to be your son!

 My beloved brothers, thank you for your support and prayer,

 My Best of the Best Friends in Damai Hijau, Mafia Kost and Ganesha Operation Surakarta,

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Alhamdulillahirabbil’alamin. Praise be to Allah SWT who has given His blessing to the writer so that he can complete the writing of this thesis. In this occasion, the writer would like to express his deepest gratitude and appreciation to the following.

1. Prof. Dr. H. M. Furqon Hidayatullah, M. Pd., the dean of Teacher Training and Education Faculty, for his advice and his approval of this thesis. 2. Drs. Suparno, M. Pd., the head of the Art and Language Education, and

Drs. Martono M.A., the head of English Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty, for their advice and their approval of this thesis. 3. Prof.Dr. Joko Nurkamto, MPd., the first consultant, and Kristiandi, S.S.,

the second consultant, for their priceless guidance, advice, suggestion, encouragement and patience.

4. Drs. H. Sudadi Mulyono, M.Si., the headmaster of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta for facilitating the writer in collecting the data.

5. Muh Haris,SPd., the English teacher of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta, who has helped the writer to do the research.

6. The eleventh grade students of IPA 4 SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta who have participated well during the research.

7. His beloved family, for their supports, caring, prayer, and helps.

8. His friends in English Department of year 2003, for their everlasting friendship. His friends in Damai Hijau Kost (Pakdhe, Fajar, Rintis, Achmad, Bayu, Pondra, Arif BC, Handis,Radit, Ari) and in Mafia Kost (Omen, Arin, Amin,Adit, Fajar, Bayu, Wajid)

The writer realizes that this thesis is still far from being perfect. He hopes and accepts every comment and suggestion. Hopefully, this thesis will be useful for the readers.

Surakarta, 31 Januari 2011

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TABLE OF CONTENT

TITLE ... i

APPROVAL ... ii

LEGITIMATION ... iii

ABSTRACT ... iv

MOTTO ... v

DEDICATION ... vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... vii

TABLE OF CONTENT ... viii

LIST OF APPENDICES ... xi

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ... 1

A. Background of the Study ... 1

B. Problems Statements ... 7

C. The Objectives of the Study ... 8

D. The Benefits of the Study ... 8

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE RELATED THEORIES ... 9

A. Grammar... 9

1. The Meaning of Grammar ... 9

2. The Scope of Grammar... 10

3. The Teaching Grammar in English Language Teaching 16 4. Grammar Mastery ... 18

B. Error Correction Feedback……… 19

1. Meaning of Error Correction Feedback ... 19

2. Types of Feedback: Direct and Indirect Feedback ... 23

3. Strategies for Feedback……….. 26

4. Teacher’s Feedback……… 27

C. Writing... 30

1. Definition of Writing ... 30

2. The process of Writing... 31

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4. Micro skill of writing………. 39

D. Review on The Related Study ... 40

E. Rationale ... 40

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 43

A. Research Setting ... 43

1. The Place of the Research ... 43

2. The Time of The Research... 44

B. Subject of The Research... 44

C .Method of the Research ... 45

D. The Model of Action Research ... 47

E. The Procedures of Action Research ... 48

F. The Technique of Collecting the Data……… 52

G.The Technique of Analyzing the Data……… 54

CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION ... 56

A. Research Findings ... 56

1. Introduction ... 56

2. Research Implementation ... 57

3. Findings……….. 76

B. Discussions and Justification of Research Findings ... 77

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION AND SUGGESTION ... 82

A. Conclusion ... 82

B. Implication... 84

C. Suggestion... 85

BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 87

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LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Pre Research Observation ... 91

Appendix 2: Field Notes... 98

Appendix 3: Interview Notes... 126

Appendix 4: Lesson Plan... 129

Appendix 5: List of Students’ Names... 137

Appendix 6: The Result of the Study ... 138

Appendix 7: The Sample of the Teaching Learning Process ... 140

Appendix 8: Questionnaire... 145

Appendix 9: Data of analysis of students’ survey questionnaire... 146

Appendix 10: Students’ Worksheet... 149

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English teaching has the goal to help students to acquire the four language skills namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. To gain four skills, it is very important for students to have an experience in practicing and applying English grammar. Students can not master the language well which is being studied without mastering its grammar. Grammar is guideline for language learner in using the language, involving how to put words in order in the sentences.

Therefore, it is important for the learners to study grammar. People or the learners who decide to study grammar because they want to be better writers or because they want to speak a more standard dialect. By studying grammar, we will learn the makeup of the language and so be able to apply what we learned as better listener, readers, speaker, and writers. Penny Ur, a teacher trainer and author of Grammar Practice Activities says there is no doubt that knowledge-implicit or explicit- of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of language. In the curriculum 2006 (p:308), it is stated that on e of the ultimate objective of English instruction for Senior High School or MA students is to develop the English communicative competence to reach the informal level in order that students are able to access many information and knowledge with language. The communicative competence covers four competences namely grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic (Savignon, 1997:40).

Then the scope of English instruction for Senior High School or MA students is supporting competence in which one of the aspects is linguistic or grammatical competence. This competence deals with knowing how to use the grammar and vocabulary of the language to achieve communicative goals, knowing how to do this in socially appropriate way (Thornbury, 2001:18). The importance of having grammatical competence, as stated by Hymes, supported by

Canale and Swain ( in Lock, 1996:266), is as one of the four types of competence that should be included in any definition of proficiency.

A proper understanding of the concept of communicative competence would have revealed if it gives no endorsement for the neglect grammar (Widowson in Lock, 1996:266). There is no doubt that to be able to use English in real communication, students should master its grammar. Also this is in line with curriculum 2004 (p:19) stating that curriculum emphasizes on the need of mastering English grammar because the purpose of teaching and learning English at senior high school level is to prepare the graduates to attend the university. Learning at this level is to study in the context of the language use. Its target gives students the ability to use English that satisfies the need of English for the international level.

For the 2nd language learner, English is the foreign language that is difficult to learn. Brown (1994:193) stated that a principal barrier for 2ndlanguage acquisition is the interference of the first language system. Language system includes form and meaning. The form of language involves the grammatical structures of language. It is obvious that English grammar is quite different from the grammar of the Indonesian language. In mastering the English grammar, there are many different and complicated rules of the language that must be mastered by the students. They cannot gain the English grammar just by memorizing the rules and trying to understand the explanation from the teacher. The important thing which must be given a special attention is that in learning a foreign language, we must study the rules of language, practice the rules mush and apply them often in the communication. Terrel in Khalid (2003) states;

“Language consists of set of rules with an associated lexicon. It follows logically from

the model that foreign language students must learn rules of grammar. The suggested sequence is study the rule, practice the rules and then apply the rules in meaningful interactions in the target language”.

Considering the explanation above, grammar will be learnt effectively if it is practiced by the student actively. Teaching English grammar to students is they point to study English. In order to convey meaningful ideas and information, students must understand how to make

Therefore, grammar is important part in studying a certain language. So, it becomes the English

teacher’s duty to teach grammar as good as possible.

Learning a language is complicated activity. A lot of researches have been done in to how to make learning effective but, as yet, it remains surprisingly difficult to say with certainty what methods are truly more effective, but it is largely inconclusive. One certain way to raise a group of language teacher to heated discussion is to question their attitude to correction. The question

of teacher’s attitude to error and correction is probably the single most important issue in language teacher’s professional development. The kind of activities the teacher encourages in the

classroom, and the kind of which the teacher avoids or minimizes, will be strongly influenced by

the teacher’s views of the role of error correction in learning.

In high school, students may not have received comments on language problems, or they may have received only global remarks such as "you need to keep working on your grammar." In order to help students continue to acquire academic English and to correct patterns of error that may persist in their writing, they need structure help.Reid (1982:xi) says that naturally ESL students even at advanced level continue to have grammatical weaknesses. Further he said that grammatical problems that are usually found in writing are; punctuations, and sentence structure, a subject-verb agreement tenses, prepositions and so forth. Another supportive statement comes from Ferris and Leki in Hong (2004) who say that ESL students whose interlanguage are still developing, probably need and expect grammar feedback on error from their teacher.

In teaching learning process of English as a foreign language, errors made by students have always been a significant concern to almost all language teachers. Errors refers to those

features of learner’s utterances which differ form those of any native speakers (Corder,

1973:260). Error made by the foreign learner is natural. It means that error in learning foreign language is usually found. Student always make errors in their foreign language use. This problem makes the teacher have to think what he has to do to solve the problem in his foreign language teaching. Teacher becomes confused whether he has to continue the next material or to correct their error and make the remedial course. Most people agree that making mistakes is apart of learning and they also agree that correction is a part of teaching. Many errors always

in speaking as well as in writing. The correction of spoken language is also for the correction of written language. If teacher looks carefully at the mistakes the student makes, he will find that the errors cover many different things that happen in language use, and the errors will lead to a misunderstanding. The linguistic mistakes our students make are an important and necessary part of their language learning.

Teacher often finds mistakes or errors in their written task for example; the use of

grammar and vocabulary. The absence of teacher’s feedback that is expected by the students on

their composition may result in ignorance whether the grammar they use in correct form or not.

By investigating the students’ error in their writing task, teacher can understand the quantity and

the quality of error in their writing task. Those errors of course can be taken as supportive feedback to their students in order to reduce errors made by the students in their coming writing task. Any correction will help them become more accurate in their use of the language.

In giving feedback to his students, the teacher may use different kinds of correction techniques. Firstly, the teachers put the certain marks or symbol on the free margin that can be understood clearly by the students. Secondly, the students are given oral explanation and they are asked to study the error they make. So, by putting certain marks or symbol and by giving the oral explanation or some information on their errors, the teacher can help students identify and correct hem in their composition.

Edge (1997:50) states that correction should mean helping people to become more accurate, not insisting completely standard English. Involving learning in judgement about correctness also helps them become more accurate in their use of the language. As English

teachers at school, they need to provide the students with the information dealing with students’

language learning development, or by giving help to correct the error they create in composition.

According to ideas presented by the writer, students can master well the English language if they understand the rules or grammar of its language. When they make errors or mistakes, teacher should overcome this problem by giving feedback in the form of error correction. There

are many errors and mistakes the students make and factors that cause this problem, so teacher should pay attention to it.

To support these ideas, the writer had conducted a pre-observation for two weeks on February 6th -13th 2010 in the XI IPA 4 students of SMA N 8 Surakarta. He got the results that the students get many problems in learning grammar. For example, they are difficult to understand the pattern of English sentence. Even, the students can not remember it for a long time. This case causes them to make a lot of mistakes in doing the assignments. It can be shown in the result of their pre-observation test score. The mean of the score is 3, 47 which indicates that their grammar mastery is still low.

The condition of students’ grammar mastery is supported by the teacher statement, he

says “Secara umum untuk grammar saat ini, terus terang, tidak mendapatkan perhatian yang

khusus sehingga belum mendapatkan hasil yang memuaskan, karena memang kita belum menemukan teknik yang sesuai untuk bagaimana anak agar dapat mengingat terus dan paham

tentang grammar.”

Meanwhile, from the students themselves, they have problems with the grammar. They said that they are still confused in some grammar points like the use of modal, the use of

pronoun, and the use of past tense. As what has been said by some students “Saya masih

bingung mas untuk menggunakan tenses past sehingga masih salah dalam menuliskan kata kerja

nya”. The other students say; “Apalagi kalau disuruh menulis, kita pasti kesulitan dan banyak salah nya di grammar”.

Based on the finding, the writer concludes that the students’ grammar mastery needs to

be improved. Teacher should solve the problem students have and some factors that cause it.

This must be one of the teacher’s considerations in maintaining good English teaching process, how to help student’s problem in their grammatical errors.

According to the facts above, the writer is interested in conducting a classroom action

research by using teacher’s feedback in order to improve the student’s grammar mastery of the

eleventh grade of IPA 4 students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta.

B. Problem Statement.

Based on the description in the background of the study and the fact in the 11th grade of IPA 4 students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in 2009-2010 academic year. The writer finds some problems arising which are identified as in the following.

1. Does and to what extent teacher’s feedback improve the students’ grammar mastery of

the eleventh grade of IPA 4 of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta?

2. What are the strengths and the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback?

C. The Objective of the Research

Based on the formulation of the problem, the general objective of this research is to

improve students’ grammar mastery by using teacher’s feedback. Particularly, this research is

aimed to find out:

1. Whether teacher’s feedback can effectively improve the grammar mastery of the

eleventh grade of IPA 4 students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta.

2. The strengths and weaknesses of teacher’ feedback.

D. The Benefit of The Study

This research hopefully will give some contributions to the process of English teaching. There are some expected benefits of the study for the English teacher and students.

1. For the English teacher It will hopefully make teacher

a. know the contribution of feedback to the students’ error so that the teacher realizes

2. For the students

It may enable students to

a. identify kinds of errors in their composition. b. correct their errors in their composition.

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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE RELATED THEORIES

A. Grammar

1. The Meaning of Grammar

According to Richards, Platt, Heidi (1987:161), grammar is defined as a set of rules and lexicon that describes a knowledge (competence) of which a speaker has of his or her language. In other point of view, they also defined grammar as follows: Grammar is description of the structure of the language and the way in which linguistics units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language. It may not include the description of the sounds of a language.

Brown (1994:347) has the same idea about grammar. He states that grammar is a system of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationship of words in a sentence. Widdowson (1990: 84) says grammar is the name we gave to the knowledge of how words are adopted and arranged to form sentences. Another linguist, Ur (1984:4) defines grammar is the way words are put together to make correct sentences. The need of language learner to learn grammar is essential, since the grammar is the central part of language. Each language has a highly complex system that differs from language to language, that is why language is different. Therefore, grammar is very important for one who wants to study language.

Another definition comes from Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary that defines grammar as the study or the science of rules of the combination of words into sentences (syntax) and the forms of words (morphology). This definition is supported by Lock (1997:4) who states that grammar is viewed as the study of the syntax-how the words are combined to form a meaningful sentences, and morphology- the system of rules that cover the formation of words.

While, Penny Ur in another book (1998:4) tells that grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form larger units of meaning.

Those definitions view grammar not only on the forms of the rules of language, but also on the meaning. Based on the definitions above, the writer can conclude that grammar is a study of language rules as the way how language constructs and combines words and how words are arranged to form larger unit of meaning. In conclusion, grammar is defined as the description of language rules dealing with the forms and the structure of words (morphology) and arrangement of phrases and sentences (syntax) and includes how to the larger meaning is formed.

2. The Scope of Grammar

In this chapter, the writer tries to present the scope of grammar proposed by some linguists. Chomsky (in Crystal, 1997: 88) divides grammar into three aspects namely phonology and semantics, and syntax as the more specific notion.

Grammar

Phonology syntax semantics

A diagram of grammar’s aspects by Chomsky

Meanwhile, Joseph and Droste (1991: 6) point out that grammar covers three distinctive aspects. They are syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Based on Lock idea, grammar is a set of rules, which specify all the possible grammatical structures of the language. It includes two aspects: (1) the arrangement of words and (2) the internal structures of word (1997:1). It is supported by Thornbury (2001: 2) who states that grammar is conventionally seen as the study of

In his study, the writer prefers to discuss the scope of grammar involving morphology and syntax.

A. Morphology

Radford (1997: 1) states that morphology is the branch of grammar that studies how words are formed out of smaller units. In addition, Crystal (1997:90) gives the examples below;

Unhappiness un-happi-ness

Horses horse-s

Talking talk-ing

Yes yes

Crystal explain that ‘Yes’ has no internal grammatical structure. One could analyze its

constituent sounds, /j/, /e/, /s/, but none of these has a meaning in isolation. By contrast, horse, talk, and happy plainly have meanings, as do the element attached to them (the ‘affixes’) : un -carries a negative meaning, -ness expresses a state or quality; -sexpresses plural; and–inghelps to convey a sense of duration. The smallest meaningful elements into which words can be analyzed are known as morphemes, and the way morphemes operate in language provides the subject matter ofmorphology.

From the four examples above, we can make a broad distinction between two types of morphemes. They are free and bound morpheme. Yule (1996: 75) explains that free morpheme is morphemes, which can stand by themselves as single words, e.g. happy, horse, talk, and yes. Bound morpheme is morphemes, which cannot normally stand alone but, which are typically attached to another form e.g. un-, -ness, -s, and –ing. It is an easy matter to analyze those example words into morphemes, because a clear sequence of elements is involved. But not all words can be analyzed into morphemes so easily, for example, it is difficult to know how to

analyze irregular nouns and verbs: miceis the plural ofmouse,but it is not obvious (vague) how to identify a plural morpheme in the word, analogues to the –s ending of horse (Crystal, 1997:90).

Generally, there are two main fields that are recognized within morphology, namely, inflectional and derivational morphology (Crystal, 1997: 90). Inflectional morphology studies the way in

which words vary (or ‘inflect’) in order to express grammatical contrast in sentences, such as

singular/plural or past/present tense. Boy and boys, for example, are two forms of the ‘same’; the

choice between them, singular vs. plural is a matter of grammar, and thus the business of inflectional morphology. Derivational morphology, however, studies the principles governing the construction of new words, without reference to the specific grammatical role a word might play in a sentence. In the formation of drinkable from drink, or disinfect from infect, for example, one can see the formation of different words, with their own grammatical properties.

B) Syntax

Crystal (1997: 94) infers that syntax is the way in which words are arranged to show relationship of meaning within (and sometimes between) sentences. According to him most syntactic studies have focused on sentence structure, for this is where the most important grammatical relationships are expressed. A sentence itself is defined as the largest unit to which syntactic rules apply. Then, he suggests three aspects of sentence syntax including clauses, phrases, and coordination vs. subordination. The following is the brief explanation of each.

a) Clauses

The various units that make up the structure given functional labels, such as Subject (S), verb (V), complement (C), Object (O), and Adverbial (A). A number of clauses types can be identified in this ways, such as:

S + V The dog is running.

S + V + O The man + saw + a cow S + V + C The car + is + ready

S + V + A A picture + lies + on the ground S + V + O + O I + gave + John + a book

S + V + O + C He + called + John + a fool S + V + O + A Mary + saw + John + yesterday

Several approaches to grammatical analysis make use of elements of this kind, though there is considerable variation in definition and terminology. Languages are also very greatly in the way in which these elements are identified. In English, word order is the main factor, with only occasional use being made of morphology e.g.he(subject)saw(verb)him(object).

b) Phrases

A phrase is group of related words that does not contain a predication (Funk. 1991: 120). Most phrases can be seen as expansions of a central element (the head), and these are often referred to

as ‘endocentric’phrases:

cars the cars the big cars

all the big cars

all the big cars in the garage

Phrases, which can not be analyzed in this way, are then called ‘exocentric’: inside/the cars. On

the other hand, the internal structure of an endocentric phrase is commonly described in a three-part manner:

All the big cars in the garage

Pre-modification Head Post Modification

c) Coordination vs. Subordination

Coordination is one of two main ways of making sentences more complex; the other is

known as subordination, or ‘embedding’. The essential difference is that in the former the

clauses that are linked are of equal grammatical status, whereas in the later, one clause functions

as part of another (the ‘main’ clause). For example:

Coordinate clause:

The boy left on Monday and the girl left on Tuesday. Subordinate clause:

The boy left on Monday when John rang.

The phrase on Monday is part of the clause, giving the time when the action took place. Similarly, the unit when John rang is also part of the clause, for the same reason. But when John rang is additionally a clause in its own right.

3. The Teaching Grammar in English Language Teaching

It is helpful for the students to be aware of grammatical information about language included in it is the role of grammar. In general terms, Harmer (1997: 3) divides the role of grammar into two concepts.

A) Covert

Coverts grammar teaching is where grammatical facts are hidden from the students –

even though they are learning the language. In other words, the students may be asked to do an information gap activity or read an English text where new grammar practiced or introduced, but their attention will be drawn to the activity or to the text and not to the grammar. With covert grammar, teachers help the students to acquire and/or practice English, but they do not draw conscious attention to any of the grammatical facts of the language.

B) Overt

Overt grammar teaching means that the teacher actually provides the students with grammatical rules and explanations. The information is openly presented. Some techniques for the presentation of new language, for example where the teacher explains how present simple questions needdoordoes, are extremely overt.

With the overt teaching, the teacher explains explicitly and openly about the grammar of the language, but with covert teaching he simply get students to work with new language in this case English and hope that they will more or less subconsciously absorbs grammatical information which will help them to acquire the language as a whole.

Hormer (1997: 7) adds that at the beginner level, the students do quite a lot of structure teaching and practice and less really free communicative activity. The teaching of grammar at

this stage is likely to be fairly covert since the main aim is to get students to practice and use the language as much as possible. At the intermediate levels the students would be involved in more communicative activities and would have less and would have less grammar teaching. The teaching of grammar of this stage would be more overt and as students get more advanced they can actively study grammar in more overt ways.

In other case, there is no doubt that knowledge–implicit or explicit- of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of a language: you cannot use words unless you know how they should put together (Ur, 1998: 4). The learning of grammar should be seen in the long term as one of the means of acquiring a thorough mastery of the language as a whole. As stated previously in curriculum 2006 (KTSP) that the objective of English language teaching is to develop communicative competence, and for Hymes supported by Canale and Swain (in Lock, 1996: 266), the grammatical competence is one of the four types of competence they should be included in any definition of proficiency (the other three being sociolinguistics competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence). A proper understanding of the concept of communicative competence would have revealed that it gives no endorsement for the neglect of grammar (Widdowson in Lock, 1996: 266).

Lock (1996: 267) explains more about the importance of grammar in English language teaching. He states in order to communicate, the teacher needs to be able to (1) represent what it is he wants to talk about and to locate it in time, which means selecting appropriate process types, participants, circumstances, and tenses; (2) make the content interpersonally relevant and appropriate; which means selecting appropriate moods, modalities, and polarities; and (3) make the whole message relevant to what has been said previously and to the situational context. Seen

from this perspective, grammar is not an optional add-on in language teaching but it lies at the very heart in communication that should be taught effectively.

4. Grammar Mastery

Webster (1990:732) defines mastery as skill or knowledge that makes one master of a subject. In line with her, Quirk says that mastery is full power to control something or great skill/knowledge in a particular subject (1998:644). Thus, grammar mastery is great skill or knowledge (competence) that makes one master of a particular subject. Related to grammar, Chomsky in Rod Ellis (1996:8) asserts:

Competence consists of the mental representations of linguistics rules that constitute the speaker-hearers’ internal grammar. It is evident in the intuitions which speaker-hearer has about the grammaticality of sentences (1996:8).

Sandra J Savignon (1997:40) says that person demonstrates grammatical competence not by stating the rules, but by using rules. According to her, grammatical competence is mastery of linguistics codes, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological features of a language and to manipulate these features to form words and sentences. It involves the ability to apply the grammatical rules in order to form grammatically correct sentences. Further explanation is stated by Richard who writes:

Grammatical competence was the knowledge underlying our ability to produce and understand sentences in a language. We call upon our grammatical competence to express meaning in ways that are native-like in target language (1985:144).

Thus, grammar mastery can be defined as great skill or knowledge that makes one masters a system of language rules to produce, understand, and apply the grammatical rules in order to form grammatically correct sentences.

B. Error Correction Feedback

1. Meaning of Error Correction Feedback

Teacher’s treatment of learner’s error is an important aspect of second and foreign

language acquisition. Every teacher will have different views on this because this treatment can be used as an input from readers to writer that provides information for revision (Reid, 1993: 218) and an effective means to communicate to the students about their writing (Chaudron, 1984:2) and different ways of correcting their students’ error and it is a case of finding out what

teacher and students feel comfortable with. The skill of writing in a first (L1) or second language (L2) is a complex issue, as becoming a proficient writer entails mastering elements of content, style, and organization in addition to surface elements such as grammar, vocabulary, and the actual mechanics of writing. While surface errors are generally of secondary interest in L1 writing, they have been a focus of L2 writing research for sometime. One important area of research in L2 writing is that of error/grammar correction, specifically, whether learners actually benefit from the feedback that they receive from instructors and which type of feedback is most important.

Harwood (2002) states that feedback is the part of writing program which is either underused or misunderstood. Feedback is limited to the overt correction of errors and the provision of comments and/or grades by the teacher. Feedback can (and should) be a learning experience, which provides the link between the consecutive writing lessons. During feedback, learners are invited to identify the merits and shortcomings of their writing performance, understand the reasons for these shortcomings and the discussion of possible improvement. When learners become familiar with feedback procedures, feedback activities can also be set as homework.

Then, Lummeta (2005) stated that feedback is a process by which the teacher provides learners with information about their performance for the purpose of improving their performance.

According to Heidi (1982:62), feedback generally refers to the listeners’ or readers’ response given to learners’ speech or writing. One type of feedback is correction. Edge (1997:59)

says that correction means helping people to express themselves more accurately. Correction should not mean insisting on everything being absolutely corrected. It helps the students to become more accurate in their use of language. Hendrickson (1979:5) states that he gives

correction to ESL student’s composition by giving marks to the errors in order that they would

be able to identify many of their errors and recognize the deviant form and structures in their written work and finally reconsider their errors into correct sentences. Also, Wingfield, as quoted by Byrne (1998) has pointed out that the teacher should choose correcting techniques that are most appropriate and most effective for individual students. He lists five techniques for correcting written errors.

1. Teacher gives sufficient clues to enable self-correction to be made. 2. The teacher corrects the scripts.

3. The teacher deals with errors through marginal comments and footnotes. 4. The teacher explains orally to individual students.

5. The teacher uses the error correction as an illustration for a class explanation.

In short, it can be stated that error correction feedback is the teacher’s act to deal with the students’ performance on writing by marking the errors on their composition by giving certain

structures of the target language learned. It helps the students to become more accurate in their use of language.

In association with the error correction, error analysis is needed. Hendrickson (1979:3) stated that errors are always produced by language learners and these errors can provide significant insights into how languages are learned if they are studied systematically. In other words, students frequently make grammatical error in their communication and by studying the

grammatical error made by students, teachers are able to infer the nature of students’ knowledge

of grammar (Corder, 1985:257).

Dealing with the correction feedback by teacher, Vengadesamy (2002) wrote that when

responding to form in students’ essays, teachers normally make one of three types of correction.

1. Firstly, they might indicate only location of an error in the students’ essays.

2. Secondly, they may choose to indicate both the location of the error and the type of error

that the students has made (for example, by writing ‘tense’ to indicate that the wrong tense had been used, or ‘SVA’ to indicate a subject verb agreement error)

3. Thirdly, the teacher’s response gets even more salient in the third type of response, where

they opt to indicate not only the location and type of error, but also provide a model of the correct version.

Li (2006) stated that giving effective feedback is a central concern for any teachers of writing and an important area for L2 writing research. Feedback itself is always viewed as the essentials of writing since it impulses the writers to refine their first writing draft into a final complete draft.

Kepner (1991:141) defines feedback in general as any procedures used to inform a

assignment, however, feedback will strictly refer to the written feedback given teachers as a

response to their student’s error in writing. Form feedback which is also be known as grammar

feedback and surface-level feedback is the type of feedback that looks into issues like grammar,

spelling…etc. to ensure whether grammar feedback is necessary. Grami (2005) states that some

of the studies (form feedback) give practical evidence that grammar correction in fact does help students to improve their accuracy.

Kepner ( 1991:305) believes that error correction in second language teaching is perennial concern to L2 teachers. He notes that many L2 teachers fear the fossilization of error

and that teachers feel normally obliged to correct all mistakes in their L2 student’s work. While

Ferris (1999) noted that L2 students are very much concerned on accuracy and they will ask for their errors to be corrected by the teacher.

Hyland and Hyland (2001) also note that providing written feedback to students is one of

the ESL writing teachers’ most important tasks. In the same manner, ESL students were also

reported to overwhelmingly desire their linguistic errors to be corrected and they strongly believe

that it is teacher’s responsibility to provide such feedback. In short, ESL teachers have to correct

surface-level errors and students want their teachers to do so. As Ferris (2002) stated for such an attitude by ESL students is that L2 writers are aware of their linguistic limitation and thus more likely to focus on word or sentence level accuracy.

2. Types of Feedback : Direct and Indirect Feedback

Giving feedback to students’ grammatical errors is the teacher’s responsibility in order

that students will not make same mistakes and errors they ever made. In this study, there are two types of feedback dealing with the treatment of grammatical error, namely, direct and indirect feedback. According to Hendrickson (1984), the purpose of indirect feedback is to indicate either

the presence or the specific location of errors. Direct feedback means not only to indicate the presence or location of errors, but also to suggest correct forms. If the students are only provided with direct feedback on their final draft, they do not have an opportunity to reflect and correct the errors for themselves; they only note the errors marked by the teacher. This is one reason why indirect feedback has received more support among researchers ( Ferris, 2002; Hendrickson, 1984; Lalande, 1982; Robb et al., 1986). Roob et al. (1986) suggested that teachers should not waste time giving direct feedback to students if both direct and indirect methods are more equally effective.

Frodesen (2001) also suggested that indirect feedback is generally more useful than direct correction in correcting. He advised L2 writing teachers not to provide correction on all errors because it makes students feel overwhelmed and reduces their motivation for learning. Others have reported that indirect feedback may be more beneficial to students than direct feedback in editing because indirect feedback can guide learning and help the students to solve problems by themselves (Lalande, 1982). In the case of Hendrickson (1984), the combined method of indirect and direct feedback was considered most beneficial for the students in the revision process, because some types of errors could be more readily corrected by students and others could not. For example, if the students make an error concerning a noun ending, they can correct their own error by using the cues that the teacher gives, or by referring to a grammar book. However, they have more trouble choosing appropriate words in context and using acceptable sentence structures if only the location of errors are indicated without any guidance as how to correct the forms as shown in the study of Ferris et al. (2001). Depending on their linguistic competence and exposure to language use, students have differing levels of difficulty when asked to correct errors if teachers do not give them enough information.

Supposing indirect feedback is superior to direct feedback for pedagogical reasons, the next issue may be the level of explicitness or salience of indirect feedback (Ferris et al., 2001).

Robb et al. (1986) explored whether the salience of indirect feedback influenced student’s

accuracy, fluency, and grammar. They classified indirect feedback into three subcategories; coded, non-coded and marginal feedback. Firstly, coded feedback is a a method in which teachers provide a coding scheme that indicates the types of students errors, such as noun ending and tense, etc. and students are supposed to correct the errors themselves. Secondly, non-coded feedback only marks the location of the errors by underlining or circling them; teachers do not specify the error types or correct forms. Thirdly, marginal feedback signals the number of errors per line by writing in the margin. The students have to both discover and correct their errors. It is reasonable to consider that the marginal feedback is the most challenging method for ESL writers.

In conclusion, both types of feedback, direct and indirect feedback are necessary to help

students learn and solve the problem on their linguistics’ competence.

3. Strategies for Feedback A. Teacher-Editing

For beginner student who starts writing essays toward the end of the first term, it may be difficult to do the self and peer editing. The teacher may provide guidance during editing or she may do the editing and proof-reading with the student to set an example. (http://www.temple.edu/gradmag/fall98/loewen.htm)

B. Peer-Editing

Here, the texts are interchanged and the evaluation is done by other students. In the real world, it is common for the writers to ask friends and colleagues to check texts for spelling, etc. in the classroom environment, the students can exchange their papers and comment on each

other’s paper.

Students exchange their first drafts of a text and point out changes which are needed to help the reader (e.g. better organization, paragraph divisions, sentence variety, vocabulary choice). They can also act as each other's editors spotting vocabulary repetitions, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, etc.

Peer editing is a useful tool for any level of learner, although its specific application can vary from level to level. For example, at lower level teacher would generally use this to highlight the grammatical problems, whereas for higher levels this would be used to assess how effectively an essay question has been answered. Rollinson. 2008. Strategies For Feedback. (http://www.temple.edu/gradmag/fall98/loewen.htm)

C. Self-Editing

Generally, it is very common for the writers to miss their own mistakes. This is why it is recommended to sleep on it for a night. After putting the paper aside for some time, emptying the mind dealing with some other work, the writer is able to approach her paper with a clear mind. In the classroom environment, teachers can have the students write their essays one day, collect the papers, and have the students edit and proof-read the paper the next day.

4. Teacher’s Feedback

Teacher’s feedback is a kind of information the teachers can say to their students

about the drafts essays they have produced; this information is much more helpful if it is provided on preliminary and intermediate stage, rather than the final one, and cooperation between teacher and students is very necessary for the successful implementation of feedback.

The most prominently used feedback methods fall into two common categories: feedback on form and feedback on content. The most common methods of feedback on form are outright teacher correction of surface errors, teacher markings that indicate the place and type of error but without correction, and underlining to indicate only the presence of errors. The first requires students to copy the corrections and the latter two require students to correct the errors on their own. Feedback on content consists mainly of comments written by teachers on drafts that usually point out problems and offer suggestions for improvements on future rewrites. Students are usually expected to incorporate information from the comments into other versions

of their papers. Here are some types of teacher’s feedback on form and content:

A) Marginal Feedback versus End Feedback

Marginal feedback is a kind of feedback that is written in the margin or between

sentence lines of the students’ paper. It refers to the teacher’s immediate intervention in discrete

parts of the students’ draft. By contrast, summary feedback at the end of the paper is normally an

overview of more consideration in an essay. According to Ferris and Hedgcock (1998) there is no conclusive evidence that either marginal or end comments are preferable or more effective. However, in case teachers can only give one form of commentary given the overwhelming

number of papers and severe time constraints, a comprehensive and clear end note is strongly recommended. When time permits, writing teacher should try to make a combination of both to give the students more chance to revise their writing.

B) Negative Feedback versus Positive Feedback

Much research has been done into the effect of positive and negative comments on

the students’ revision. In these studies, the researchers found outthat the students remember and

appreciate encouraging remarks made by their teachers. The students would have better attitudes towards writing if they receive positive feedback. However, some researchers some described critical comments as being positive since they all helped them improve their papers. It is clear that, although the students appear to enjoy and appreciate praises, they expect to receive constructive criticisms and are not necessarily offended by this.

The question is a good teacher must know how to keep a balance between these two kinds of feedback. Too many praises, especially at the early stage of the responding process, may

actually discourage the students from revising (e.g., “My teacher liked this part, so I shouldn’t

change it) or may lead the students to resent receiving low marks (e.g.,” My teacher said that

there are a lot of good things about my essay, so why I get such a low grad?). Being excessively

negative to the students’ writing is also a disincentive to the student writers. Therefore, the wisest

course of action is the teachers should strive for a balance, providing some praise for the students’

efforts, but not forgetting their crucial instructional role of helping the students to revise, to improve on what they have done badly.

C) Text-specific Feedback versus General Feedback

Text-specific feedback is a kind of comment that directly relates to the text at hand; whereas, general feedback can be attached to any paper. Many experts in that field argued that teacher feedback is more helpful if it is text-specific. According to Reid, feedback should be informative and detailed enough to help the student writers return to the task of writing but not so overwhelming that they cannot form a revision plan. As they write, receive response, and revise, students should be able to feel good about what they have done well and realize that they can improve on what they have not done effectively (1993: 225). There is a role in teacher commentary for general responses. A general response of encouragement is no doubt better than none.

C. Writing

1. Definition of Writing

Peter Elbow as quoted by Brown (1994:4) says ‘Writing as two-steps process. First you

figure out your meaning, and then you put it into language. Second, you figure out what you

want to say; don’t start writing till you do; make a plan, use an outline, begin writing only

afterward.

In another case, Done Byrne (1997:1) defines writing as the act of forming letters or combination of letter: making sign of flat surface of some kind.

Furtermore, Nurgiantoro in Rahayu (1998:7) writing activity is the manifestation of language competence and skills, which are required by students after three other skills; reading, listening and speaking.

Basically, writing is means of communication between reader and writer. For this reason, writing may be said to represent an attempt to communicate with the readers (Raimes, 1983:4)

From the ideas above, the writer concludes that writing is a complex process for conveying or delivering ideas, thoughts, opinions and feeling using combination of letter in written language that other people can understand.

It is complex because we have to consider about grammar, spelling accurately,

punctuating meaningfully, linking ideas and information across sentences to develop a topic, etc. Writer means that we have to organize our sentences into a coherent text whole which is possible and complete in it, so that we are able to communicate successfully with our reader through the medium of writing

2.The Process of Writing

Writing is a process of expressing thoughts and feelings, of thinking, and of shaping experiences. It requires putting words and larger units into pattern or arrangement for the purpose of expression.

Some experts have identified that writing is commonly seen as a three stage process. Petty and Jensen (1980: 363), for example, note that writing consists of three phases: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Similarly, Tricia Hedge nominates that the process of writing is often described as consisting of three major activities or group of activities: prewriting, writing, and post writing or revising (Hedge, 1998: 21).

A. Prewriting

The prewriting phase helps writers gathering information and ideas. It includes discussion of proposed writing, namely the theme or topic, ideas and related words, and feelings and thoughts.

In this phase, the writer should consider two important points. The first one is the purpose of his writing. It has something to do with function. Is it a report, which the writer hopes will be

persuasive and stimulate action? Is it an explanation of how something works, which has to be careful, detailed, and clear? Is it a letter of invitation or a letter applying for a job?

The second important point is the target reader. The reader may be an individual, one you know well, or a group of colleagues, an institution, and so on. Considering the target reader helps the writer to select the most appropriate style and word choices- formal, friendly, serious, or tentative.

B. Writing

The writing phase includes pausing and rereading as the writing occurring, interaction with others (further discussion), consulting resources (looking up word meaning or spelling, for example), and reformulating the ideas and organization of composition.

Good writers tend to concentrate on getting the content right first and leave the details like correcting, spelling, punctuation, and grammar structures, until later the writing phase focuses primarily on what the writer wants to say, while rewriting progressively focuses on how to say it most effectively.

C. Post writing or Revising

Post writing phase means rewriting, rewriting, and then rewriting some more. This phase

consists of reading through and trying to apply a reader’s perspective in order to access how

clearly readers might flow the ideas. It means that this phase guides the writer to make final readjustment and checks accuracy so that the text written is maximally accessible to the readers.

3. Type of Text

According to Tri Wiratno (2003) in his book Kiat Menulis Karya Ilmiah dalam Bahasa

a. Narrative Text.

Generally speaking, narrative text (i.e., fiction) is easier to comprehend and remember than expository text (i.e., factual and informational material). The narrative text uses story to inform and persuade, For one thing, the content of a narrative is usually more familiar than the content of an exposition. Most research on narrative text has focused on teaching students to utilize story structure as an organizing framework for understanding critical aspects of the stories they read. Even preschool children use story structure to aid their comprehension. As they get older, children improve in their ability to use it. The most familiar and most studied text structure is narrative text or stories. Although there is no prevailing consensus on the definition of narrative text and some debate over the features of a story, narrative text depicts events, actions, emotions, or situations that people in a culture experience. A story is written to excite, inform, or entertain readers and may report actual or fictitious experiences.

While there are no clear boundaries between categories, narratives include myths, epics, fables, folktales, short stories, novels, tragedy, and comedy. The depictions of events are organized so that the audience can eventually anticipate them. That is, readers must be able to infer motives of characters and the causal relations among events. Most research on narrative text has focused on teaching students to utilize story structure as an organizing framework for understanding critical aspects of the stories they read. Even preschool children use story structure to aid their comprehension. As they get older, children improve in their ability to use it. However, students with learning disabilities are slower to develop this ability. They may not be good at certain tasks, such as picking out important story information, making inferences, and

Captions Journal entry, Personal letters Dialogues / monologues.

1) The Characteristics

This technique has been applied by using story maps and by asking generic questions based on story grammar. It has also been used to move beyond the plot level of stories to teach students with disabilities to identify story themes, a more abstract comprehension level than is typically taught to students with learning disabilities. Narratives normally involve

a) Animate beings as characters with goals and motives

b) Temporal and spatial placements usually presented at the beginning of the story. c) A problem or goal faced by the main character that imitates a major goal.

d) Plots or a series of episodes that eventually resolve the complication e) Impacts upon the reader's emotions and arousal levels

f) Points (e.g., justice, honesty, loyalty), morals, or themes. In particular, narrativeis such a fundamental and ubiquitous form that it may be especially problematic to treat it as a genre. b. Description Text

Description is also often called elaboration. It aims to elaborate what things are as they are or what things do as they do. In other words, description is an elaboration of what real something is. What are elaborated are the form, size, element, and the characteristics. If only it deals with living being then the elaboration can complement with its habitual life. In addition, if it covers something gone or missing, description such is identical to narration. A description text can manifest as elaboration of the process as the process of rain or a procedure about how

from the evaporation, dew or from the fall of rain itself. The process like that is tending to be cycle rather than the procedure that cannot be placed randomly as in the procedure of how to

make a paper. Occasionally for describing something needs

definition and classification. What is defined usually as technical term, particular term contains definition or certain concept in certain specialized science. Whereas the classification is the group of something into its class, it is suitable with certain criteria. In context of science, description text holds a prominent role. It is able to give illustration in table, figure, graphic, diagram, object or area of study.

1) The Characteristics

Linguistically, description text has features as follows:

a) It is dominated by simple present tense. This is caused by a factual of description text itself. Exemplified if the temperature in the desert in the day is hot then every people will say it hot.

b) It does not exploit human kind so that the more important is the main what is described not the man who describing.

c) Conjunction such as firstly, secondly is used merely for setting the idea not for stating the sequence.

it will be a relation between the tree and the parts of tree like root, trunk, leaves, and branch. It much more makes use of relational and material verbs. Besides for stating identification in description, relational verb is also used for making a definition. e.g. Deserts are very dry and hot regions where only few animals and plants can live.

c.Exposition Text.

There are two kinds of this text, namely analytical and hortatory. First is hortatory which has the communicative purpose to persuade the readers by presenting arguments. The characteristic of this kind is the use of:

1. Emotive words such as alarmed, worried.

2. Words that qualify statement such as usual and probably.

3. Words that link arguments such as: firstly, however, on the other hand, therefore 4. Usually present tense

5. Compound and complex sentence.

Another text is hortatory which has communicative purpose to persuade the readers or listener that something should or should not be the case. The characteristic of this text is the use of:

1. Emotive words such as alarmed, worried.

2. Words that qualify statement such as usual and probably.

6. Modal verbs: can, may, certainly, get, stop. 7. Subjective opinion using pronouns: I and we.

d. Spoof text

Spoof is a text which tells factual story, happened in the past time with unpredictable and funny ending. Its social function is to entertain and share the story. Spoof has generic structure, namely orientation in which the characters, setting and time of the story are established, events which tell what happened, twist which is unexpected thing or funny thing. The characteristic of spoof is the use of:

1. Focusing on people, animals or certain things. 2. Using action verbs; ate, run.

3. Using adverb of time and place 4. Using pst tense

5. Told in chronological order.

4. Micro skill of Writing

1. Follow conventions of spelling, punctuation and capitalization. 2. Use an acceptable core vocabulary and appropriate word order.

3. Use acceptable grammatical systems (i.e. tense, agreement), patterns and rules. 4. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms, with a variety of

7. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose.

8. Convey links and connections between events. Communicate such relations as main ideas, supporting ideas, new information, given information, generalization and exemplification.

9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.

10. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text. 11. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the

audience’s interpretation, using pre-writing devices, using paraphrases and

synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback and using feedback, for revising and editing.

D. Review on the Related Study

According to the study by Hong (2004) “The Effect of Teacher’s Error Feedback on

International Student’s Self-Correction Ability”, teacher’s feedback was the most significant

factors influencing student’s self-correction, compared to proficiency level and performance on

the grammar test. It helps ESL learners’ self correct grammatical error.

E. Rationale

In learning a foreign language, students may think that writing is the most difficult language skill to be learned since it tends to attach more importance to correctness of every kind (word choice, punctuation, and text cohesion, for example). Tribble (1996:3) says that writing is

particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking that precede creating an initial draft. The result of these difficulties is that students try to avoid writing and they do not try their best whenever they are asked to write. They always complained whenever they were asked to write. They seemed to be discouraged to have writing lesson. In short, they tried to avoid it because they were afraid of making many errors in writing and got a bad score. According to the teacher, the problem faced by the students was actually resulted from the lack of grammar mastery.

The condition of students’ grammar mastery is supported by the teacher statement, he

says “Secara umum untuk grammar saat ini, terus terang, tidak mendapatkan perhatian yang

khusus sehingga belum mendapatkan hasil yang memuaskan, karena memang kita belum menemukan teknik yang sesuai untuk bagaimana anak agar dapat mengingat terus dan paham

tentang grammar.”

Meanwhile, from the students themselves, they have problems with the grammar. They said that they are still confused in some grammar points like the use of modal, the use of

pronoun, and the use of past tense. As what has been said by some students “Saya masih

bingung mas untuk menggunakan tenses past sehingga masih salah dalam menuliskan kata kerja

nya”. The other students say; “ Apalagi kalau disuruh menulis, kita pasti kesulitan dan banyak

salah nya di grammar”.

However, writing is a basic language skill that must be learned by students. Therefore, English teachers should find and use the ways that make writing lesson effective. It is very difficult for students to produce a good piece of writing since English is very difficult from Indonesian. In addition, the teacher has not implemented method in teaching writing which can

done wrong or right.

There is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for second language learners to master. The difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also translating these ideas into readable text. In many cases, the students would need intervention from the teachers in terms of not only their writing instructions but also their comments on their submitted drafts in order to identify their own strength and weaknesses, which, in the case of the latter, will make the students know how to go about improving themselves and become effective writers. Thus

feedback can be considered a pedagogical tool for the students’ writing improvement.

Feedback is an essential aspect of any English language writing course. This is especially true now with the predominance of the process approach to writing that requires some kind of second party feedback, usually the instructor, on student drafts. Kroll (2001) describes feedback as one of the two components most central to any writing course with the other being the assignments the students are given. The goal of feedback is to teach skills that help students improve their writing proficiency to the point where they are cognizant of what is expected of them as writers and are able to produce it with minimal errors and maximum clarity.

By considering the reason above, it can be concluded that teacher’s feedback can improve the

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Research Setting 1. The Place of the Research

This classroom action research was carried out in SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta. It is located at Jln. Sumbing VI / 49, Mojosongo, Jebres Surakarta. SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta has three grades of class, namely the tenth grade, the eleventh grade and the twelfth grade. Each grade consists of five classes and each class consists of 39 up to 40 students. Beside fifteen classrooms, the other buildings are library, teacher office, headmaster office, administration office, computer room, language room and mosque.

SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta uses KTSP (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pelajaran) curriculum as the basis of teaching and learning processes. Instructional processes are done in six days from Monday up to Saturday. The students start to learn at 07.00 a.m. They finish the lesson at 01.30 p.m on Monday to Friday, except on Friday they learn from 7 a.m to 10.15 a.m. The students of this school come from different social background but most of their parents work as merchant and factory employee.

This research is conducted in 5 months from February 2010 to June 2010. It includes the pre research, action and activities after the action. It can be arranged as follow:

No. Activity Time of research

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Pre research (interview, and observe English teaching)

Preparation of thesis proposal Pre test

Action 1 Post test 1 Action 2 Post test 2

Analyzing the result

February 2010

February to March 2010 April 2010

April 2010 May 2010 May 2010 May 2010

June to July 2010

B. Subject of The Research

The subject of the research was the students in the eleventh grade of Science Class of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta. The eleventh grades are divided into four classes. They are class IPA 1 up to IPA 4. In this research, the writer chooses IPA 4. This class consists of 33 students, 17 boys and 16 girls.

The method used in this study is classroom action research. For a starting point, it is necessary to give a definition of action research. Relating to his study, the writer uses action research method. Kemmis in Hopkins (1993 : 44) defines the action research as follows:

“Action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in social

situation in order to improve the rationally and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of this practices and the situation in which these

practices are carried out.”

In addition, Hopkins (1993: 44) says that action research combines as substantive act with a research procedure; it is action disciplined by enquiry, a personal attempt at understanding while engaged in a process of improvement and reform. Heidi Watts considers the definition of action research as stated in http: //www.madison.kl 2.wi.us/sod/car/carisandisnot.html, action research is a process in which participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully using the techniques of research. It is based on the following assumptions:

1. teachers and principals work best on problems they have identified for themselves; 2. teachers and principals become more effective when encouraged to examine and

assess their own work and then consider ways of working differently; 3. teachers and principals help each other by working collaboratively;

4. working with colleagues helps teachers and principals in their professional development.

research usually conducted by the teachers, administrators, or other educational professionals for solving a specific problem or for providing information for decision making at local level.

There is a view that an action research is essentially done collaboratively or participatory. Burns (1999: 34) explains that it is important to bear in mind that action research may be carried out through different combinations of people working together: by group of teachers working with university researchers; by teacher-researchers pairs or group working together; by teachers working in partnerships with administrators, students, parents or community members. Cohen and Manion (1994: 189) outline the range of possible roles which can be adopted by action researchers as follows.

“First there is the single teacher operating on her own with her class. She will feel the need for some kind of change or improvement in teaching, learning or organization, for example, and will be in a position to translate her ideas into action in her own

classroom…

Second, action research may be pursued by a group of teachers working cooperatively within one school, though of necessity functioning against a bigger backdrop than the

teacher working solo…

And third, there is the occasion…where teams of teachers work alongside a researcher

or researchers in a sustained relationship, possibly with other interested parties like

advisors, university departments and sponsors on the periphery…”

From the explanation above, the writer makes conclusion that action research is a systematic study and it is a form of self –reflective inquiry undertaken or carried out by the teachers or participants in order to overcome educational problems or to change the things related to educational problems for better improvement.

The model of action research in this classroom action research uses the model developed by Kemmis and Taggart (in Hopkins, 1993 : 48). There are four steps in this model of action research namely; identifying problem and planning the action, implementing and observing the action, reflecting the result of the observation and revising the plan for the following step. As shown in diagram below;

Plan

Reflection

Step I Action

& Observation

Revised Plan Reflection

Step II Action

&

According to Kemmis and Taggart (in Hopkins, 1993 : 48), the procedures of each steps can be explained as follows.

1. Identifying the Problem

To start an action research project, the researcher needs to decide the problem. In this research, the problems were identified after doing the pre-research and interviewing the English

teachers. It referred to the students’ grammar mastery which was still low and needed

improvement.

2. Planning

The most important outcome of the planning phase is a detailed plan of the action the researcher intends to take or the improvement he intends to make. Here, the researcher prepared

everything needed in doing the action in order to improve the students’ grammar mastery. Inthis

research, the researcher was the teacher.

Since the time was limited, the use of teacher’s feedback to improve the students’

grammar mastery in this research was adapted directly to the curriculum. It means the students were asked to write based on the topics –spoof- decided by the researcher which was in accordance with the curriculum. Nevertheless, the teaching of the topics (the explanation of the grammar, generic structure, and vocabulary needed) was delivered in the written and oral form so that it would not give any burden to students.

1. The researcher gave the students a pre-test and evaluated the result of the test. 2. Then, he made lesson plans that would be used to teach the students in order to

improve their grammar on composition.

3. After making lesson plans, he provided the students with the copy of feedback codes and its meaning and the examples in sentences. Besides, he also explained

the guidelines of teacher’s feedback.

4. The researcher implemented the lesson plans he had made.

5. Having finished applying all the lesson plans, the researcher gave a post-test and evaluated the result of the test.

6. Then, he compared the result of the pre-test and the post-test by using the mean score in order to identify the improvement.

3. Action Implementation

In carrying out the action, the researcher did the planning which had been made. He implemented the lesson plans he had made. He did all the things written in the lesson plans and changed them if things didn’t go precisely as expected. The writer did the teaching and learning

process by implementing teaching technique in improving grammar mastery on writing by using feedback.

The implementation of the action planned in this research was held in two cycles carried

out to overcome the students’ main problem in grammar mastery. Each cycle included several

implementation was presented as follows.

1. The researcher explained the steps of writing namely pre-writing, writing, and post-writing or revising to students since the activity instructed dealt with composing.

2. The researcher gave examples of pre-writing by giving the topic of text located in orientation; as the first part of spoof text. This activity was done in order that students could make a composition based on its generic structure namely orientation, events and twist.

3. The researcher explained the grammatically correct sentences which were taken from the topic of spoof text. Since the sentences used mostly were in the form of Past Tense, the researcher put much attention on verb formation (V2).

4. The researcher asked some students to make their own sentences then they were asked to mention the verb in the past form.

5. The researcher explained the teacher’s feedback in order that students could recognize it

in the form of either underlining the errors or giving codes on the errors.

6. The researcher asked students to correct the errors which were given underlined feedback on the composition, while on the next cycle, they were asked to correct the errors which were given both underlined and coded feedback.

7. After doing the correction on composition, the researcher and students discussed what they had done, reviewed materials and did evaluation.

8. The writer asked about the students’ feeling and their comment dealing with the teacher’s

Another aspect isthe weaknesses of teacher’s feedback.

a. It requires much time allotment by the researcher to give feedback to all students’ composition.

Since teacher’s feedback is used by the researcher in the class which consisted of 33 students; considered as a big class, it needs more time and energy of the teacher to check and give feedbackto each students’ writing task, so what the teacher does by implementing teacher’s feedback takes time and needs much effort. It is in line with Ferris et.al (2001) who stated that providing coded feedback to students’ writing requires more time and effort.

b. Some students still find difficulties in memorizing all the error feedback codes written and copied by the researcher.

Because there are too many codes given on the grammatical errors, students get difficulty to remember so they often forget the meaning of each code. Also, too many codes can make students frustrated because they have to deal with symbols and markings on their writing. Based on the literature about students’ responses, Ferris (2002) saysthat students sometimes found that teacher’s marking systems confusing or cumbersome.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND SUGGESTION

This chapter presents the conclusion, implication and suggestions of the classroom action research conducted in the eleventh grade of IPA 4 of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in academic year 2009/2010. It presents the final discussion from the research result.

A. Conclusion

Teacher’s feedback is a suitable technique to improve students’ grammarmastery at the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta. The improvement of students’ grammar mastery is shown in students’ achievement. The research questions cover: (1) The extent to which teacher’s feedback improve students’ grammar mastery (2) What strenghts and weaknesses of teacher’s feedback.

The first is about does and to what extent teacher’s feedback improve students’ grammarmastery.The writer’s analysis shows that the implementation of teacher’s feedback on writing can improve the students’ ability in correcting the errors on the composition. The improvement of the students’ grammar mastery can be seen from the result of the tests. The mean score of the second post-test done at the end of the action shows that there is significant improvement of the students’ grammar mastery. The mean score of the second post test is 68.48. It is better than the mean score of the first post test result which is 58.78.

The second is about the strengths and the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback. There are two strengths of teacher’s feedback as follows:

(1) Teacher’s feedback makes students more accurate in writing.

Since the teacher’s feedback is directed to the grammatical errors on writing, it is helpful in enabling the students to minimize the grammatical errors and improve the quality of their writing and it is a fast and accurate way for students in making correction. Teacher’s feedback on coding form can be used as the clue for students to correct the errors, so, the students recognize and correct them more easily.

(2) Teacher’s feedback makes students more aware in their writing task.

Teacher’s feedback gives students more information about their writing weaknesses on the aspect of grammar. It is implemented either by using underlining or coding feedback on their grammatical errors on writing. It also raises the students’ responses because they want to receive error feedback from their teacher.

While the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback are as follows:

(1) It requires much time allotment by the researcher to give feedback to all students’ composition and is time consuming.

Since teacher’s feedback is used by the researcher in the class which consists of thirty three students; considered as a big class, it needs more time and energy of the teacher to check and give feedback to each students’ writing task, so, it is a hard effort for teachers to implement teacher’s feedback as it is used in a big class.

(2) Some students still find difficulties in memorizing all the error feedback’s codes written and copied by the researcher.

Because there are too many codes given on the grammatical errors, students get difficulty to remember so they often forget about the meaning of each code. Also, too many codes can make students frustrated because they have to deal with symbols and markings on their writing.

B. Implication

In teaching writing, teacher’s feedback has important implication on students’ preference on feedback. The use of teacher’s feedback in giving treatment on students’ composition is an effective way to improve the students’ ability in correcting grammatical errors in composition. The teacher’s feedback can improve the student’s accuracy in writing and improve student’s self correction in correcting the grammatical errors appearing in their composition. The teacher can also give the treatment by giving underlining or coding feedback based on the student’s level of English mastery.

In ESL writing teachers should implement both coded and non-coded feedbacks continuously and have to give much attention to the students’ grammatical error. Teachers can also ask student in correcting their error themselves and in discussing the appearance of error in peer-editing. Student can make a group of four to find and to correct the errors.

From the process of the implementation of both underlining and coding feedback, teacher can also make more interesting games or techniques in the class in order that students learn English grammar more easily. Since the coding feedback needs much time to be delivered and explained, the teacher can use another media in introducing all codes in order that students can remember them more easily.

C. Suggestion

Based on the conclusion and the implication stated above, the researcher would like to give some suggestions dealing with the teacher’s feedback on grammatical errors in student’s composition.. Hopefully, the suggestions will be useful for whomsoever willing to improve students’ grammar mastery including teachers, students, other researchers, and institutions.

1. For teachers

. Teachers should give more attention when implementing teacher’s feedback on each student’s writing and teacher should be more creative in implementing teacher’s feedback and in explaining teacher’s feedback to the students. In addition, teachers should be active in giving individual feedback to students since it will mean something important for them.

Teacher should implement teacher’s feedback not only on the aspect of grammar in writing, but also on the aspect of organization, content and other writing aspects.

2. For students

The students should not be afraid of making errors and mistakes in the use of language in writing because making errors and mistakes is part of learning. To improve their grammar mastery on writing on the level of accuracy, what all students have to do is practicing writing as much as possible. Students make errors, they can fix by themselves.

The students should also take their time to study the feedback codes in order that they find, recognize and then correct the error on their composition more easily.

3. For other researchers

This study discusses the implementation of teacher’s feedback as a means of improving students’ grammar mastery in writing. It is expected that other researchers have much time to conduct teacher’s feedback and have better media to implement this feedback. The researcher also hopes that other researchers can apply this technique by collaborating other techniques in delivering materials, for example by using various interactive and interesting games in teaching grammar. Besides, other researchers can use this technique to improve students’ writing skill focused on other aspects of writing skill, such as syntax, organization and content. They can also conduct researches, experimental researches or comparative ones for example, comparing this technique with other techniques in teaching writing.

4. For institutions

SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta should encourage and support the English teachers to improve the quality of their teaching. It can be done by providing facilities needed by both teachers and students so that the teaching and learning process runs well. The institution should also facilitate various media and material supporting the teaching and learning process, so that it runs more efficiently and effectively. Besides, the institution should hold regular meeting with the English teachers in order to discuss about the problems they face in teaching and to find out the best solutions.