T1 112009107 Full text
A STUDY OF THE STUDENTS’ VIEWS TOWARD WRITTEN
AND ORAL CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN WRITING
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Herinta Dyan Pratiwi
112009107
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2014
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A STUDY OF THE STUDENTS’ VIEWS TOWARD WRITTEN
AND ORAL CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN WRITING
Herinta Dyan Pratiwi
Abstract
The issue of which feedback, oral or written corrective feedback, is effective for
students’ writing improvement both in the process and the quality of product is
still questionable, since each feedback has its own features. Oral corrective
feedback has the strength of providing face-to-face conversing in which offering
the students opportunity to discuss complex ideas. On the other hand, written
corrective feedback get the excess of improving students’ accuracy and providing
a guideline with sufficient information for writing process. Inspired by the issue,
the study was held to explore The English Department students’ perspectives
towards the feedbacks in proposal writing. The participants of this study were 20
students of Satya Wacana Christian University who were taking proposal writing
class. All of the 20 students were interviewed. The findings showed that students
found both written and oral corrective feedback effective in generating ideas,
improving accuracy, and facilitating sufficient information for revision. However,
students preferred written corrective feedback better than the oral corrective
feedback.
Keywords:
oral corrective feedback, written corrective feedback, students’
perspective, writing.
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INTRODUCTION
Most teachers provide students with written feedback especially in writing.
Written feedback is usually full of red ink and marks like circles and underlines,
and short comments or suggestions. Here, students often get confused of the
meaning of the marks in their paper. Ironically, those marks were often abandoned
by the students.
Written corrective feedback is often impaired by a large number of
students’ error categories like grammatical errors and jumping ideas. Therefore,
the efficacy of such feedback is still being questioned. In 1996, Truscott found out
that written corrective feedback (WCF) in ESL student writing was ineffective
and harmful that it should be ignored (Bitchener and Knoch, 2008). On the other
hand, the study of Bitchener and Knoch (2008) in two private language schools
and at the English Department of a university in Auckland, found that WCF had a
valuable effect to improve students’ accuracy in using the target functions of the
English article system and that they maintained the level of accuracy when writing
a new text seven weeks after they got the treatment.
Another study of Bitchener, Young, and Cameron (2005), found that 53
adult migrant students of a university in New Zealand, in the process of acquiring
new linguistic forms, may perform them with accuracy in one occasion, but fail to
do the same on other similar occasions. They may show an improvement of
acquiring new linguistic forms in the revision process of their writing, but they
fail to implement the new linguistic forms in their writing process of a new text. It
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showed that feedback must provide sufficient information which could be easily
used by students. Thus, the information students got from the provision of
feedback could help them to improve their capability in the present and future
writing.
In contrast, oral corrective feedback has produced clear and positive
effects for the learners by focusing on a single error category (Lyster in Bitchener
& Knoch, 2008). Conversational situation is interactive, allowing people to
coordinate with one another in a communication in order to proceed properly
(Appelbaum & Musial, 2005). As a result, oral corrective feedback is needed in a
writing course in order to improve the effectiveness of feedback provision in the
students’ paper revision. Since active interaction was included in oral corrective
feedback, it will give many chances for the students to ask more questions related
to their errors orally. It was shown in the study of Appelbaum and Musial (2005),
80% of 20 writing students enrolled in a psychology of language class prefer to
talk with someone to help them improve the clarity of their writing.
Oral corrective feedback will provide the students an opportunity to
communicate with the reader face to face. Clark and Krych in Appelbaum and
Musial (2005) declared that speakers are affected by their conversational partners.
Conversation in oral corrective feedback is interactive which allows students to
get further understanding by nodding, asking questions, and gesturing. It is
essential because it impacts the students for what they will do next in their paper
revision.
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Realizing that feedback is crucial in improving students’ writing, I decided
to conduct a study on how oral and written corrective feedbacks work on students’
writing. The aim of the study was to examine which feedback brought beneficial
effects for the students’ development in the writing process and the quality of the
writing product in their proposal and report writing class. The study was guided
by the research question “what kind of feedback is beneficial to improve the
students’ proposal writing at the English Department, Satya Wacana Christian
University?”
LITERATURE REVIEW
Second or Foreign Language Writing
Writing is a combined skill which focuses on the mechanism, syntactical,
lexical, drawing conclusion, and the organization discourse (Williams, 2007). A
writer has to be able to convey their ideas into a written product in order to be
understood by the reader as a part of communication. Here, writing is not only a
product but also a process which include planning, drafting, revising, editing and
evaluating (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012).
Some experts believe that writing is the pivotal academic skill students
develop in their education (Nagin in Appelbaum & Musial, 2005). Most students’
assignments and tests are in the written forms. Students should be able to express
their thoughts in writing. It is easy for students to express their ideas in daily
conversation, but when they attempt to write their ideas in a paper they find many
difficulties. Stringing up words into a correct sentence may be easy. In fact, it’s
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hard to get the readers understanding when a writer has to convey their ideas
sentence by sentence. The main point is not about how the word stringed into a
correct sentence, but it’s generally about how the sentences could be a medium for
the writer to interact with their readers.
Writing includes both as a process and product which is not only
considered as a physical act but also a work that demands the writer to deliver and
organize their thoughts clearly to the reader (Sokolik, 2003). Here, writing has a
role as a product in which the writer can be communicate with the reader
indirectly (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012). In an ESL and/or EFL academic
writing courses, students often find difficulties in delivering their thoughts since it
is different from their daily conversational situation where they could express
their thoughts spontaneously and easily. If the writing product is not well
organized, the writer might fail to get the readers’ understanding. In other words,
the writer fails to communicate with the readers. It is not only a media that the
writer could express their thoughts in a written paper, but also how that written
paper can be well understood by the readers. Therefore, to have a good writing, a
writer needs to do the process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and
evaluating (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012; Mi-mi, 2009)
There are three concepts of writing that a writer should focus on: language
structure, text functions, and creative expression (Hyland in Soori, et al, 2012).
First, the focus on language structure involves linguistic knowledge, vocabulary
choices, syntactic patterns, and cohesive devices. Grammatically correctness is the
basis in every writing process. Second, the focus on text function is to help the
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students in developing a paragraph by making the topic sentence, supporting
sentences, transitions and developing another type of paragraphs in academic
writing. Third, the focus on creative expressions takes more on the writer rather
than the form in which the writer are freely to develop their ideas and state their
opinions. A creative expression is like sharing the writer’s personal thoughts to
the reader about their own view on a topic (Hyland, 2000). In this case, the writer
should be aware of the connection between their own ideas with the topic they are
discussing about in their academic writing.
Teacher’s Feedback in Students’ Writing
Since writing academically is hard to do, many students’ errors cannot be
avoided. In a writing process, some errors always occur, for instance in grammar,
words choices, unorganized ideas, punctuation, spelling, and even repetition of
ideas. The teacher has to concern about the students’ errors in their writing in
order to develop the students’ writing capability. Therefore, teacher has to provide
the students with feedback in order to help them in revising, editing, organizing,
and evaluating their writing product (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012). However,
teacher often finds difficulties in giving feedback due to the large number of
students’ writing products and the various kinds of mistakes that the students
made.
Most writing teachers insist that providing feedback in EFL writing is the
most difficult and time consuming but it is seen as pedagogically useful to
motivate the students for their writing improvements (Hyland & Hyland, 2001).
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Teachers’ feedback provision is an essential concern to any teachers of writing in
improving students’ learning with helpful writing command. Feedback provision
also has a function as scaffolding provided by the teachers to build students’
confidence in the learning process. Those who get involved in second language
writing field argued that feedback is a pivotal factor for giving approval to the
students in learning, so that the students are able to evaluate their own errors and
revise their paper where necessary (Hyland & Hyland in Soori, et al, 2012).
The concern of feedback provision is in the way of how the teachers have
to provide a fruitful feedback for the student, so that it will give a positive effect
for the students’ writing development process and the quality of their writing
products. Therefore, teachers’ role is not only as a feedback provider but also as
an examiner, reader, critic, judge, consultant, coach, guide, and facilitator (Soori,
Janfaza, Zamani, 2012).
There are many ways to provide feedback for students’ writing
improvements, but the most common that we could see in many academic writing
courses, such as proposal and report writing course, is written corrective feedback
provision which could be a critical feedback for students’ accuracy. Whereas,
written corrective feedback provision sometimes could cause confusion among
the students because it is lack of oral interaction. On the other hand, oral
corrective feedback is the one which could fill students’ needs of direct interaction
between the students and teachers. In this case, the highest aim of feedback
provision is to move the students to be able to handle their own writing, be aware
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of their own errors, and in their errors correction and evaluation (Soori, et al,
2012). In other words, feedback starts from the teachers and lead to the students.
Written Corrective Feedback
Feedback as an essential factor in writing becomes a wide concern for
writing teachers as an only way to respond to the students’ paper. For a long time,
written corrective feedback appears as the most common feedback given by
teachers to the students in an ESL/EFL writing class in order to respond to the
students’ writing product. Of course, as a traditional feedback, it has its own
advantages which other feedback cannot perform. It provides a critical
instructional opportunity for the students to achieve a practical one-on-one
communication that might be impossible in day-to-day class activities (Mi-mi,
2009). Since feedback provision is often impaired by the large number of students
with their various errors, written corrective feedback provision might become a
practical feedback which can overcome this problem.
It has been argued long that second or foreign language writing teachers
and researchers who get involved in corrective feedback field argued written
corrective feedback (WCF) helps the students to gain and act mastery in the use of
syntactical forms in the target language (Bitchener & Knoch, 2008). They believe
that the students will be able to improve the accuracy in their writing product.
Hence, the focus of feedback provision is more in how to provide a useful WCF
for the students rather than find other types of feedback to be applied in a writing
course.
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In WCF, teachers often correct the students’ errors in every single word
(give a circle or underline the errors on grammar or spelling) and might be giving
them a short critical comment in their writing. Negative comments are often given
by teachers to the students in their writing without any balance of positive
suggestions which will not be valuable and give positive effects for the students’
writing improvement. Receiving a low quality of suggestion and a critical
feedback will lead the students into negative emotions (Cafarella & Barnett in
Gulfidan Can, 2011). Unluckily, students will more likely ignore the feedback.
Even worse, the marks in WCF often drag the students’ motivation and interest in
writing getting down. WCF may confuse the students in how they should deal
with such marks or comments on their paper in the revising process. Positive
feedback which integrates with a critical one will give the students the feeling of
encouragement, confidence, and acceptance in their writing (Kumar & Stracke in
Gulfidan Can, 2011). That’s why teachers have to combine both negative and
positive comments on the students’ writing in order to make it balanced since it
will be useful for the students’ written work (Eyres in Gulfidan Can, 2011)
Even though written corrective feedback might appear as a critical one of
errors correction and shows the students in which part they make mistakes that
should be revised, its contribution to the students’ writing improvement is still
unclear. According to Ferris in Hyland & Hyland (2001), although three quarters
of teachers’ comments on students’ papers are apparently used by the students,
only half of them could be considered as an improvement. It shows that written
corrective feedback still couldn’t work maximally to improve the students’
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awareness of their own errors. It might occur because of the lack of direct
interaction between students and the teachers.
In the context of L2 writing, feedback which focuses on errors correction
is seen as an essential part that should give the students benefit, in both short and
long term. Commonly, WCF is given with the focus on linguistic matters rather
than in how to develop and generate more ideas in students’ writing product. It
has been long regarded by those who are working in area of corrective feedback
that WCF helps the students to learn and be able to master the use of linguistic
forms and structures (Bitchener & Knoch, 2008). Six studies (Ashwell, 2008;
Bitchener et all., 2005; Fathman & Walley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Sheen,
2006) found that students who received a single WCF meaningfully improved the
accuracy of their writing and that the benefits increased from this input are not
only temporary but also clearly found in a new piece of writing.
Oral Corrective Feedback
Different from WCF, oral corrective feedback which could be considered
as an interactive feedback allows the students to have a direct discussion with the
teacher about their writing. It might give an unlimited chance for the students to
ask further questions about their paper. Many teachers believed that one-on-one
teacher-student meeting are beneficially more effective because it gives chances
for clarification, instruction, and negotiation (Ferris, 2007). Unfortunately, oral
corrective feedback cannot be provided in a short time since it is more time-
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consuming in face-to-face interaction between the students and the teachers
individually.
In particular, students prefer to talk to someone in order to discuss and to
get advices about their paper in the revising process. The benefit of oral corrective
feedback compared with written corrective feedback is that it provides a direct
communication which allows the students to talk and ask question freely about
their writing. Conversation is interactive and it requires people to work together
effectively in order to communicate properly. Social coordination is needed to
plan of what they say and will do next (Bavelas & Chovil in Appelbaum & Musial
2005). People not only create the content of their conversation (the who, what,
when. where) but they also provide a proof of their understanding by nodding,
asking questions, gesturing, among other techniques (Appelbaum & Musial,
2005).
Oral communication and writing are used as a means of communicating
ideas to another person. In one-to-one oral communication, people usually
introduce their ideas step by step, to ensure that their ideas are mutually
understood (Appelbaum & Musial, 2005). Without the ability to interact,
misunderstanding is much more likely to happen. In this case, oral corrective
feedback provides a face to face communication for the students to avoid a
misunderstanding phenomenon that might occur and to ask critical questions
directly related to their errors they made in their paper. As Bitchener & Knoch,
2008, stated that direct feedback is more helpful since it can reduce students’
confusion when they fail to gain understanding, provide them with adequate
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information to reveal more complex errors, and offer more quick feedback on
hypotheses that have been made. Hence, the students will be given a further and
clear explanation of what they will do next in the revising process of their writing.
METHODOLOGY
This study was qualitative descriptive research. It started with the
assumption that the research topic must be understood holistically. Its purpose
was to describe a phenomenon of students’ perspectives of feedbacks provision
and the effects of each feedback in a proposal writing class.
Context of the Study
This study was conducted at The Faculty of Language and Literature,
Satya Wacana Christian University which is located in Salatiga, Central Java,
Indonesia. The subjects of this study were the English Department students. They
were taking Proposal and Report Writing course.
Participants
The participants were 20 students of Proposal and Report Writing class
because the students are advanced learners who are at least in their fourth year of
their study in the department. They are 15 female students and 5 male students.
Each participant was interviewed in a different place and time.
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Instruments of Data Collection
The writer used interview as the instrument for this study to get the data.
The interviews were recorded. The interview questions were about the students’
perspective toward the kind of feedback their teachers provided in their Proposal
Report and Writing course.
Data Analysis
The data from the recorded interview were transcribed. The data were
displayed descriptively. It was described based on the participants’ words and
stories that were translated and presented as extracts. The data analysis was
interpretative analysis by categorizing data according to the emerging themes.
FINDINGS
In this study the writer found that students have different views about the
feedbacks they got in their proposal and report writing class. They revealed that
each feedback brought them different effects. Oral corrective feedback showed
more influence on the content. On the other hand, written corrective feedback
showed more influence on the detail of the writing.
The writer divided four emerging subtopics in order to show the
comparison of oral and written corrective feedbacks’ effects on students’ writing
according to the students’ views in this study. The first subtopic was facilitating in
generating idea, the second subtopic was improving students’ accuracy, the third
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subtopic was facilitating sufficient information for revision, and the last subtopic
was students’ top choices of feedbacks technique to use in the future.
Facilitating in Generating Ideas
The participants of the study viewed that interactive conversation, as oral
feedback provision, helped in generating ideas. They generate ideas by listing,
finding sources, brainstorming, mind mapping, etc. The following is an extract
from the interview of a participant who agreed that oral feedback was beneficial
for facilitating in generating ideas.
Extract 1
“I often get confused in how to organize my ideas and connect it to each other. So,
to overcome it I used to go to see a friend who also write proposal and discuss it
together since my teacher is too busy for extra consultation”
(Participant J)
In contrast, written corrective feedback didn’t show significant effect for
facilitating in generating ideas, since, there’s no interactive communication in it.
The following is extract interview of participant who considered written feedback
didn’t give a significant effect in the process of generating ideas.
Extract 2
“Written feedback limits my opportunity to ask the supervisor, especially, in how
I should relate my ideas with the topic”
(Participant A)
Eleven out of 20 participants like to talk to someone about what they are
writing to enhance their ideas. The writer concluded that they believe that oral
interaction could facilitate generating ideas. Students found that the process of
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writing is much more difficult. In the process, learners often found difficulties in
deciding their main point and organizing and developing their ideas.
In my analysis, oral corrective feedback gave the learners an opportunity
to talk about their writing content freely and deeply. Learners could ask questions
and clarify directly how the ideas should be developed and organized. Giving
feedback in the part of generating ideas is different with the part of grammatical
errors which could be given through written language. Ideas are too wide to be
discussed through written language. It needs a deep working through without any
communication limits. As participant J said, if she talked to her friends and
teacher face to face, she could gain more ideas to develop her topic. Here, the
writer could see that to elaborate more ideas, it needs unlimited interaction.
Another result why oral corrective feedback could facilitate in generating
ideas is that the learners could measure how well they make their audiences
understand their writing. Oral interaction provided an opportunity to get
immediate feedback on what the audiences currently understand and how this
understanding might be different with the learner’s intention. Through oral
conversation between the writer and the audiences, writer would know how to rearrange their ideas to more focus in delivering their intention. Having oral
conversation gave much contribution to avoid jumping ideas.
The finding indicated that oral corrective feedback was beneficial to
facilitate an easier way to transfer the knowledge. The finding was similar to
Clark & Krych in Appelbaum & Musial (2005) who found that people specifically
introduce ideas step by step in face to face communication to ensure that they are
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mutually understood. An interactive direct communication between the writer and
the facilitator was needed since generating ideas is complex enough to be
discussed. It was like finding a solution for a problem in which a discussion was
important to get the deal and to avoid misunderstanding.
Improving Students’ Accuracy
In EFL writing, accuracy is needed since students have to consider the use
of targeted linguistic forms and structures. Writing is not only about how the
message being understood by audiences, but it’s also about how the writers
organize their words into correct grammatical matters. The participants’ views in
this study showed that written corrective feedback (WCF) did help them
improving their accuracy. The following is extract interview of participants who
agreed that WCF did have advantage in improving accuracy.
Extract 3
“Through written feedback I could be sure that my supervisor had read my whole
writing, because it can be seen from the underlines, circles, and comments on my
paper. I can see clearly in which part I should revise and improve. It shows in
detail what kind of grammatical errors I had made”
(Participant L)
On the other hand, there were 6 students who thought oral corrective
feedback was harmful in the part of accuracy improvement. Oral corrective
feedback didn’t show satisfactory effects on students’ writing. The following is
extract interview of a participant who argued that oral corrective feedback did not
help the improvement in accuracy.
Extract 4
“My supervisor often forgot what he had said in our last consultation and didn’t
give specific comments to show in what part I made grammatical errors”
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(Participant N)
Fourteen out of 20 participants who received WCF from their proposal and
report writing supervisor, said that WCF had the strength to help them improving
and acquiring the targeted linguistic forms and structures. Besides developing
deeper ideas to be discussed, students have to consider the grammatical
correctness in their writing. The participants of this study are all EFL writing
students. In this context, accuracy is an essential part of writing which couldn’t be
abandoned.
Hence, in EFL writing context, delivering the ideas of a writing product to
audiences could be successfully achieved if it had a correct targeted linguistic
forms and structures. English as a foreign language is not used in daily life
communication in which students need to think about accuracy in the language
they used for writing. The correctness of grammatical matters and word choices
could influence the quality of students’ writing product and the audiences’
understanding. Good writing product does not only have an interesting topic
discussion with a lot of great ideas in it, but it also has an organized structure.
Since it was EFL writing in which students used a foreign language that is
not used in daily life communication, writing students more likely found obstacles
in grammatical matters. They might be influenced by their L1. In this case,
supervisor who acts as a reader and also facilitator should be careful in providing
feedback to improve students’ accuracy.
In my analysis, WCF also had a position in which the students could be
assured that their supervisor did totally read their writing. It could be proved
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through marks and comments they got on their draft. Discussing about
grammatical errors is different from developing ideas since it needs to be showed
in detail. The marks students got on their draft could help them to remember one
by one in which part they made errors. It helped them in the process of revision.
The finding showed that most participants viewed WCF effective in
helping them improving the grammar accuracy of their writing. The finding was
similar to the study of Bitchener & Knoch in 2008 which found that WCF enables
ESL writing students to improve the accuracy. Thus, the improvement of
students’ accuracy could be reached through WCF provision that offered detail
knowledge of grammatical matters. Here, students could see what grammatical
errors they had made clearly one by one on their drafts.
Facilitating Sufficient Information for Revision
One of the steps in the process of writing is revision. What writers needed
in order to be able to revise their writing is information they got from their
facilitator. Through the information, writers will be able to know what exactly are
needed to be revised in their writing. The result of this study demonstrated that
WCF facilitated ED proposal and report writing students with sufficient
information to help them in the process of revision. The following extract
provides the participants’ statements who agreed that WCF facilitated sufficient
information for revision.
Extract 5
“I just memorize what the supervisor said in the consultation time, but sometimes
I can’t get what he meant. I brought my soft file and bold the error part but his
feedback isn’t specific. What he said in the previous consultation was always
different from today’s, I think it’s better if he wrote down everything he said.”
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(Participant Q)
Compared to WCF, students argued that oral corrective feedback tends to
be forgettable. It indicates that the information in the feedback is not sufficient. It
was like when someone’s talking and the interlocutor didn’t record the
information of the conversation, it may become an incomplete memory of
information. The following extract is one of participants’ statements who claimed
that oral corrective feedback didn’t provide sufficient information for their
revision.
Extract 6
“I got both oral and written feedback for my writing. Both are helpful, but the
written one seems more detail and easier to remember with all marks and
comments on the error parts rather than the oral feedback.”
(Participant B)
There were 14 participants out of 20 who agreed that written feedback did
provide them sufficient information which they could use to develop their writing
product. As a pedagogical sort, teacher written feedback is drew to bring a heavy
informational load, providing commentary on the form and content of a text to
encourage students to enhance their writing and merge their learning (Hyland &
Hyland, 2001). The information should offer the aid of an expert, take roles as a
guidance which provides opportunities for the students to see how others respond
to their work and learn from the responses.
Written corrective feedback had clear instructions to be understood by the
students. Students could read the comments many times. Indirectly, the written
comments had a role as a list of a guideline in which students would know what to
do next for further writing process. It would be different from those who received
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oral comments. Practically, since it was provided in the written form, it gave an
ease for the students to work in the process of revision without missing any point
that they needed.
In this study, the writer found that those who received oral corrective
feedback mostly said that they face difficulties to implement the information they
got from the evaluator in revising their writing. It happened since their supervisor
was inconsistent with their comments and suggestions. More often, most students
found that their supervisor did not read the whole writing product. The supervisor
only gave general comments of the content but not specify it that could lead the
students into confusion.
Even worse, many of them asked their proposal writing students to change
the idea for many times whereas they had already confirmed it in the previous
consultation. It showed that the students got trapped in the supervisor
inconsistency which could destruct students’ interest in writing. By providing
written corrective feedback, the students could clarify if there were an
inconsistency from the previous consultation with the next consultation.
The writer also thought that WCF offers the students a clear step to follow
for their revision. Since, the comments written were based on the part that should
be revised. So, if the students forgot what they should do next, they would look at
their draft.
Top Choices of Feedbacks Technique to Use in the Future
In the last subtopics, the writer presented students’ preferences of
feedback technique to use in the future writing. In any pedagogical genre, in
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choosing a technique a teacher should consider who the target is and what they
need. In this study, the writer found that 5 out of 20 participants prefer the
combination of oral and written feedback, 6 out of 20 participants prefer oral
corrective feedback alone, and 9 out of 20 participants prefer written corrective
feedback alone to be implemented in the future of proposal writing.
Those who preferred the combination of both oral and written feedback
claimed that it would be better since it could complete each other. WCF took role
as a written guideline, whereas the oral corrective feedback took a role as
explanation of the guideline. The following extract presents the participant
statement that preferred technique of using the combination of oral and written
corrective feedback.
Extract 7
“I prefer both oral and written feedback in balance to be given to the proposal
writing students. Written is used to give an ease for the students and the
supervisor in remembering which parts needs to be revised and improved, what
kind of errors it is, while the oral feedback is used for the explanation for the
written one”
(Participant R)
Six participants that chose the provision of oral corrective feedback alone
argued that it gave them more opportunity to ask freely. Since, it was a
conversational condition. The following is the extract interview of a participant
who preferred oral corrective feedback to be used in the future.
Extract 8
“I prefer oral feedback. It gives me more opportunity to ask my supervisor freely
and shows my disagreement directly”
(Participant A)
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A conversational condition did allow the students to ask and clarified
directly to the supervisor. They rated conversation as a useful writing technique
more highly rather than the written one. The following extract is the participant’s
statement why written corrective feedback tends to be not preferable.
“I think written feedback is unclear. There’s no interaction between the students
and the teacher. It limits my opportunity to ask. Especially in how to relate my
idea with my topic”
(Participant A)
The results showed that the highest preference of feedback techniques to
be used was written corrective feedback alone. Nine participants who preferred
this technique mostly had the same idea that WCF was more specific and
unforgettable since it was in the written form. The following extract provides a
statement of a participant who believed that WCF is better to be used in the future
writing.
Extract 9
“I prefer written feedback because through written feedback it would be shown
that the supervisor had read all of my writing and they must give marks or
comments in the every error’s part. So, it will be clearer since I won’t forget in
which part the errors are. Grammatically, it really helps and is more specific”
(Participant O)
Compared to those who did not agree with oral corrective feedback alone,
the following extract shows another participant’s statement. It shows how oral
corrective feedback should not be used in the future of writing feedback
provision. The content of oral corrective feedback was forgettable.
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Extract 10
“Oral feedback tends to be unclear since the supervisor often forgot what they had
said in the previous consultation. Oral feedback also takes time since it burdened
by the number of students”
(Participant R)
The study found that the provision of feedback should concern about who
the target is. It should consider the need of the target appropriately. Teacher
couldn’t use a feedback technique as they pleased, since the one who need and use
the information of the feedback was students.
The writer believed that inappropriate provision of feedback would give an
impact to the quality of students’ writing product at the end. Each feedback had
their own function and effect on students writing. In the case of ED proposal
writing students, oral corrective feedback had the aid of facilitated generating
idea. On the other hand, written corrective feedback had the function to assist the
students in improving accuracy, providing sufficient information as a guideline in
revising, and assuring them that the supervisor had completely read their writing.
CONCLUSION
The aim of the study was to explore The English Department students’
perspectives towards the feedbacks in proposal and report writing course. In order
to examine the feedback effects, interview was used. The study revealed that oral
corrective feedback and written corrective feedback brought students different
effects in their writing. The findings also showed that each feedback worked
differently in the students’ writing based on their need in which to be developed
and improved.
22
Each participant had their different response toward the feedbacks. It could
be seen from the interview results; first, generating ideas was achieved by oral
corrective feedback. Interactive conversation did help the students developing and
organizing their ideas. Generating ideas in writing need unlimited communication
in which students could gain more valuable ideas since ideas is too wide. Second,
in the case of improving students’ accuracy, written corrective feedback had the
strength to help students improving and acquiring the targeted linguistic forms
and structures. It showed in the findings that WCF was systematically more detail
to show the grammatical errors in students’ writing rather than oral corrective
feedback. Third, compared to oral corrective feedback, WCF provided sufficient
information in the revision process. In this case, WCF had the role as a guideline
in which students could follow and remember of what they needed for their
revision. Last, written corrective feedback had been the top choice of feedback
technique to be used in the future based on the ED proposal writing students’
preference. The participants argued that they could ensure that their writing
product had been completely read by their supervisor through written corrective
feedback. It indicated that they had been given reliable feedback for their further
writing.
Reflecting to the result of this study, which indicated that different
techniques of feedback provision may affected students’ writing quality
differently, it gives consideration for the English Department teachers to provide
appropriate feedback in proposal writing based on the students’ need. This finding
was similar to the previous study by Li Mi-mi (2009), teachers should use various
23
feedback strategies in the EFL writing class based on the type of assignment, the
particular teaching environment, and students’ writing proficiency. The proper
utilization of varied feedback techniques will contribute to the productive use of
feedback in writing class and facilitate students’ writing improvement in a foreign
language.
Nevertheless, this study cannot be generalized to all contexts. In this case,
the limitation of the study was on the finding. The role of the other proposal and
report writing students outside The English Department may result differently.
Since the needs of the students must be different. Moreover, the participants of
this study are EFL writing students who are not using English in daily life
conversation. Thus, the result would be different if the study was conducted in the
context of ESL or non-English proposal and report writing students. For that
reason, it is suggested that further studies are needed to investigate more about
how oral corrective feedback and written corrective feedback affect ESL or nonEnglish writing students.
24
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis would not have been completed without the help and support from
many people. Therefore, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the
following people who have assisted e in completing this thesis. First of all, I
would like to express my sincere gratitude to:
-
The Lord who has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time.
-
Ms. Maria Christina Eko S., M.Hum, my beloved supervisor, who was
abundantly helpful and gave meaningful assistance, support, patience and
guidance.
-
Mrs. Drs. Martha Nandari, M.A., my second reader, without her
knowledge and assistance this study would not have been completed.
-
My beloved parents and only son, thank you for always loving, supporting
and motivating me during the process of writing my thesis.
-
My best friends: Putri, Angel, Finna, Elia, Shinta, and Vio, thank you for
the motivation and support.
-
My participants, for their cooperation during the process of data collection.
The last, I give my biggest gratitude for all whose names I cannot
mention here who help a lot during my study in English Department of Satya
Wacana Christian University.
25
References:
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Content of the Performance of the EFL Students. European Journal of
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from http://www.europeanjournalofsocialsciences.com
Beuningen, C. V. (2010). Corrective Feedback in L2 Writing: Theoretical
Perspectives, Empirical Insights,and Future Directions. International
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22, 2013, from www.um.es/ijes
Chandler, J. (2003). The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for
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are we, and where do we go from here? (and what do we do in the
meantime . . .?). Journal of Second Language Writing , 13, 49-62.
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Ferris, D. (2007). Preparing Teachers to Respond to Student Writing. Journal of
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Attitudes Toward Written Feedback for Academic Writing. Res High Educ
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Hyland, F. (2000). ESL writers and feedback: giving more autonomy to students.
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Hyland, F., & Hyland, K. (2001). Sugaring the pill praise and criticism in written
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Feedback on ESL Student Writing. Journal of Second Language Writing ,
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14, 191-205. Retrieved November 14, 2013, from
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John Bitchener, U. K. (2009). The Contribution of Written Corrective Feedback to
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31 No.2, 193-214. Retrieved November 17, 2013, from
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John Bitchener, U. K. (2008). The Value of a Focused Approach to Written
Corrective Feedback. ELT Journal , 63, 204-210. Retrieved November 17,
2013, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com/
John Bitchener, U. K. (2008). The Value of Written Corrective Feedback for
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27
APPENDIX
Interview Questions
1. Are you taking proposal and report writing class?
2. What difficulties do you face in your proposal writing process?
3. In what part do you find it difficult?
4. What kind of feedbacks do you usually get from your supervisor? (oral,
written, balance of both)
5. What do you usually do with the feedback you got?
6. After you got the feedback, do you realize your weakness in writing?
Please explain!
7. What kind of errors do you usually make?
8. How is your writing after you got the feedbacks?
9. Do the feedbacks help you in revising? Why?
10. What kind of teacher’s comment did you get in your writing? (positive,
negative, balance of both)
11. Do the comments help to motivate you in writing? Why?
12. How do use the comments to improve your writing?
13. What kind of feedbacks do you think are unclear?
14. What do you usually do when you find any unclear feedback?
15. What kind of feedbacks do you prefer? Why?
28
AND ORAL CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN WRITING
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Herinta Dyan Pratiwi
112009107
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2014
i
ii
iii
iv
A STUDY OF THE STUDENTS’ VIEWS TOWARD WRITTEN
AND ORAL CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN WRITING
Herinta Dyan Pratiwi
Abstract
The issue of which feedback, oral or written corrective feedback, is effective for
students’ writing improvement both in the process and the quality of product is
still questionable, since each feedback has its own features. Oral corrective
feedback has the strength of providing face-to-face conversing in which offering
the students opportunity to discuss complex ideas. On the other hand, written
corrective feedback get the excess of improving students’ accuracy and providing
a guideline with sufficient information for writing process. Inspired by the issue,
the study was held to explore The English Department students’ perspectives
towards the feedbacks in proposal writing. The participants of this study were 20
students of Satya Wacana Christian University who were taking proposal writing
class. All of the 20 students were interviewed. The findings showed that students
found both written and oral corrective feedback effective in generating ideas,
improving accuracy, and facilitating sufficient information for revision. However,
students preferred written corrective feedback better than the oral corrective
feedback.
Keywords:
oral corrective feedback, written corrective feedback, students’
perspective, writing.
v
INTRODUCTION
Most teachers provide students with written feedback especially in writing.
Written feedback is usually full of red ink and marks like circles and underlines,
and short comments or suggestions. Here, students often get confused of the
meaning of the marks in their paper. Ironically, those marks were often abandoned
by the students.
Written corrective feedback is often impaired by a large number of
students’ error categories like grammatical errors and jumping ideas. Therefore,
the efficacy of such feedback is still being questioned. In 1996, Truscott found out
that written corrective feedback (WCF) in ESL student writing was ineffective
and harmful that it should be ignored (Bitchener and Knoch, 2008). On the other
hand, the study of Bitchener and Knoch (2008) in two private language schools
and at the English Department of a university in Auckland, found that WCF had a
valuable effect to improve students’ accuracy in using the target functions of the
English article system and that they maintained the level of accuracy when writing
a new text seven weeks after they got the treatment.
Another study of Bitchener, Young, and Cameron (2005), found that 53
adult migrant students of a university in New Zealand, in the process of acquiring
new linguistic forms, may perform them with accuracy in one occasion, but fail to
do the same on other similar occasions. They may show an improvement of
acquiring new linguistic forms in the revision process of their writing, but they
fail to implement the new linguistic forms in their writing process of a new text. It
1
showed that feedback must provide sufficient information which could be easily
used by students. Thus, the information students got from the provision of
feedback could help them to improve their capability in the present and future
writing.
In contrast, oral corrective feedback has produced clear and positive
effects for the learners by focusing on a single error category (Lyster in Bitchener
& Knoch, 2008). Conversational situation is interactive, allowing people to
coordinate with one another in a communication in order to proceed properly
(Appelbaum & Musial, 2005). As a result, oral corrective feedback is needed in a
writing course in order to improve the effectiveness of feedback provision in the
students’ paper revision. Since active interaction was included in oral corrective
feedback, it will give many chances for the students to ask more questions related
to their errors orally. It was shown in the study of Appelbaum and Musial (2005),
80% of 20 writing students enrolled in a psychology of language class prefer to
talk with someone to help them improve the clarity of their writing.
Oral corrective feedback will provide the students an opportunity to
communicate with the reader face to face. Clark and Krych in Appelbaum and
Musial (2005) declared that speakers are affected by their conversational partners.
Conversation in oral corrective feedback is interactive which allows students to
get further understanding by nodding, asking questions, and gesturing. It is
essential because it impacts the students for what they will do next in their paper
revision.
2
Realizing that feedback is crucial in improving students’ writing, I decided
to conduct a study on how oral and written corrective feedbacks work on students’
writing. The aim of the study was to examine which feedback brought beneficial
effects for the students’ development in the writing process and the quality of the
writing product in their proposal and report writing class. The study was guided
by the research question “what kind of feedback is beneficial to improve the
students’ proposal writing at the English Department, Satya Wacana Christian
University?”
LITERATURE REVIEW
Second or Foreign Language Writing
Writing is a combined skill which focuses on the mechanism, syntactical,
lexical, drawing conclusion, and the organization discourse (Williams, 2007). A
writer has to be able to convey their ideas into a written product in order to be
understood by the reader as a part of communication. Here, writing is not only a
product but also a process which include planning, drafting, revising, editing and
evaluating (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012).
Some experts believe that writing is the pivotal academic skill students
develop in their education (Nagin in Appelbaum & Musial, 2005). Most students’
assignments and tests are in the written forms. Students should be able to express
their thoughts in writing. It is easy for students to express their ideas in daily
conversation, but when they attempt to write their ideas in a paper they find many
difficulties. Stringing up words into a correct sentence may be easy. In fact, it’s
3
hard to get the readers understanding when a writer has to convey their ideas
sentence by sentence. The main point is not about how the word stringed into a
correct sentence, but it’s generally about how the sentences could be a medium for
the writer to interact with their readers.
Writing includes both as a process and product which is not only
considered as a physical act but also a work that demands the writer to deliver and
organize their thoughts clearly to the reader (Sokolik, 2003). Here, writing has a
role as a product in which the writer can be communicate with the reader
indirectly (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012). In an ESL and/or EFL academic
writing courses, students often find difficulties in delivering their thoughts since it
is different from their daily conversational situation where they could express
their thoughts spontaneously and easily. If the writing product is not well
organized, the writer might fail to get the readers’ understanding. In other words,
the writer fails to communicate with the readers. It is not only a media that the
writer could express their thoughts in a written paper, but also how that written
paper can be well understood by the readers. Therefore, to have a good writing, a
writer needs to do the process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and
evaluating (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012; Mi-mi, 2009)
There are three concepts of writing that a writer should focus on: language
structure, text functions, and creative expression (Hyland in Soori, et al, 2012).
First, the focus on language structure involves linguistic knowledge, vocabulary
choices, syntactic patterns, and cohesive devices. Grammatically correctness is the
basis in every writing process. Second, the focus on text function is to help the
4
students in developing a paragraph by making the topic sentence, supporting
sentences, transitions and developing another type of paragraphs in academic
writing. Third, the focus on creative expressions takes more on the writer rather
than the form in which the writer are freely to develop their ideas and state their
opinions. A creative expression is like sharing the writer’s personal thoughts to
the reader about their own view on a topic (Hyland, 2000). In this case, the writer
should be aware of the connection between their own ideas with the topic they are
discussing about in their academic writing.
Teacher’s Feedback in Students’ Writing
Since writing academically is hard to do, many students’ errors cannot be
avoided. In a writing process, some errors always occur, for instance in grammar,
words choices, unorganized ideas, punctuation, spelling, and even repetition of
ideas. The teacher has to concern about the students’ errors in their writing in
order to develop the students’ writing capability. Therefore, teacher has to provide
the students with feedback in order to help them in revising, editing, organizing,
and evaluating their writing product (Soori, Janfaza, & Zamani, 2012). However,
teacher often finds difficulties in giving feedback due to the large number of
students’ writing products and the various kinds of mistakes that the students
made.
Most writing teachers insist that providing feedback in EFL writing is the
most difficult and time consuming but it is seen as pedagogically useful to
motivate the students for their writing improvements (Hyland & Hyland, 2001).
5
Teachers’ feedback provision is an essential concern to any teachers of writing in
improving students’ learning with helpful writing command. Feedback provision
also has a function as scaffolding provided by the teachers to build students’
confidence in the learning process. Those who get involved in second language
writing field argued that feedback is a pivotal factor for giving approval to the
students in learning, so that the students are able to evaluate their own errors and
revise their paper where necessary (Hyland & Hyland in Soori, et al, 2012).
The concern of feedback provision is in the way of how the teachers have
to provide a fruitful feedback for the student, so that it will give a positive effect
for the students’ writing development process and the quality of their writing
products. Therefore, teachers’ role is not only as a feedback provider but also as
an examiner, reader, critic, judge, consultant, coach, guide, and facilitator (Soori,
Janfaza, Zamani, 2012).
There are many ways to provide feedback for students’ writing
improvements, but the most common that we could see in many academic writing
courses, such as proposal and report writing course, is written corrective feedback
provision which could be a critical feedback for students’ accuracy. Whereas,
written corrective feedback provision sometimes could cause confusion among
the students because it is lack of oral interaction. On the other hand, oral
corrective feedback is the one which could fill students’ needs of direct interaction
between the students and teachers. In this case, the highest aim of feedback
provision is to move the students to be able to handle their own writing, be aware
6
of their own errors, and in their errors correction and evaluation (Soori, et al,
2012). In other words, feedback starts from the teachers and lead to the students.
Written Corrective Feedback
Feedback as an essential factor in writing becomes a wide concern for
writing teachers as an only way to respond to the students’ paper. For a long time,
written corrective feedback appears as the most common feedback given by
teachers to the students in an ESL/EFL writing class in order to respond to the
students’ writing product. Of course, as a traditional feedback, it has its own
advantages which other feedback cannot perform. It provides a critical
instructional opportunity for the students to achieve a practical one-on-one
communication that might be impossible in day-to-day class activities (Mi-mi,
2009). Since feedback provision is often impaired by the large number of students
with their various errors, written corrective feedback provision might become a
practical feedback which can overcome this problem.
It has been argued long that second or foreign language writing teachers
and researchers who get involved in corrective feedback field argued written
corrective feedback (WCF) helps the students to gain and act mastery in the use of
syntactical forms in the target language (Bitchener & Knoch, 2008). They believe
that the students will be able to improve the accuracy in their writing product.
Hence, the focus of feedback provision is more in how to provide a useful WCF
for the students rather than find other types of feedback to be applied in a writing
course.
7
In WCF, teachers often correct the students’ errors in every single word
(give a circle or underline the errors on grammar or spelling) and might be giving
them a short critical comment in their writing. Negative comments are often given
by teachers to the students in their writing without any balance of positive
suggestions which will not be valuable and give positive effects for the students’
writing improvement. Receiving a low quality of suggestion and a critical
feedback will lead the students into negative emotions (Cafarella & Barnett in
Gulfidan Can, 2011). Unluckily, students will more likely ignore the feedback.
Even worse, the marks in WCF often drag the students’ motivation and interest in
writing getting down. WCF may confuse the students in how they should deal
with such marks or comments on their paper in the revising process. Positive
feedback which integrates with a critical one will give the students the feeling of
encouragement, confidence, and acceptance in their writing (Kumar & Stracke in
Gulfidan Can, 2011). That’s why teachers have to combine both negative and
positive comments on the students’ writing in order to make it balanced since it
will be useful for the students’ written work (Eyres in Gulfidan Can, 2011)
Even though written corrective feedback might appear as a critical one of
errors correction and shows the students in which part they make mistakes that
should be revised, its contribution to the students’ writing improvement is still
unclear. According to Ferris in Hyland & Hyland (2001), although three quarters
of teachers’ comments on students’ papers are apparently used by the students,
only half of them could be considered as an improvement. It shows that written
corrective feedback still couldn’t work maximally to improve the students’
8
awareness of their own errors. It might occur because of the lack of direct
interaction between students and the teachers.
In the context of L2 writing, feedback which focuses on errors correction
is seen as an essential part that should give the students benefit, in both short and
long term. Commonly, WCF is given with the focus on linguistic matters rather
than in how to develop and generate more ideas in students’ writing product. It
has been long regarded by those who are working in area of corrective feedback
that WCF helps the students to learn and be able to master the use of linguistic
forms and structures (Bitchener & Knoch, 2008). Six studies (Ashwell, 2008;
Bitchener et all., 2005; Fathman & Walley, 1990; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Sheen,
2006) found that students who received a single WCF meaningfully improved the
accuracy of their writing and that the benefits increased from this input are not
only temporary but also clearly found in a new piece of writing.
Oral Corrective Feedback
Different from WCF, oral corrective feedback which could be considered
as an interactive feedback allows the students to have a direct discussion with the
teacher about their writing. It might give an unlimited chance for the students to
ask further questions about their paper. Many teachers believed that one-on-one
teacher-student meeting are beneficially more effective because it gives chances
for clarification, instruction, and negotiation (Ferris, 2007). Unfortunately, oral
corrective feedback cannot be provided in a short time since it is more time-
9
consuming in face-to-face interaction between the students and the teachers
individually.
In particular, students prefer to talk to someone in order to discuss and to
get advices about their paper in the revising process. The benefit of oral corrective
feedback compared with written corrective feedback is that it provides a direct
communication which allows the students to talk and ask question freely about
their writing. Conversation is interactive and it requires people to work together
effectively in order to communicate properly. Social coordination is needed to
plan of what they say and will do next (Bavelas & Chovil in Appelbaum & Musial
2005). People not only create the content of their conversation (the who, what,
when. where) but they also provide a proof of their understanding by nodding,
asking questions, gesturing, among other techniques (Appelbaum & Musial,
2005).
Oral communication and writing are used as a means of communicating
ideas to another person. In one-to-one oral communication, people usually
introduce their ideas step by step, to ensure that their ideas are mutually
understood (Appelbaum & Musial, 2005). Without the ability to interact,
misunderstanding is much more likely to happen. In this case, oral corrective
feedback provides a face to face communication for the students to avoid a
misunderstanding phenomenon that might occur and to ask critical questions
directly related to their errors they made in their paper. As Bitchener & Knoch,
2008, stated that direct feedback is more helpful since it can reduce students’
confusion when they fail to gain understanding, provide them with adequate
10
information to reveal more complex errors, and offer more quick feedback on
hypotheses that have been made. Hence, the students will be given a further and
clear explanation of what they will do next in the revising process of their writing.
METHODOLOGY
This study was qualitative descriptive research. It started with the
assumption that the research topic must be understood holistically. Its purpose
was to describe a phenomenon of students’ perspectives of feedbacks provision
and the effects of each feedback in a proposal writing class.
Context of the Study
This study was conducted at The Faculty of Language and Literature,
Satya Wacana Christian University which is located in Salatiga, Central Java,
Indonesia. The subjects of this study were the English Department students. They
were taking Proposal and Report Writing course.
Participants
The participants were 20 students of Proposal and Report Writing class
because the students are advanced learners who are at least in their fourth year of
their study in the department. They are 15 female students and 5 male students.
Each participant was interviewed in a different place and time.
11
Instruments of Data Collection
The writer used interview as the instrument for this study to get the data.
The interviews were recorded. The interview questions were about the students’
perspective toward the kind of feedback their teachers provided in their Proposal
Report and Writing course.
Data Analysis
The data from the recorded interview were transcribed. The data were
displayed descriptively. It was described based on the participants’ words and
stories that were translated and presented as extracts. The data analysis was
interpretative analysis by categorizing data according to the emerging themes.
FINDINGS
In this study the writer found that students have different views about the
feedbacks they got in their proposal and report writing class. They revealed that
each feedback brought them different effects. Oral corrective feedback showed
more influence on the content. On the other hand, written corrective feedback
showed more influence on the detail of the writing.
The writer divided four emerging subtopics in order to show the
comparison of oral and written corrective feedbacks’ effects on students’ writing
according to the students’ views in this study. The first subtopic was facilitating in
generating idea, the second subtopic was improving students’ accuracy, the third
12
subtopic was facilitating sufficient information for revision, and the last subtopic
was students’ top choices of feedbacks technique to use in the future.
Facilitating in Generating Ideas
The participants of the study viewed that interactive conversation, as oral
feedback provision, helped in generating ideas. They generate ideas by listing,
finding sources, brainstorming, mind mapping, etc. The following is an extract
from the interview of a participant who agreed that oral feedback was beneficial
for facilitating in generating ideas.
Extract 1
“I often get confused in how to organize my ideas and connect it to each other. So,
to overcome it I used to go to see a friend who also write proposal and discuss it
together since my teacher is too busy for extra consultation”
(Participant J)
In contrast, written corrective feedback didn’t show significant effect for
facilitating in generating ideas, since, there’s no interactive communication in it.
The following is extract interview of participant who considered written feedback
didn’t give a significant effect in the process of generating ideas.
Extract 2
“Written feedback limits my opportunity to ask the supervisor, especially, in how
I should relate my ideas with the topic”
(Participant A)
Eleven out of 20 participants like to talk to someone about what they are
writing to enhance their ideas. The writer concluded that they believe that oral
interaction could facilitate generating ideas. Students found that the process of
13
writing is much more difficult. In the process, learners often found difficulties in
deciding their main point and organizing and developing their ideas.
In my analysis, oral corrective feedback gave the learners an opportunity
to talk about their writing content freely and deeply. Learners could ask questions
and clarify directly how the ideas should be developed and organized. Giving
feedback in the part of generating ideas is different with the part of grammatical
errors which could be given through written language. Ideas are too wide to be
discussed through written language. It needs a deep working through without any
communication limits. As participant J said, if she talked to her friends and
teacher face to face, she could gain more ideas to develop her topic. Here, the
writer could see that to elaborate more ideas, it needs unlimited interaction.
Another result why oral corrective feedback could facilitate in generating
ideas is that the learners could measure how well they make their audiences
understand their writing. Oral interaction provided an opportunity to get
immediate feedback on what the audiences currently understand and how this
understanding might be different with the learner’s intention. Through oral
conversation between the writer and the audiences, writer would know how to rearrange their ideas to more focus in delivering their intention. Having oral
conversation gave much contribution to avoid jumping ideas.
The finding indicated that oral corrective feedback was beneficial to
facilitate an easier way to transfer the knowledge. The finding was similar to
Clark & Krych in Appelbaum & Musial (2005) who found that people specifically
introduce ideas step by step in face to face communication to ensure that they are
14
mutually understood. An interactive direct communication between the writer and
the facilitator was needed since generating ideas is complex enough to be
discussed. It was like finding a solution for a problem in which a discussion was
important to get the deal and to avoid misunderstanding.
Improving Students’ Accuracy
In EFL writing, accuracy is needed since students have to consider the use
of targeted linguistic forms and structures. Writing is not only about how the
message being understood by audiences, but it’s also about how the writers
organize their words into correct grammatical matters. The participants’ views in
this study showed that written corrective feedback (WCF) did help them
improving their accuracy. The following is extract interview of participants who
agreed that WCF did have advantage in improving accuracy.
Extract 3
“Through written feedback I could be sure that my supervisor had read my whole
writing, because it can be seen from the underlines, circles, and comments on my
paper. I can see clearly in which part I should revise and improve. It shows in
detail what kind of grammatical errors I had made”
(Participant L)
On the other hand, there were 6 students who thought oral corrective
feedback was harmful in the part of accuracy improvement. Oral corrective
feedback didn’t show satisfactory effects on students’ writing. The following is
extract interview of a participant who argued that oral corrective feedback did not
help the improvement in accuracy.
Extract 4
“My supervisor often forgot what he had said in our last consultation and didn’t
give specific comments to show in what part I made grammatical errors”
15
(Participant N)
Fourteen out of 20 participants who received WCF from their proposal and
report writing supervisor, said that WCF had the strength to help them improving
and acquiring the targeted linguistic forms and structures. Besides developing
deeper ideas to be discussed, students have to consider the grammatical
correctness in their writing. The participants of this study are all EFL writing
students. In this context, accuracy is an essential part of writing which couldn’t be
abandoned.
Hence, in EFL writing context, delivering the ideas of a writing product to
audiences could be successfully achieved if it had a correct targeted linguistic
forms and structures. English as a foreign language is not used in daily life
communication in which students need to think about accuracy in the language
they used for writing. The correctness of grammatical matters and word choices
could influence the quality of students’ writing product and the audiences’
understanding. Good writing product does not only have an interesting topic
discussion with a lot of great ideas in it, but it also has an organized structure.
Since it was EFL writing in which students used a foreign language that is
not used in daily life communication, writing students more likely found obstacles
in grammatical matters. They might be influenced by their L1. In this case,
supervisor who acts as a reader and also facilitator should be careful in providing
feedback to improve students’ accuracy.
In my analysis, WCF also had a position in which the students could be
assured that their supervisor did totally read their writing. It could be proved
16
through marks and comments they got on their draft. Discussing about
grammatical errors is different from developing ideas since it needs to be showed
in detail. The marks students got on their draft could help them to remember one
by one in which part they made errors. It helped them in the process of revision.
The finding showed that most participants viewed WCF effective in
helping them improving the grammar accuracy of their writing. The finding was
similar to the study of Bitchener & Knoch in 2008 which found that WCF enables
ESL writing students to improve the accuracy. Thus, the improvement of
students’ accuracy could be reached through WCF provision that offered detail
knowledge of grammatical matters. Here, students could see what grammatical
errors they had made clearly one by one on their drafts.
Facilitating Sufficient Information for Revision
One of the steps in the process of writing is revision. What writers needed
in order to be able to revise their writing is information they got from their
facilitator. Through the information, writers will be able to know what exactly are
needed to be revised in their writing. The result of this study demonstrated that
WCF facilitated ED proposal and report writing students with sufficient
information to help them in the process of revision. The following extract
provides the participants’ statements who agreed that WCF facilitated sufficient
information for revision.
Extract 5
“I just memorize what the supervisor said in the consultation time, but sometimes
I can’t get what he meant. I brought my soft file and bold the error part but his
feedback isn’t specific. What he said in the previous consultation was always
different from today’s, I think it’s better if he wrote down everything he said.”
17
(Participant Q)
Compared to WCF, students argued that oral corrective feedback tends to
be forgettable. It indicates that the information in the feedback is not sufficient. It
was like when someone’s talking and the interlocutor didn’t record the
information of the conversation, it may become an incomplete memory of
information. The following extract is one of participants’ statements who claimed
that oral corrective feedback didn’t provide sufficient information for their
revision.
Extract 6
“I got both oral and written feedback for my writing. Both are helpful, but the
written one seems more detail and easier to remember with all marks and
comments on the error parts rather than the oral feedback.”
(Participant B)
There were 14 participants out of 20 who agreed that written feedback did
provide them sufficient information which they could use to develop their writing
product. As a pedagogical sort, teacher written feedback is drew to bring a heavy
informational load, providing commentary on the form and content of a text to
encourage students to enhance their writing and merge their learning (Hyland &
Hyland, 2001). The information should offer the aid of an expert, take roles as a
guidance which provides opportunities for the students to see how others respond
to their work and learn from the responses.
Written corrective feedback had clear instructions to be understood by the
students. Students could read the comments many times. Indirectly, the written
comments had a role as a list of a guideline in which students would know what to
do next for further writing process. It would be different from those who received
18
oral comments. Practically, since it was provided in the written form, it gave an
ease for the students to work in the process of revision without missing any point
that they needed.
In this study, the writer found that those who received oral corrective
feedback mostly said that they face difficulties to implement the information they
got from the evaluator in revising their writing. It happened since their supervisor
was inconsistent with their comments and suggestions. More often, most students
found that their supervisor did not read the whole writing product. The supervisor
only gave general comments of the content but not specify it that could lead the
students into confusion.
Even worse, many of them asked their proposal writing students to change
the idea for many times whereas they had already confirmed it in the previous
consultation. It showed that the students got trapped in the supervisor
inconsistency which could destruct students’ interest in writing. By providing
written corrective feedback, the students could clarify if there were an
inconsistency from the previous consultation with the next consultation.
The writer also thought that WCF offers the students a clear step to follow
for their revision. Since, the comments written were based on the part that should
be revised. So, if the students forgot what they should do next, they would look at
their draft.
Top Choices of Feedbacks Technique to Use in the Future
In the last subtopics, the writer presented students’ preferences of
feedback technique to use in the future writing. In any pedagogical genre, in
19
choosing a technique a teacher should consider who the target is and what they
need. In this study, the writer found that 5 out of 20 participants prefer the
combination of oral and written feedback, 6 out of 20 participants prefer oral
corrective feedback alone, and 9 out of 20 participants prefer written corrective
feedback alone to be implemented in the future of proposal writing.
Those who preferred the combination of both oral and written feedback
claimed that it would be better since it could complete each other. WCF took role
as a written guideline, whereas the oral corrective feedback took a role as
explanation of the guideline. The following extract presents the participant
statement that preferred technique of using the combination of oral and written
corrective feedback.
Extract 7
“I prefer both oral and written feedback in balance to be given to the proposal
writing students. Written is used to give an ease for the students and the
supervisor in remembering which parts needs to be revised and improved, what
kind of errors it is, while the oral feedback is used for the explanation for the
written one”
(Participant R)
Six participants that chose the provision of oral corrective feedback alone
argued that it gave them more opportunity to ask freely. Since, it was a
conversational condition. The following is the extract interview of a participant
who preferred oral corrective feedback to be used in the future.
Extract 8
“I prefer oral feedback. It gives me more opportunity to ask my supervisor freely
and shows my disagreement directly”
(Participant A)
20
A conversational condition did allow the students to ask and clarified
directly to the supervisor. They rated conversation as a useful writing technique
more highly rather than the written one. The following extract is the participant’s
statement why written corrective feedback tends to be not preferable.
“I think written feedback is unclear. There’s no interaction between the students
and the teacher. It limits my opportunity to ask. Especially in how to relate my
idea with my topic”
(Participant A)
The results showed that the highest preference of feedback techniques to
be used was written corrective feedback alone. Nine participants who preferred
this technique mostly had the same idea that WCF was more specific and
unforgettable since it was in the written form. The following extract provides a
statement of a participant who believed that WCF is better to be used in the future
writing.
Extract 9
“I prefer written feedback because through written feedback it would be shown
that the supervisor had read all of my writing and they must give marks or
comments in the every error’s part. So, it will be clearer since I won’t forget in
which part the errors are. Grammatically, it really helps and is more specific”
(Participant O)
Compared to those who did not agree with oral corrective feedback alone,
the following extract shows another participant’s statement. It shows how oral
corrective feedback should not be used in the future of writing feedback
provision. The content of oral corrective feedback was forgettable.
21
Extract 10
“Oral feedback tends to be unclear since the supervisor often forgot what they had
said in the previous consultation. Oral feedback also takes time since it burdened
by the number of students”
(Participant R)
The study found that the provision of feedback should concern about who
the target is. It should consider the need of the target appropriately. Teacher
couldn’t use a feedback technique as they pleased, since the one who need and use
the information of the feedback was students.
The writer believed that inappropriate provision of feedback would give an
impact to the quality of students’ writing product at the end. Each feedback had
their own function and effect on students writing. In the case of ED proposal
writing students, oral corrective feedback had the aid of facilitated generating
idea. On the other hand, written corrective feedback had the function to assist the
students in improving accuracy, providing sufficient information as a guideline in
revising, and assuring them that the supervisor had completely read their writing.
CONCLUSION
The aim of the study was to explore The English Department students’
perspectives towards the feedbacks in proposal and report writing course. In order
to examine the feedback effects, interview was used. The study revealed that oral
corrective feedback and written corrective feedback brought students different
effects in their writing. The findings also showed that each feedback worked
differently in the students’ writing based on their need in which to be developed
and improved.
22
Each participant had their different response toward the feedbacks. It could
be seen from the interview results; first, generating ideas was achieved by oral
corrective feedback. Interactive conversation did help the students developing and
organizing their ideas. Generating ideas in writing need unlimited communication
in which students could gain more valuable ideas since ideas is too wide. Second,
in the case of improving students’ accuracy, written corrective feedback had the
strength to help students improving and acquiring the targeted linguistic forms
and structures. It showed in the findings that WCF was systematically more detail
to show the grammatical errors in students’ writing rather than oral corrective
feedback. Third, compared to oral corrective feedback, WCF provided sufficient
information in the revision process. In this case, WCF had the role as a guideline
in which students could follow and remember of what they needed for their
revision. Last, written corrective feedback had been the top choice of feedback
technique to be used in the future based on the ED proposal writing students’
preference. The participants argued that they could ensure that their writing
product had been completely read by their supervisor through written corrective
feedback. It indicated that they had been given reliable feedback for their further
writing.
Reflecting to the result of this study, which indicated that different
techniques of feedback provision may affected students’ writing quality
differently, it gives consideration for the English Department teachers to provide
appropriate feedback in proposal writing based on the students’ need. This finding
was similar to the previous study by Li Mi-mi (2009), teachers should use various
23
feedback strategies in the EFL writing class based on the type of assignment, the
particular teaching environment, and students’ writing proficiency. The proper
utilization of varied feedback techniques will contribute to the productive use of
feedback in writing class and facilitate students’ writing improvement in a foreign
language.
Nevertheless, this study cannot be generalized to all contexts. In this case,
the limitation of the study was on the finding. The role of the other proposal and
report writing students outside The English Department may result differently.
Since the needs of the students must be different. Moreover, the participants of
this study are EFL writing students who are not using English in daily life
conversation. Thus, the result would be different if the study was conducted in the
context of ESL or non-English proposal and report writing students. For that
reason, it is suggested that further studies are needed to investigate more about
how oral corrective feedback and written corrective feedback affect ESL or nonEnglish writing students.
24
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis would not have been completed without the help and support from
many people. Therefore, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the
following people who have assisted e in completing this thesis. First of all, I
would like to express my sincere gratitude to:
-
The Lord who has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time.
-
Ms. Maria Christina Eko S., M.Hum, my beloved supervisor, who was
abundantly helpful and gave meaningful assistance, support, patience and
guidance.
-
Mrs. Drs. Martha Nandari, M.A., my second reader, without her
knowledge and assistance this study would not have been completed.
-
My beloved parents and only son, thank you for always loving, supporting
and motivating me during the process of writing my thesis.
-
My best friends: Putri, Angel, Finna, Elia, Shinta, and Vio, thank you for
the motivation and support.
-
My participants, for their cooperation during the process of data collection.
The last, I give my biggest gratitude for all whose names I cannot
mention here who help a lot during my study in English Department of Satya
Wacana Christian University.
25
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APPENDIX
Interview Questions
1. Are you taking proposal and report writing class?
2. What difficulties do you face in your proposal writing process?
3. In what part do you find it difficult?
4. What kind of feedbacks do you usually get from your supervisor? (oral,
written, balance of both)
5. What do you usually do with the feedback you got?
6. After you got the feedback, do you realize your weakness in writing?
Please explain!
7. What kind of errors do you usually make?
8. How is your writing after you got the feedbacks?
9. Do the feedbacks help you in revising? Why?
10. What kind of teacher’s comment did you get in your writing? (positive,
negative, balance of both)
11. Do the comments help to motivate you in writing? Why?
12. How do use the comments to improve your writing?
13. What kind of feedbacks do you think are unclear?
14. What do you usually do when you find any unclear feedback?
15. What kind of feedbacks do you prefer? Why?
28