13
Besides it helps to see the process of the students when they come up with different or even negative opinions which is caused by human’s way of thinking
and it has its own interpretation in the same stimuli within an environment.
2. Feedback
Feedback, which has two different forms; written and spoken, also has several different definitions which come from several experts. Generally,
according to Sherman 1994 feedback is a response or reaction from a person to something that another person does, that can be used to assess and improve a
person’s performance in the future. In the educational field, F. Hyland K. Hyland 2006 note that feedback is important in providing students with the
rhetorical choices central to new academic or professional literacy skills and as a way of assisting students in negotiating access to new knowledge and practices.
Limited to L2 writing classrooms, Hyland 2003 addresses. “Feedback emphasizes a process of writing and rewriting where the text is not seen as self-
contained but points forward to other texts the students will write” p.177.
Although the definitions above have different meanings in context, these definitions are centered on a person’s development in the process of learning in
order to improve his skills and bring him into wider knowledge. As it is proposed by Hyland Hyland 2006 and Hyland 2003, it can be referred that feedback
provides the students meaningful and useful information in the process of learning in order to assist them to develop their skills and broaden their knowledge. As
14
well as in the application of feedback in writing, it is concerned about the process of learning in creating proper writings, which becomes the starting point to create
other texts. These synthesized definitions will be the base where feedback is used
in this study.
Deriving from its definition, feedback aims to assist the students to develop their skills and knowledge into broader context of writing. As Lewis
2002 has described, it provides information both for the teacher and student, in which it is rather like an ongoing form of assessment than grades and marks. In
addition, it also provides advice and language input in learning where it illustrates how language is used in one-to-one communication. Being a language input, it is
a form of motivation. It means that the more the teachers know about the students through their writings, the more encouragement takes place in personal
circumstances. One long-term purpose of feedback is to lead the students towards
autonomy which means students are led into the point where they make mistakes.
Previously, feedback was identical to teachers’ markings in which bundles of students’ works are corrected and evaluated. There are some ways to deliver
feedback in L2 writing classrooms, one of them is by seeing the source of feedback itself. According to Lewis 2002, “ …several sources of feedback:
teacher feedback, peer feedback and self-correction feedback” pp.15-23. In many classes, teachers are still considered as the main source of feedback in
spoken and written language. On the contrary, it is possible that the students may give feedback to one another by exchanging their papers or conducting a role-
play, which is called peer feedback and the source of feedback is given by the
15
students themselves. The last source of feedback comes from the student himself. The student who has his own writing may give his own feedback to his writing in
order to evaluate it. a. Kinds of Feedback
Hyland 2003 states that there are several kinds of feedback; “peer feedback, teacher-students conferencing feedback and teacher written feedback”
p. 177. One alternative in receiving feedback is by having peer feedback, it occurs when students give feedback to one another by exchanging their papers,
having role-play, comparing papers, etc. It is both improving writer’s drafts and developing readers’ understandings of good writing. Another kind of feedback is
teacher-students conferencing. It is done by giving the students feedback through face-to-face conferencing, which allows the students to negotiate the meaning of
their texts through dialogue. The third kind of feedback is teacher written feedback. It is like the comments on students’ papers that take the various written
form such as praise, questions, suggestions, marks, grades, etc. These three kinds of feedback have their own strengths and weaknesses. However, in the following
discussion, this study will only focus on teacher written feedback since nowadays it plays a central role in most L2 writing classes compared to other kinds of
feedback.
16
1 Teacher Written Feedback
Limited to its term, this kind of feedback involves teachers as the source of feedback to provide written feedback to students’ text. Written comments here
mean the teacher writes comments on different aspects of the written tasks in the margins, spaces between paragraphs or at the end Rairnes 1988; Fathmen and
Whalley, 1990; Leki 1990 as cited in Karim Ivy, 2011. Another definition comes from Kaweera 2008, she notes that
teacher written feedback refers to written responses provided by the teacher to the students writing. The responses
are limited to comments on grammatical errors and content of the students’ writing. In order to know further about teacher written feedback, this study
elaborates its forms, types and focus. In addition, Harmer 2001 states that the way the teachers give feedback
depends on the kind of writing task. When we give feedback more on the longer texts and not on the workbook exercises, we have to demonstrate our interest on
the content of students’ work. Harmer proposed that there are two techniques of feedback, responding and coding. Responding here means one way of considering
feedback as ‘responding’ rather than assessing or evaluating. It means we respond to how text appears to us, how successful the texts are and what needs to be
improved. While coding is where the teachers put codes in the body of writing or in a corresponding margin. Of course, the codes or symbols are decided both by
the teachers and students. As the techniques of giving feedback, coding helps the
17
teachers to avoid over-correction scripts and helps the students to concentrate on particular features of written English.
a Forms of Teacher Written Feedback
According to Hyland 2003, the most common forms of teacher written feedback are “commentary, rubrics, minimal marking, taped commentary and
electronic feedback” pp. 180-183. Commentary refers to the handwritten commentary on the students’ paper, which directly discusses the exact point
where the students make mistakes. It states how the text appears to us as readers, how successful it is and how the text can be improved. Raimes 1983 notes,
“Comments on students’ paper which is in form of paraphrase of the ideas expressed, praise, questions, and suggestions are more productive yet encouraging
and motivating” p. 143 One of the variations of commentary is rubrics. It is the use of cover sheets
which consists of the criteria that will be used to assess students’ assignment and performances related to the criteria. Another form of teacher written feedback is
minimal marking, which indicates the location and perhaps type of error, rather than direct correction. Since it only provides ‘code correction’ in every part of
students’ texts in students’ paper, it leads to a neater correction and less threatening for the students, which help the students to find and identify their
mistakes.
However, there is a kind of feedback where the teachers give their feedback via recording which is called taped commentary. Teachers will record
18
their own voice talking about the correction based on the students’ texts then they will put numbers where the comments refer to. The numbers will help the students
to follow the feedback into the text orderly. The last form of teacher written feedback is electronic feedback. It allows the students to submit their texts via
email or any other online writing facilities that makes the teachers flexible in
providing feedback. b Types of Teacher Written Feedback
Biber, Nekrasova and Horn 2011, p.7 conclude that there are two types of teacher written feedback: direct and indirect feedback. The term direct
feedback is used to denote instances where the writing instructor makes an explicit correction to the student’s text e.g.: providing the correct grammatical
form in the ungrammatical sentences. While indirect feedback is where the instructor indicates that something about the student’s writing is problematic e.g.:
by underlining ungrammatical sentences
c Focus of Teacher Written Feedback
The focus of this feedback deals with the language features used in students’ text such as lexis, grammar, mechanics, etc. According to Fathman and
Whalley 1990 in Chiang, 2004: 99 as cited in Wulandari, 2007, p. 18 the focuses of teacher written feedback are form-focused feedback and content-based
feedback. The first focus of teacher written feedback is usually known as grammar correction. It is where the students are corrected only on the scope of
grammatical terms. This type of feedback has been a long discussion among the
19
scholars since it is rather speculative and grammar-grounded, which does not show the nature process of learning. In addition, it is considered beneficial for
students in some cases but it is not an effective way to all L2 writing classrooms. Next, is content-based feedback which is known as meaning-based feedback.
Different from form-focused feedback, it concerns more on content quality and organizational features of the overall text. For instance, teachers provide the
overall feedback in which the text is relevant and make sense within the content selected and how the text is organized well in logical ways without pointing any
grammatical errors and mistakes that students made. As the improvements of the needs of L2 writing classrooms nowadays, there is a new focus which concern on
both form-focused and content-based feedback which is called integrative feedback. It leads to students’ writing accuracy improvements and motivates the
students to create better writings with qualified contents. In relation to this study, these theories about feedback specifically on
teacher written feedback with its forms, types and focus help us to understand what is really meant by feedback itself especially about teacher written feedback.
Having known this kind of feedback, it is clearly seen that it is written form of feedback such as grades, marks, questions, praise, suggestions, etc. in students’
paper which covers all language features used in writings. These theories will be the base for designing the instruments. Since this research employs questionnaire
and interview, these theories can be elaborated to design the blueprint category of questionnaire and interview before making the instruments’ items. It is expected
20
that every item of the questionnaire and interview is precise to the research objectives in order to get maximum result.
d Review of Existing Studies of Teacher Written Feedback
There are several researches discussing teacher written feedback. In this
section, two studies will be reviewed. The first research entitled Students’ Perception toward Teacher Written Feedback on their Composition: A Case
Study written by Christina Dyah Kurniyati 2006. The second research entitled Improving SMAN 1 Depok Students’ Accuracy of Simple Past Tense in
Narrative through Teacher’s Feedback written by Bernadeta Diah Ratih
Angguratami 2012. Kurniyati 2006 investigated the types of written feedback that the teacher
gave on the students’ compositions and the students’ perception toward teacher written feedback on their writing compositions. It was a mixed mode of case
study and document analysis. The instruments used were students’ compositions, interview and questionnaire. The findings show that the type of written feedback
given was only in the surface level of students’ composition. The students also have a good perception toward teacher written feedback. it shows that teacher
written feedback given is clear because it is readable and understandable. It is objective, which indicates no personal bias, and proportional, which indicates that
teacher has given appropriate written feedback to the students. Teacher written feedback also assists the students to improve their writing compositions. In
21
addition, teacher written feedback given is also encouraging in the sense of motivating the students to revise their compositions.
Angguratami 2012 conducted CAR Classroom Action Research using teacher’s feedback as one best strategy to improve tenth grade students’ grammar
accuracy of simple past tense in narrative writing. In conducting the research, Angguratami used two cycles of CAR. Besides, it used students’ drafts,
observation sheets, field notes, questionnaires, and interviews as the data sources. The findings show that the students’ error percentage of simple past tense
decreased from 56 to 27 in the first cycle and 21 in the second cycle. The findings show that teacher’s feedback helped the students to understand their
mistakes and to get new knowledge about grammar, vocabulary and simple past tense forms. In addition, the students also felt motivated after receiving teacher’s
feedback. This current study has similar topic to the two previous reviews of
research which talking about teacher written feedback. This study investigates the students’ perception on the implementation of teacher written feedback and its
implications while these two researches investigates types of written feedback, students’ perception on written feedback and on the use of teacher’s feedback to
improve students’ grammar accuracy of simple past tense in narrative writing.
22
3. Critical Reading and Writing
