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works. Through evaluating, the students‟ progress and achievements in writing can be seen. What makes evaluating different from responding is that
in evaluating, the teacher is allowed to grade the works. Furthermore, evaluating can be a learning opportunity that allows the students to realize the
mistakes they made and then they try to put them right.
4. Feedback on Writing
Givi ng feedback on students‟ written work is a major part of all
teachers‟ job, therefore it is something teachers must be careful with since it will determine students‟ confidence depending on how the feedback is given.
Teachers should focus not only on bad points but also on good ones since it is clear that writing skill is complex and quite demanding. Praising the students‟
writing is also one way to increase their motivation towards writing activity. Since the teacher gives a huge amount of influence to the
students‟ learning achievement, it can be sure that whatever being delivered by the teacher will
determine the students‟ responses towards their interests in writing. When feedback is applied upon written works, it should affect the learners‟
language use in the future. Considering how written feedback is given, Harmer 2004: 108-109
divides the technique into two as follows. a. Responding
Not only concern with the accuracy of the students‟ writing performance, but also with the content and design of their writing. The teachers may
respond to their writing by saying how much they enjoyed reading their
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works and then recommend that the students have to look at a book or website which has more information about the same topic. When
responding, the teachers are discussing the students‟ writing rather than judging it.
It is used to support the students‟ writing improvement and raise their motivation instead of increasing their anxiety towards writing.
b. Correcting It is for indicating when something is not right. The correction on the
mistakes of the students‟ writing performance can be done for some issues like syntax word order, concord grammatical agreement,
between subjects and verbs, collocation words which live together, or word choice. The teacher‟s task is not to say what is right or wrong, but
to ask questions, make suggestions and indicate where improvements may be made to both the content and the performance of the writing.
In addition, peer feedback can also be applied in responding the students‟ writing. Brown 2004: 270 stated that peer feedback gives
encouragement to the students to have cooperative and collaborative learning in the classroom. Moreover, the students will feel less anxious when their
writing is corrected by their classmates rather than their teacher. Both responding and correcting are good to be given as written
feedback for the students‟ writing because the teacher can maintain the students‟ progress during writing. Moreover, peer feedback will also give
beneficial for the students since they can get closer to each other.
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B. Fluency in Writing
