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THE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD TEACHERS’ WRITTEN AND
ORAL FEEDBACK IN WRITING COMPOSITIONS
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Francisca Wiwin Kristanti 112008126
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
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THE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD TEACHERS’ WRITTEN AND
ORAL FEEDBACK IN WRITING COMPOSITIONS
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Francisca Wiwin Kristanti 112008126
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Name : Francisca Wiwin Kristanti Student ID Number : 112008126
Study Program : English Language Teaching Department Faculty : Language and Literature
Kind of Work : Undergraduate Thesis
In developing my knowledge, I agree to provide SWCU with a non-exclusive royalty free right for my intellectual property and the contents therein entitled:
The students’ perception toward teachers’ written and oral feedback in writing compositions
along with any pertinent equipment.
With this non-exclusive royalty free right, SWCU maintains the right to copy, reproduce, print, publish, post, display, incorporate, store in or scan into a retrieval system or database, transmit, broadcast, barter or sell my intellectual property, in whole or in part without my express written permission, as long as my name is still included as the writer.
This declaration is made according to the best of my knowledge.
Made in : Salatiga
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COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2012 Francisca Wiwin Kristanti and Dra.Martha Nandari, MA
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THE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD TEACHERS’ WRITTEN AND
ORAL FEEDBACK IN WRITING COMPOSITIONS
Francisca Wiwin Kristanti
ABSTRACT
Based on interviews and analysis of students’ writing compositions administered in a second year Narrative and Descriptive writing class at the English Department of Satya Wacana University, this study has attempted to explore the students’ perception toward teachers’ feedback in writing class. The study was aimed at providing details on students’ perception of what they have received from the teacher’s feedbacks to improve their writing, and how they used those feedbacks. There were ten students participated in this study. Qualitative analyses were conducted to explore the findings in details. The results showed that the teacher’s feedback plays an important role in helping the students to revise their writing. It was also found that (1) teachers’ feedback was important, helpful, and sufficient to improve students’ writing; (2) teachers’ oral and written feedback was relevant but written feedback was seen to be more effective than the oral one, (3) students preferred written, specific, and individual feedbacks since they were more effective, (4) students perceived that the use of feedbacks significantly reduced the numbers of errors and increased the quality of their writing compositions, and 5) the students applied the teacher’s feedbacks through four ways: directly applied the feedbacks for revision, asked the teacher to clarify some unclear feedbacks, asked for second opinions about the feedbacks from their peers, and performed a self-effort in combination with the teacher’s feedbacks to improve the quality of their writing compositions. This study’s findings are expected to give contribution to a better understanding of teacher feedback in writing class.
Key words: Students’ Perception, Teacher’s Feedback, Narrative And Descriptive Wrting Class
INTRODUCTION
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2009). However, in this study, the writer only wants to focus on oral and written feedback given by the teachers.
The position of feedback has been debated among theorists, researchers, and practitioners since the mid-1990s. Truscott as cited in Kea Leaph, (2011), for example, claims that corrective feedback should be discarded because it is ineffective and harmful. He argues that corrective feedback do not encourage students to genuinely improve their writing skill since it only provides them with instant correction. It can also be less effective as Fritz, Morris and Bjork (2000) say that symbol feedback does not improve learning even when provided. The explanation for this is that students do not understand or misinterpret the feedback provided to them.
On the other hand, teachers’ feedback is considered to be important to improve students’ writing. By giving feedback for students, teachers can help the students to make a good piece of writing. Kepner (as cited in Kea Leaph, 2011) found that students who receive content feedback produce writing better than those who receive grammar feedback. As Chaudron & Nunan (as cited in Farahani & Mirsharifi, 2007) find that question feedback have a significant part to play in second language acquisition. Moreover, Ferris (as cited in Kea Leaph, 2011), argues that indirect feedback is virtuous as it enables L2 students to revise their own writing and assists them in acquiring correct English. In his opinion, feedback is used as triggers that further will enable the students to create a better writing. Based all the notions above, it is clearly seen that feedbacks in any forms, whether content of grammatical, direct or indirect, written or oral, are useful to help students to make better writing compositions.
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perceptions toward feedback. Therefore, in her own context as an English Department student, the writer wanted to know more about what the students’ perceptions on teachers’ oral and written feedback are. After knowing about their perception, the writer also wanted to know how they applied the teachers’ feedback in their writing. This second question was asked because the students in general and the writer in particular have ever experienced difficulties in interpreting the teacher’s feedbacks. Sometimes students simply correct their writing compositions based on their teacher’s feedbacks and in some other occasions, students find difficulties to interpret the meaning of the teacher’s feedback. When difficulties occur, some students may try to interpret the feedback based on their own understandings, some other may seek second opinions from their friends, and the rest may ask the teacher for clarification. Therefore, the writer wants to know how the students of Narrative and Descriptive Writing class apply the feedbacks given by their teacher to improve their writing.
It is hoped that this study could provide some information on effective feedback from the perspective of the students. By knowing their perception on feedback, the writer expects to find out the kind of feedback that is helpful for the students. Hopefully, this study can be a useful guide in the future to provide information in the creation of a method or a technique that is made to eliminate or at least reduce common problems about feedbacks, such as difficulties to understand and interpret the teacher’s feedbacks, between students and teachers.
Teacher’s Feedback
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did a case study toward third year writing students of the Faculty of Letters and Language in Mentoury University. The aim of his study is to ensure the incorporation of the written feedback into the learners’ written productions and see how effective the teacher’s feedback is to improve students’ writings. In conducting his research, the writer does not only observe the teacher’s feedback, but also conduct a writing test to see the use of feedback in students’ writing production. The result of this study shows that students make fewer errors after revising their writings based on their teacher’s feedback and they demonstrate overall improvements in subsequent drafts. Findings of this research invite teachers of writing first to integrate the multiple drafts technique into their teaching practices and second, and more importantly, to provide feedback on preliminary drafts not on final ones.
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perception toward oral and written teachers’ feedback and how the students use the feedback for their writing assignments.
Forms of Feedback
Feedback on writing can take numbers of forms. Based on the way feedback is given, there are written feedback, oral feedback, teacher-students conferencing, and computer-delivered feedback (Hyland & Hyland, 2006, pp. 185-187). Moreover, based on the form of the feedback given, feedback can also be in the form of praise and encouragement, correction and comments, class discussions, or individual tutorial (Gower, et al., 2005, p. 163). Based on who gives the feedback, there are two forms of feedbacks known as peer feedback and teacher feedback (Gower, et al., 2005, p. 167).
However, the context of this research is only on teacher’s feedback, particularly in teacher’s written and oral feedback. The definition of written and oral feedback can be found in the following paragraphs.
Oral feedback
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students’ writing. After the students are able to provide explanation to the teacher’s question, the teacher will give suggestion in order to improve the students’ writing.
William as cited in Hyland & Hyland (2006) says that students were successful in using advice when teacher suggestions were direct, when students actively engaged in negotiating meaning and when they took notes of teacher comments, during the dialogues. By contrast, Carnicelli (1980, as cited in Gulley, 2010), in his qualitative study among English-major students at the University of New Hampshire, discussed about students-teacher conferencing time. This conferencing time is the kind of oral feedback, where there are conversations or dialogues between a teacher and his/her students to discuss about the students’ writing. The result of this study shows that conferencing is preferable to in-class learning since it provides clearer understanding between the students and the teacher, related to the content of their writing. However, he also notes that conference might fail if one of these conditions appear: 1) if the teacher does not listen to the student, 2) if the student feels insecure, or 3) if the student does not remember the teacher’s comments (p. 13).
Written feedback
Written feedback refers to the correction of errors and weaknesses in content, organization, and language through writing. In written feedback, the teacher makes use of direct versus indirect correction, coded versus encoded feedback, and marginal versus end comments, in the forms of corrections, questions, imperatives, praise, and suggestions (Patthey, Chavez & Ferris.1997, as cited in Hyland & Hyland, 2006). It means that any written correction that is given in order to improve the quality of students’ writings can be considered as written feedback.
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revise, whereas end comments can be more useful for writing development since they summarize major problems. Marginal comments are also deemed to be more motivating since the reader is actively engaged with the writer’s text (Goldstein, 2004, as cited in Hyland & Hyland, 2006). Marginal comments are comments that are written beside the paragraph to indicate what should be improved there, whereas end comments are general comments that are written at the end of the students’ writings to indicate the teachers’ overall impression of the students’ writings.
The Focus of Feedback
Today’s feedback in EFL/ESL writing is more concerned with the improvement of students’ future writing rather than with the assessment of the final product (Hyland & Hyland, 2006, p. 1). It means that the improvement of students’ writings in the future is considered more important than the final result of the students’ current writings. It shows that the focus of feedback, especially in students’ writing, is not merely centered on the students’ production but also on the never ending learning process of the students in improving their writings.
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(Ferris, 2006, p. 83). However, in indirect feedback, teachers are more indicating than fixing the error, for example using an “underline, circle, or code” (Ferris, 2006, p. 83). It provides students a chance to perform self-correction.
THE STUDY
Context of the study
The study was conducted in The English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU), Salatiga. The students who were enrolled in Narrative and Descriptive classes were asked to participate in this study on a volunteering basis. Narrative and Descriptive Writing class’ students were chosen for various reasons. First, at this level students were required to write a narrative essay on free topics. This level of students was chosen because before the final essays were collected, students had to consult them several times with the teacher. Then the students would receive feedback from their teacher and they had to revise their essays based on those teacher’s feedbacks. This first reason was important because it showed that the students of Narrative and Descriptive class were familiar with teacher’s feedbacks as well as with the ability to do revision accordingly. Second, the students had passed the previous writing class (Guided writing) so they were familiar with the various types of teachers’ feedback. Third, the students were already equipped with proper English skills to analyze and react appropriately toward feedback they received.
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1. What are English Department students of Narrative and Descriptive Class’ perceptions on teachers’ oral and written feedback on their writing assignments?
a. Do the students feel that the teacher’s feedbacks are helpful to improve their writing? Why or why not?
b. Do the students feel that teacher’s oral and written feedbacks are relevant and effective, so that they are able to make revision accordingly? Why or why not?
c. Which form of feedback do the students feel more helpful to improve their writing (oral feedback or written feedback, generic or specific, group or individual)? Why? 2. How do students use the feedback in their revision?
Participants
The study was carried out with English Department students in Narrative and Descriptive writing class. The writer only focused on one class, and 10 students were chosen to be participants for this study. This study used random sampling, so the participants were randomly picked. Only those who were willing to be the respondents were chosen. Considering that this research’s instrument was interview which required time to transcribe to analyze all the data qualitatively, as well as time limitation in conducting the study, taking 10 students in one class was considered representative enough.
Data Collection Instrument
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graded by the teachers. In the process of making the drafts to the final versions, they had to go through several steps of revisions based on the feedback given by their teachers.
The interview was conducted in a less formal situation where the interviewer and the interviewee sat side by side to create natural conversation in order to encourage the students recount their experiences, opinions, and free responses (Seliger & Shohamy, 1989, pp.166). In addition, the interview was a semi-structured interview where the writer had general ideas (direction) to lead or guide the interview. It was similar to structured interview but it allocated for greater flexibility including changing the order of the questions for follow up questions. This semi-structured interview was done in order to control the open questions that might arise during the interview (Nunan, 1992, p.149).
Data Collection Procedure
Since the instrument used for this study was semi-structured interview that was conducted in a less formal situation, the writer invited the participants individually. Moreover, the type of interview used in this study was in-depth interview that involved conducting intensive individual interviews with a small number of participants to explore their perspective on a particular idea or situation (Boyce & Neale, 2006). The interviews took 20-30 minutes. During the interview, the writer recorded the conversation (Nunan, 1992, p. 153) and the recordings were then transcribed and analyzed.
Data Analysis Procedure
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relevancy and effectiveness of the teacher’s feedbacks, 3) the students’ preferences of teacher’s feedbacks, 4) the students’ perceptions on the use of feedbacks for revision (whether or not they can reduce the number of errors in their writing composition, and 5) the students’ ways to apply the teacher’s feedback (performing direct revision, seeking second opinions, asking for teacher’s clarification, etc). This approach also allowed the writer to use descriptive language about the students’ perception toward teachers’ oral and written feedback in Narrative and Descriptive class. The interview took 20-30 minutes on the average and was recorded and transcribed.
DISCUSSION
This part will present the analysis of the students’ perception toward the teacher’s feedback. As what has been mentioned in the previous heading, there are five major themes in which the analysis and discussion are carried out. They are: students’ perception of the teacher’s feedback in general, the relevancy and effectiveness of teachers’ oral and written feedback, the students’ preference of the teacher’s feedback, students’ perception on the use of feedback for revision, and the students’ ways to apply the teacher’s feedback.
1. The students’ perception of the teacher’s feedback in general
Due to the important roles of teachers’ feedback in students writing with the purpose
of increasing the quality of their compositions, it is important to know how the students
perception toward teachers’ oral and written feedback, especially in Narrative and
Descriptive class. Ideally, as said by all of participants in Narrative and Descriptive class, teachers’ feedback is helpful for the students in revising their rough draft. Smith & Gorard (2005) stated that feedback was appreciated by the focus group participants and was generally deemed to be relevant and helpful. Therefore, when feedbacks are finally able to
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In order to explore the students’ perception toward teachers’ oral and written feedback, I conducted the interviews for students’ in Narrative and Descriptive class. The interview was conducted using Indonesian in order to get more data and reduce misunderstanding. Yet, in this discussion I translated the interview results into English to make it easy to follow the discussion.
Based on the interview, the students said that the definition of feedback was any corrections (Miss Blue, Enyok, Ice-Cream, Turtle, Enyak, Interview, 2012) or revision (Nyo, Lista, Nyi, Interview, 2012) or comments (Feragamo, Interview, 2012) given by the teacher on their writing compositions. Only one student presented different point of view about feedback. according to Suri:
Extract 1: Interview with Miss Suri (October 26, 2012)
“Feedback is a two-side communication between the teacher and the student.”
This student perceived that feedback should be a two-way communication, which meant that whatever corrections, revisions, or comments given by the teacher, they should be communicated clearly to the students and then the students should be given opportunities to explain their ideas. In my analysis, this communication would not only help the teacher to understand the students’ ideas, but also would help the students to comprehend the feedbacks given by their teacher.
The students’ understandings of feedback were seen to be an important aspect since they would be useful to answer how helpful feedbacks were for their writing. The finding showed that teachers’ oral and written feedbacks were very helpful to improve students’ writing. This finding was supported by the students’ perception toward teacher’s feedback in Narrative and Descriptive class, for example:
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“The feedback that my teacher gave is useful for me because it helps me to revise my writing”
Extract 3: Interview with Miss Nyii (October 24, 2012)
“I think it is very helpful because I can know which part that I make mistakes.”
Extract 4: Interview with Miss Suri (October 26, 2012)
“In my opinion it is helpful because from the feedback I know what is wrong in my assignments and I can improve it perfectly”
Extract 5: Interview with Miss Blue (October 30, 2012)
“Feedbacks from my teacher are really helpful to lead me when I write so that I am not confused to write”
From the students’ opinion above, we could see that the students see the helpfulness level of the feedbacks from how those feedbacks could detect the students’ errors so that they could revise them accordingly. In addition, they also said that by receiving feedbacks, they got guidance on what to write or how to correct their writing. Feedback provides a students with information on his/her performances attempt at an assessment task (Hester, 2001). In this respect, feedback could help the students to know what was wrong in their writing and got examples on how the correct sentences should be.
Additionally, when asked whether feedback was important or not, all of the students answered yes. All of them stated that they always read every feedback given by the teacher and used them as a valuable source to improve the quality of their writing compositions. They also claimed that their teacher had given them sufficient amount of feedbacks so that the results of their writings were improved significantly.
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assessment as being important in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, enhancing motivation and improving future grades (Hyland 2000).
2. The relevancy and effectiveness of teachers’ oral and written feedback
There are many kinds of feedbacks. From the way feedback is given, there are written feedback, oral feedback, teacher-students conferencing, and computer-delivered feedback (Hyland & Hyland, 2006, pp. 185-187). In this study, the feedbacks which were found in Narrative and Descriptive writing class were oral and written feedback. Below is the illustration:
a. Teachers’ oral feedback
Presented below are the students’ perceptions of oral feedback: Extract 6: Interview with Miss Blue (October 30, 2012)
“Oral feedback is relevant because it is more specific and my teacher directly showed the wrong part in my draft. It also effective because it helped me to correct my mistakes”
Extract 7: Interview with Miss Lista( October 28, 2012)
“I think it is relevant and effective because I think if my teacher gave oral feedback it is clearer, for example when I did not understand her feedback, I ask her and she explained it clearly.”
Extract 8: Interview with Miss Nyak(October 27 2012)
“Yes relevant and effective. My teacher explains more detail in oral feedback and I can also ask directly about the feedback”
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believed that oral feedback gave them opportunity to ask the teacher directly about the part that they did not understand. Nevertheless, there were two students who stated the opposite:
Extract 9: Interview with Miss Turtle (October 23, 2012)
“Yes, it is relevant and effective for me because the teacher’s feedbacks gave me so many inputs, so it was so important for me. However, if the feedbacks were delivered orally, I sometimes forgot what the teacher said”
Extract 10: Interview with Miss Nyoo (October 23, 2012)
“It was relevant but less effective because I often forgot what the teacher said”
From the two extracts above, there it was found that teacher’s oral feedback was relevant but less effective since some students could not remember what the teacher said and therefore could not revise their writings accordingly. This finding showed that there was a problem entitled with oral feedbacks that should be overcome.
b. Teachers’ written feedback is relevant and effective
The following extracts from some of the students’ perception toward written feedback: Extract 11: Interview with Miss Feragamo (November 3, 2012)
“Relevant. I think because in written we know directly my wrong part and also effective to revise my draft”
Extract 12: Interview with Miss Suri (October 26, 2012)
“For me it was relevant and effective. As a student, I really need feedback, to make a good writing, for example my sentence or word is wrong and with feedback I know how to revise it because the feedback is clear and understandable.”
Extract 13: Interview with Miss Ice-cream (November 5, 2012)
“In my opinion it is relevant and effective, when she reads my draft she gives me suggestions about how to correct it and usually she gives the solution too”
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perceptions showed that written feedback was more relevant and effective. They considered that written feedback helped them in revising their draft. For instance, in extract 11 and 12, Miss. Feragamo and Miss.Suri stated that they needed written feedback to help them in finding the wrong parts of their writing. Furthermore, in extract 13, Miss. Ice cream added that the written feedback helped her in giving suggestion for her writing. From their statements, it could be concluded that when given clearly, written feedback was considered relevant and effective since it provided the students with detail correction and suggestions for improvements. As Grabe and Kaplan (1996) state that in written feedback, students receive more detailed and comprehensible feedback for their writing.
Overall, from this theme, it could be said that both written feedback and oral feedback were seen to be relevant and effective. However, attention needed to be put on oral feedback since some students could easily forgot what the teacher said in the consultation time. When this happened, written feedback was seen to be more effective.
3. The students’ preference of the teacher’s feedbacks
According to the participants of this study, the students stated that they prefer to get written, specific and individual feedbacks compared to oral, generic, and group feedbacks. The following data displayed the students’ preferences:
Extract.14: Interview with Miss.Enyak (October 22, 2012)
“I choose written, specific, and individual. Written because I can refer back to the feedback, then specific because it is more clear and individual because I feel more comfortable and more understand.”
Extract.15: Interview with Miss.Ice Cream (November 5, 2012)
“I like more on verbal specific and individually, because in verbal I can know directly what the teacher wants , in specific I can know in details what are my mistakes or incorrect sentences that I made, and individually I can ask more intense because if in a group there are many students will ask , so that's kind of not really flexible for me to ask”
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“Written because if I forget I can read it and revise it, specific because I know which part that is fault so I know the specific feedback of each paragraph, individual because she can give me more time to face to face with her.”
Extract.17: Interview with Miss. Enyak (October 22, 2012)
“Written because I can remember the feedback and if I forgot I can look back. Specific, so it more detail than general and I choose individual because I can know each wrong part in my draft.”
The finding showed a clear students’ preference toward the kinds of feedback that the teacher gave in their writing class. When the students were asked to choose oral or written feedback, they stated that they wanted to get more in written feedback. It can be seen from the extract 14, 15, 16 and 17 that all of the participants chose written feedback because they could refer back to the feedback if they forgot and it was easy to remember. Like what have been stated in the previous discussion, oral feedback had a limitation since students might forgot what the teacher said so that it would interrupt students’ revision processes.
In addition, the students also got generic as well as specific feedbacks in their writing class. In this case, they chose to have specific feedback because the feedback could give more details and was seen to be clearer. For example, in generic feedbacks, the teacher only put question marks to ask the students to explain further or elaborate those parts. This sometimes would lead students to confusion or even misunderstanding. This misunderstanding in doing the revision would result in other errors, which sometimes more severe, in their final drafts.
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did not get clear messages about to which students those feedbacks were directed. From this statement, it could be said that group feedbacks were considered less effective compared to individual feedbacks.
Extract 18: Interview with Miss Nyoo (23 October, 2012)
“…individual feedbacks is better because in group feedback, I sometimes confused and ask my classmates about to whom the teacher gave the feedback. I also feel afraid if my teacher does not give me any feedback to revise my writing.”
Extract 19: Interview with Miss Turtle (23 October, 2012)
“…I have a fear that if the explanations of the group feedbacks are not clear enough, it will impact to the individual student who may confuse in revising his/her writing”
From those two extract above, it could be said that when group feedbacks were given, teacher might not state to whom those feedbacks were directed. Group feedbacks were usually general instead of specific. So the teacher only stated the common errors made by the students, and this kind of feedback was usually not specific in content. It also found that group feedback might create students’ anxiety if the teacher did not give feedback directed to their writing compositions. Therefore, it was found that individual feedback was more desirable.
Regarding the students’ preference that they believed in written, specific, and individual feedback were more helpful than others. This theme wanted to describe about the feedbacks that the students chose. This finding could become consideration for the teacher on the way how to give the feedback for them.
4. Students’ perception on the use of feedback for revision
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addition, teacher written feedback raises student writers’ awareness of the reader’s expectations (Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1994).
Based on the interview, this study found that the students’ points of view toward the use of feedback for revision were various as stated below:
Extract 19: Interview with Miss.Ice Cream (November 5, 2012)
“Yes, because the feedback has already been going well, so I think the feedback gives me benefit in improving my writing well, and feedback is helpful to improve my writing.”
Extract.20: Interview with Miss.Enyok (November 2, 2012)
“I can learn from the previous feedback, so I can improve my writing”
Extract.21: Interview with Miss.Nyoo (October, 23, 2012)
“Yes, I use feedback to revise my grammar because in my previous draft I make many grammatical mistakes, so I can improve my writing”
This finding confirmed what (Ashwell, 2000; Chandler, 2003) stated that the students who received corrective feedback improved the accuracy of their writing. The feedback could be used for revising and improving the students’ writing. As the interviewee stated in extract 19, Miss Ice Cream answered that the feedback gave her benefit to improve her writing. Same as Miss Nyoo in extract 17, she said that the feedback helped her to revise the grammatical mistake in her writing. In addition Miss Nyoo also responded that she could learn from the feedback to improve her writing. Clearly, it means that they could use their feedback in a good way because they used that feedback to revise their writings. The students said that the improvement of their writings could be seen clearly form the significantly reduced numbers of errors in their final drafts.
When asked about what sort of suggestions that the students could give to make feedback more useful to improve their compositions, they said that:
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“…I need clearer feedback instead of symbols such as question marks with no further explanation.”
Extract 23: Interview with Miss Feragamo (November 3, 2012)
“…a clearer feedback, for example if the teacher circles certain words or phrases, give further explanation about the meaning of the circle.”
Extract 22 and 23 indicated that the use of symbols in written feedback was less desirable. Although the use of symbols had been taught in Guided Writing class, not all students felt confident to interpret the meaning of the symbols. According to the students, teachers were expected to use the symbols consistently and re-communicated the symbols to the students at the beginning of the class to avoid misunderstanding.
From this theme, it could be concluded that the use of feedbacks were important since they significantly reduced the numbers of errors and increased the quality of students’ writing compositions. Therefore, feedback facilitates students’ development and task improvement (Hester, 2001). To maximize the improvement, student suggested that the use of symbolic writing feedback should be followed by communicating or explaining what those symbols meant. When students felt comfortable with the feedbacks, it was expected that their writing compositions would also be improved significantly.
5. The students’ ways to apply the teacher’s feedbacks
Like what have been stated in the previous discussion, some feedbacks could easily be understood by the students, but some others could not. In this section, we would see how the students apply those feedbacks, whether the understandable or not understandable ones, in their revisions. The example of feedbacks which were not understandable was the use of symbols. The students were asked about common problems appeared in their writing composition and how they overcame the problem.
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“I sometimes got confused to elaborate my ideas based on the teacher’s feedback. When it happened, I directly met my lecturer and asked her for clarification. If my teacher was busy, I usually sent her a text message. In addition, I usually pay attention on the feedback given by my teacher (and sometimes by my friends) and match the feedback with our writing, and then I see the guidance book to find some examples and the important things to be considered in my writing. I had to do that for several times to get good result in my final draft.”
Extract 25: Interview with Miss Enyak (October 22, 2012)
“I sometimes could not read my teacher’s handwriting, so I directly asked her what the sentences said. Maybe the teacher could write more neatly so that it would be more readable for the students.”
Extract 26: Interview with Miss Enyok (November 2, 2012)
”in written feedback, the teacher sometimes crosses out so many words or sentences. I do not know what that mean, so I ask her to clarify the meaning. I also sometimes ask my friends to get second opinion about the meaning of the feedback.”
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second opinions from their peers to do the revisions according to the feedback. Lastly, they did not only depend on the teacher’s feedbacks but also performed a self-effort to improve their writing.
CONCLUSION
The study aimed to answer two research questions: 1) what are English Department students of Narrative and Descriptive Class’ perceptions on teachers’ oral and written feedback on their writing assignments?, and 2) How do students use the feedback in their revision?
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To answer the second research question, it is found that students had three ways of applying the teacher’s feedbacks, such as directly applied the feedback when they are clear and easy to understand, asked the teacher to clarify the meaning of certain feedback, asked for second opinion from their friends, and did a self-effort to improve their writing compositions.
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Acknowledgement
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28 Appendix
Interview Results
PARTICIPANT 1 Miss. Ice Cream I = Interviewer
P = Participant
I: “What do you think feedback is?”
P: “Feedback is like a correction from the teacher in my writing”
I: “What do you think of your teacher’s feedback in Narrative and Descriptive writing?” P:“So far feedback from the teacher is good because she cares to her students in the way we
understand the. The teacher is good, helpful and understandable.” I: “Is feedback important to you?”
P: “Sure, it helps me to know the wrong part in my writing so that it can help me to revise” I: “Do you collect your assignments as scheduled?”
P: “ Yes”
I: “ Do you read feedback about your assignments?” P: “ Yes”
I: “Do you use feedback to try and improve your results in the future?”
P: “Yes, because we need to revise the paper or the draft, and then the feedback written by the teacher is absolutely helps us to know the incorrect part for example grammar or structure”
I: “What types of feedbacks does your teacher usually give in Narrative and Descriptive Writingclass?”
29
I: “Is the oral feedback given by your teacher relevant and effective to improve your writing?”
P: “Yes, relevant, for example when she gives the correction for my mistakes in my paper and I don’t understand then she gives the clear explanation about it, and it effective too because by using the feedback my writing is better. I usually ask about my difficulties and she gives the solution too so that's good for me”
I: “Is the written feedback given by your teacher relevant and effective to improve your writing:?”
P: “Yes, when she reads my draft she gives me suggestions by writing it on my paper which sure that it effective for me to help me revise my writing.
I: “Do you think it is necessary for your teacher to give oral feedback? Why?”
P: “Yes that's necessary I think , because the students will know directly about what is the teacher's opinion , critique or comment about our writing , from that we can also directly know the teacher agree or not about our idea our topic in our assignment”
I: “Do you think it is necessary for your teacher to give written feedback? Why?”
P: “Yes that's necessary , because in written feedback I can remember the feedback so when I forget I can look back to it”
I: “Does the lecturer provide enough information to make the oral feedback useful?” P: “Yes”
I: “Does the lecturer provide enough information to make the written feedback useful?” P: “Yes”
I: “What do you usually do if you don’t understand your teacher’s feedback?”
P: “I ask , and then I also ask for the clarification what do you mean by this and ask what do you mean by this symbols, something like that”
I: “How motivating do you think is the oral and feedback feedback given by your teacher?” P: “ Yes, it really motivate me, it’s like the teacher gives me attention so the teacher care to
30 I: “Is feedback provided in a timely manner?” P: “Yes”
I: “Does your teacher provide you enough time to correct your paper and resubmit it?” P: “Yes , one week”
I: “What sort of feedback do you prefer (verbal/written, generic/specific, group/individual)? Why?”
P: “Actually I like both, I like more on verbal specific and individual, because in verbal I can know directly what the teacher wants , in specific I can know in details what are my mistakes or incorrect sentence that I made, and individual, I can ask more intense because if in a group there are many students will ask , so that's kind of not really flexible for me to ask”
I: “Do you have any difficulties to interpret your teacher’s oral and written feedback? Please mention!”
P: “sometimes I have one difficulties when the teacher underline the sentences , sometimes he/ she forgot to give the additional notes what is the lines mean , and the rest that's good because she has already done the great notes. And about the oral feedback I don't have difficulties because i directly can ask and when she answer that's satisfy my question” I: “Related to the above question, what do you usually do to overcome those difficulties?” P: “Sometimes I interpret by myself about what is the mistakes in my writing , and I also ask
to the teacher”
I: “What short of suggestion do you want to give to make the feedback is more useful to improve your writing assignment?”
P: “I think my teacher that already done good job so perhaps the feedback is enough” I: “Do you feel that your writing assignment finally be improved at the end of the meeting?” P: “Yes , because the feedback has already been going well , so I think the feedback give me
