TYPE OF WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK USED BY A
TEACHER IN ACADEMIC WRITING CLASS
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Beri Adetya Dwi Putra
112010098
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
TYPE OF WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK USED BY A TEACHER
IN ACADEMIC WRITING CLASS
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Beri Adetya Dwi Putra
112010098
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
Type of Written Corrective Feedback Used by a Teacher in Academic Writing Class Beri Adetya Dwi Putra
Abstract
Written corrective feedback (WCF) plays a crucial role in the products of students’ writing. Feedback is not only used to assess students’ writing, but also it is very important for developing students’ capability. The types of WCF itself are various. Each type of feedback has its own characteristic and function to assist the students in the process of their revision. This study aims at finding what kind of written corrective feedback used by the teacher in an Academic Writing class in English Department in Satya Wacana Christian University. In order to do that, 118 students’ academic writing drafts were observed and analyzed. The finding shows that there are three out of the total five types of WCF proposed by Ellis (2008) found in the students’ paper. They are Direct Corrective Feedback, Indirect Corrective Feedback, and Metalingusictic Corrective Feedback. Direct CF used more for helping students more in grammatical matters. Indirect CF used more in assisting students to generate their ideas and be aware of their own errors. Meanwhile, Metalinguistic CF which is also has the similar used like CF, it also used to stimulate students to be able to do a self-editing of their own errors in writing.
Key words: Written Corrective Feedback, academic writing, students’ drafts.
INTRODUCTION
Feedback is widely seen as an essential part to accompany and encourage learning
in educational field (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). This importance is also believed by the
experts of second language writing. The feedback is very important in the process of
creating students writing skill in second or foreign language. Feedback is also being one of
ways for teachers to help the students for producing a good writing.
Hence, feedback plays a pedagogical role for responding to students writing,
assisting students to comprehend the writing context and providing a practical
understanding as students’ audience of their writing (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). It means
the feedback is not only used to assess students’ writing. It is also very important for
In addition, the role of teacher is also essential in the process of students’
development of their writing capability. 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). It means that teacher is not only responsible for
providing feedback to respond on the students’ writing product, but also responsible in
helping and facilitating the students to improve their quality in writing.
In providing feedback, teachers might find difficulty. Experts who work in the area
of second/foreign language writing may assume that providing feedback to students’
writing is the most difficult and time-consuming part, but, the provision of feedback was
imperially seen as pedagogically beneficial to facilitate improvements (Soori et al, 2012).
Providing feedback might be the most difficult and time-consuming due to some reasons,
such as the large number of students or the various errors. But, feedback is useful to
provide students with assistance and guidance to improve their writing. Since, feedback
helps the students to recognize their weaknesses or errors through the comments, both
critics and suggestions, given by the teacher in their paper.
Thus, teachers’ feedback should not be too general, they should generate a context
for their comments so that it can be used to build an interpersonal link and targeted the
feedback to students’ personality and needs (Soori et al, 2012). This implies that since the
number of students might be large with various errors and different needs from one to
another, teacher have to provide specific comments to their writing. Some students might
be have difficulty in dealing with grammatical matters, and some might have difficulty in
generating their ideas for writing. Because of that, writing teachers must see the errors
first, then, decide what kind of feedback that must be given to the students based on the
Therefore, due to the various errors of the students and their different needs in
writing, written corrective feedback (WCF) can be the one of solutions in providing
feedback for students. 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). Providing written corrective feedback can decrease the time
consuming problem of errors correction which often happen in a writing class.
On the other hand, Truscott (1996) claimed in his study that written corrective
feedback (WCF) is ineffective on the basis of practical considerations (Beuiningen et al,
2008). He was doubtful whether teachers are capable to provide feedback adequately and
consistently. He also still doubted the students’ capability and willingness to use the
feedback effectively. The Truscott study makes the other researcher investigate the
effectiveness of WCF in further. The study of Sheen (2007), revealed that 111
intermediate-level students with various L1 background in an ESL writing class showed
improvement in accuracy after got the treatment using two types of WCF. Although the
two types of WCF made a significant progress in the students’ accuracy improvement, the
direct WCF with metalinguistic comments was superior to the direct WCF without
metalinguistic comments. Another study of Ashwell (2000) also found that adult learners
who provided with grammar correction increase their grammatical accuracy in written
composition. As opposed to Truscott claim about WCF, the study of Sheen (2007) and
Ashwell (2000) proved that WCF has the advantages of increasing students’ accuracy in
the writing product.
Since feedback from teachers is very important in writing, the writer decided to
conduct a study about the types of WCF used by Ellis (2007). The study was guided based
teacher in academic writing class?” The aim of the study was to know what type of
teacher’s WCF used in academic writing class in Satya Wacana Christian University. The
findings of this study can hopefully enrich knowledge of writing teachers in the future
about the types of WCF.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This section discuss about the theoretical framework, previous studies and also
argument of the experts to support writer’s idea in this study.
Corrective Feedback
Responses to L2 learners’ production have been pointed as corrective feedback
(CF) or error correction (Beuningen, 2010). In general, Kepner (1991) defines feedback as
“any procedures used to inform a learner whether an instructional response is right or
wrong” (p. 141). It is a mean of channeling reactions and advice.
Hyland and Hyland (2006) stated that feedback can be positive and negative.
Positive feedback insists the learners’ linguistic correctness of the utterance. It was viewed
as essential since it provides affective support to develop learners’ motivation in
continuing the learning process. Yet, the ambiguity occurs on such feedback since it does
not merely provide learners with a subsequent correction or modification of the students’
utterance. As opposed to positive feedback, critical view or negative feedback is more
corrective because it indicates that learners’ utterance lacks of linguistically correctness.
Those who work in the area of SLA have concerned about corrective feedback
(CF), but they often disagreed about whether to correct the errors, what errors to correct,
the SL teachers to provide their students with a meaningful and fruitful feedback. So, it can
be accepted and used by the students for their improvement.
Commonly, corrective feedback can be provided in two different ways, oral and
written. Oral corrective feedback is an interactive feedback that allows the students to have
a direct discussion with the teacher. While, written corrective feedback is a response that is
given through written language, usually it could be found in students’ papers.
Written Corrective Feedback in Writing
Written corrective feedback appears as the most common feedback provided for
writing course. It has been long that some experts who get involved in corrective feedback
in ESL/EFL writing 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). As a result, the focus of providing feedback is most on discovering a useful
WCF to be used.
Sheen (2007) stated that written corrective feedback is complex since it points
some aspects of writing content, rethoric, organization, and mechanics, as well as linguistic
accuracy. The provision of WCF should cover all of those aspects. Each aspect is
important and interconnected to each other to build a good writing product. Bitchener and
Knoch (2008) argued that a single feedback session can be effective in developing
accuracy, but if teachers provide additional feedback on more occasions, it may improve
the rate of accuracy and help students achieve a higher level of mastery over recurrent
errors. Here, written corrective feedback should be able to provide students with input
aspects. Thus, ESL/EFL writing teachers have to provide their students with a meaningful
and various WCF in order to help students develop their writing capability.
The Type of WCF Provision
Ellis (2008) mentioned five types of WCF provision to response on students’
writing. The first one is Direct Corrective Feedback (CF) in which the teacher provides
learners with the correct forms. Such CF can be given by crossing out unnecessary word,
phrase, or morpheme, inserting a missing word or morpheme, and writing the correct form
above or near the erroneous form. The second is indirect CF which includes indicating
students’ error without actually correcting it, such as by underlining or using cursors to
show omissions in the students’ writing. It also can be done by placing a cross in the
margin next to the line containing the error. According to Lalande (1982 in Ellis, 2008),
indirect feedback is useful to guide learning and problem solving which could encourage
students to reflect about linguistic forms. Such feedback could stimulate students to be
aware of their own errors and to be able to correct it by themselves. On the other hand,
Ferris and Roberts (2001) in Ellis (2008) argued that direct CF much better than indirect
CF to assist students in their writing process, especially those with low levels of
proficiency, because it provides explicit guidance about how to correct their errors.
The third is metalinguistic CF which provides learners with some form of explicit
comment about the nature of the errors they have made by using error codes. This kind of
feedback consists of abbreviated labels for different kinds of errors. As the study of
Lalande (1982 in Ellis, 2008), found that a group of learners of L2 German that received
correction using error codes show improvement in accuracy in new pieces of writing and
The fourth is unfocused CF, in which the teacher can elect to correct all of students’
errors or just select the specific errors types for correction, and focused CF, in which the
teacher show the nature of the errors. Focused metalinguistic CF might be particularly
helpful in this respect as it promotes not only attention but also understanding of the nature
of the errors. Nevertheless, unfocused CF has the benefit of addressing a range of errors, so
while it may not be as effective in helping learners to acquire specific features as focused
CF in the short term, it may prove greater in the long term.
The fifth is reformulation feedback. It consists of a native speakers’ reworking of
the students’ whole text to make the language seem as native-like as possible while
keeping the content of the original intact. The teacher provides with alternative sentences
that native speakers often use and put it near to the error parts without omitting the error.
So, the students can see and optionally use the sentences given by the teacher to replace
their sentence. It aims to provide learners with a resource that they can use to correct their
errors but places the responsibility for the final decision about whether and how to correct
on the students themselves.
THE STUDY
This study is a qualitative descriptive research. The aim is to describe the
phenomenon of the type of written corrective feedbacks provided by academic writing
teacher. The data will be categorized into several themes.
Context of the Study
This study was conducted in Academic Writing class of English Department, Satya
Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia.Academic Writing class is
paper. For example, the knowledge and skill of entering the conversation in writing; of
starting what others are saying; of quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing; of responding
other people’s view, and planting nay sayer in writing texts.
Participants
The participant of this study was selected purposefully so that it meets the criteria
needed for this study, that is a teacher of Academic Writing class in English Department
who provides written corrective feedback to their students. There was one teacher chosen
as the participant and provide the writer with the best information. The teacher was chosen
because she provided WCF for her academic writing class students.
Instrument of Data Collection
The data of this study was collected using the students’ academic writing papers.
Students’ paper is chosen because the feedback is written. So, the writer could analyze the
feedback in the students’ paper to get the valid data. There were three kinds of students’
paper draft analyzed in this study.
Procedure of Data Collection
First, the writer made appointment with one of academic writing teacher. Then, the
writer asked the academic writing teacher to get his/her permission to use the students’
works. The writer used the students’ works with the teacher’s written corrective feedback
to collect the data.
Procedure of Data Analysis
First, the writer analyzed the feedback in each student’s academic paper. Second,
papers into direct, indirect, focused/unfocused, metalinguistic, or reformulation feedback
type. Later, the writer divided the findings into several subtopics based on the WCF types
stated by Ellis (2008) to see what WCF types the writer found.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This part presented the findings and discussion of this study. The findings were
based on written corrective feedback stated by Ellis (2008). There were three kinds of
written corrective feedback used by teacher in academic writing class. The feedbacks were
direct CF, indirect CF, and metalinguistic CF. The percentage of each feedback can be
seen as below.
WCF Used in Academic Writing Class
The chart above showed that from the total 6 drafts of the academic writing students, the use of Direct Feedback was 82.60%, the use of Indirect Feedback was 95.70%, and the use of Metalinguistic Feedback was 91.30%. However, not all the 23 students of this class submited 118 students’ academic writing drafts since some of them might be not attending the class.
A. Direct Feedback
The first type of written corrective feedback found in the students’ draft was direct
Teacher directly corrected the students’ errors such as word choices and articles. The first
proof was below.
Extract 1:
The extract was one of the students’ drafts of academic writing class. It showed that
teacher corrected the student’s wrong word choice from ‘is also qualify’ into ‘qualifies’. It
also showed in the extract, the teacher directly corrected and added ‘is’ into the wrong
sentence and correct the word ‘support’ into ‘supported’. Another proof showed the
teacher correction on the article errors like in the extract below.
Extract 2
The extract showed that there was an article error. The teacher directly provided the
correction of the article by adding ‘n’ after ‘a’. It can be seen from both of the extracts that
the academic writing teacher mostly provided the Direct Feedback by crossing out
unnecessary words or morpheme and inserting missing words or morpheme. It also can be
Extract 3:
Like the other two extracts of Direct CF before, the third extract above also showed
that crossing unnecessary words or phrase was one of the way of the teacher in providing
students with direct error correction. In the extract also can be seen that the teacher did not
only provide the students with the missing words, morpheme, phrase or articles, but also
provided the students with the correct language. What the writer means here was that when
the students wrote a sentence in inappropriate or uncommon language, teacher would help
them by correcting the language into the common one, just like in the extract above in the
part in which the teacher adding sentence “both as a second language or foreign language”
to make the language sounds more natural.
In the writer’s analysis, direct CF feedbacks gave the students an ease in the
revision process, because they were directly provided with the error correction. As Ellis
(2008) stated that Direct CF has the benefit that it provides learners with explicit guidance
about how to correct their errors. The writer analyzed that Direct Feedback here was used
to correct more in grammatical matters, like word choices and articles as shown in the
extracts. Since, grammar is seen as the most difficult thing in foreign or second language
writing, providing Direct CF might be one of the effective ways to help students dealing
with grammatical errors.
B. Indirect Feedback
The second type of written corrective feedback that found in the students’ draft of
that an error exist but correction is not provided (Ellis, 2008). It means that the students
must carefully correct their own errors. It can be seen in the extract below.
Extract 4
The extract was one of the students’ drafts. It can be seen that the teacher put a
symbol of ‘ ’ in the error part between sentences. Then, the teacher provided the
explanation of the symbol in the end of the paragraph. The symbol showed the students
that something was missing in the sentence. It means that students have to add something
to make the sentence correct. The students have to think carefully by their own about the
errors they have made. So, they can correct the errors appropriately.
It also can be seen that the teacher put marks like “?” right in the margin to show
the error location. The marks mean that the students have to make the ideas clearer. It was
found in the students’ drafts that mostly teacher provided the Indirect CF by placing
symbols and marks next to the line of the errors. The proof can be seen clearer in the
following extract.
In the writer’s analysis, the use of Indirect CF was more to help students generating
the ideas in their writing rather than for grammatical features like Direct CF. In the stage of
generating ideas like that was then required the students to think deeper in order to clarify
each idea to be well understood by the readers. In here, the reader was their teacher itself.
Thus, the use of Indirect CF could be one of ways that can be used by teacher to stimulate
students to be a dependent learner who was able to solve their own problems since it
demanded students to correct their own errors. This idea was supported by the study of
Lalande (1982 in Ellis, 2008) who found that Indirect CF is indeed more effective that it
provides to ‘guided learning and problem solving’ as students have to engage in deeper
processing.
C. Metalinguistic Feedback
The third type of written corrective feedback found in academic writing students
drafts was metalinguistic CF. Ellis (2008) said that this kind of feedback provides
metalinguistic clue to the error. It was shown in the extract below.
Extract 6
From the extract of a student’s draft above, it can be seen that the teacher provided
a brief description in the margin. Providing a brief description of the student’s error in the
margin like that included into a metalinguistic CF. In the description, the student was told
In the writer’s analysis, this kind of feedback was effective to make the students think
critically about the correction like Indirect CF.
It also can be seen from the extract that the teacher provided students with a code in
the margin. The code was written as ‘R-O’. The code means that students have to
re-organize the paragraph. It might because there was a fragment error in the paragraph.
Another proof of Metalinguistic CF can be seen in the extract below.
Extract 7
Beside the code of ‘R-O’, the teacher wrote ‘jumpy’ in the margin. It showed the
students that the sentences or the paragraph was jumpy. It means that students have to
connect the sentences or paragraph to be a well-organized idea. Of course, they have to
carefully think about the appropriate correction by their own because the correction was
not directly provided. The other proof can be seen in the following extract.
Extract 8
In the extract 8 can be seen that the teacher provided a short comment of
repeated the same ideas that have been discussed or written in the previous part. Therefore,
the students have to omit the repeated ideas or change it with any other ideas which were
appropriate.
It was found that teacher mostly provided the Metalingusitic CF by writing explicit
short comments and adding codes or labels in the margin as it shown in the extracts. In the
writer’s analysis, the use of Metalinguistic CF found in this study, through codes and short
metalinguistic explanation of students’ errors, have the same purpose with Indirect CF that
was to help students correct more in the organization of ideas and their writing
composition by their own. Since, correction was not provided in Metalinguistic CF, the
same with Indirect CF.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this study was to find out the written corrective feedbacks (WCF) used
by a teacher in an Academic Writing class. In order to do that, 118 drafts of the students
were analyzed. The result revealed that there were three types of written corrective
feedback as stated by Ellis (2008) used by the teacher of the class.
The first one was Direct Feedback. Direct Feedback here was used to correct more
in grammatical matters. The errors correction was mostly in words choices and articles.
The second one was Indirect Feedback. In the used of this feedback, teacher was not
directly correct the errors. The teacher only showed the students that errors exist in their
paper by using a symbol, like ‘ ’. In the end of the paragraph, the teacher wrote the
meaning of the symbol that was ‘something is missing’. The students have to correct the
errors by adding something that was missing into their sentences. It means that the students
writing rather than focusing on the grammatical features. The third one was Metalinguistic
Feedback. In this feedback, the teacher was provided the students with some clues to
indicate the errors. The clue can be a brief description written in the margin, like ‘R-O’ and
‘Jumpy’. The brief description allowed the students to know what they should do to correct
their own errors, like whether they need to re-organize the jumpy paragraphs or change the
idea of a paragraph. Thus, the used of this feedback was similar with Indirect CF which
required students to be aware of their own errors, be able to do a self-editing to their own
errors and developing their ideas.
Although the study reached its aim, there were still some limitations of this study.
Therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalized to all contexts. It was because
the subject of this study was an advance English academic writing students and conducted
only in one institution.
Therefore, the other similar study might reveal different result. The writer strongly
recommended for other researchers who are interested in conducting a further similar study
to broaden the scope of their study. It seems interesting to do a deeper investigation on the
types of WCF used in writing for beginner or intermediate learners of English. At last, the
writer hopes that this study can be useful to enrich knowledge of writing teachers in the
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Being surely the first, my huge gratitude goes to Allah swt, for blessing me and abundantly
before and always.
My thesis would never be made possible without help and support from these people.
To my thesis supervisor, Athriyana Santye Pattiwael, M.Hum. I would like to express my
sincere gratitude for the guidance, ideas, and suggestions of my thesis. To my second
reader mam Debora Tri Ragawanti, MA-ELT, thank you for helping me in revision and my
feedback.
I am thanking for my beloved parents, Philipus S.E, Dewi Yana, for keeping the support and trust in all things I do. My thanks also goes to my beloved sister, Terssia Putri Sari S.E for always keeping in my thesis process and also my partner of my life, Aditya Puspita Dewi, thanks for support and accompany me to do my thesis in a whole day. I also grateful for the presence of my college friends Agung, Feby, Ririn, Blank, Raymond, Apuk, Robby, Yogi thanks you for wonderful friendship and also TENNERS.
There are more, more, and more people who help me during my thesis completion. I just
