CHAPTER II
THEORITICAL RIVEW
A. Nature of writing
1. Definition of Writing
Writing is one of the language skills that cannot be separated from
learning a language. Writing as a process of expressing ideas thoughts in
words should be done at our leisure. Through writing, the writer can
inform the other, carry out transaction, persuade, infuriate, and tell what
they feel. How can we do something that we do not enjoy? Writing can be
enjoyable as long as we have the ideas and the means to achieve it.
According R.A (2010) stated that writing involve several sub-skills.
Some of these are related to accuracy, i.e.using the correct fors of
language. Writing accurately involves spelling correctly, forming letters
correctly, writing legibly, punctuating correctly, choosing the right
vocabulary, using grammar correctly, joining sentences correctly and
using paragraphs correctly.
However, writing is not just about accuracy. It is also about having a
message and communicating it successfully to other people and need to
have enough ideas, organize well and express in a appropriate style.
2. Importance of Writing
Writing is important and has some advantages which has influence in
teaching learning process. According to Harmer (2004: 31-34) there are
many advantages of writing, such as: writing encourages students to focus
on accurate language use, writing may well provoke language
development, and writing can be used to reinforce the students’ English
mastery. Harmer (2004: 31-33) states that there are some importance’s of
learning writing, by writing students can:
a. Avoid the Limitation of Writing
In writing students have more time to think than speaking
activities. They can go through what the students know in their minds
and consult their diction and grammar pattern by check the dictionary,
grammar book or other reference to help them.
b. Practice the Use of Language
Practicing the language can develop their writing skill.
c. Help in making a note as the preparation before doing activities.
Teacher gives the explanation to the students before teacher
give the task or activity, so the students have a note for their self. For
example when speaking class usually the students write a short
dialogue before their practice.
Almost test for the students is in writing. For example when
doing the examination, usually teacher asks the students to write the
answer.
3. The Function of Writing
According to Halliday (1985: 40) as cited in Nunan (1991: 34) suggest
that writing has envolved in societies as a result of cultural change
creating communicative needs which is not be readily met the spoken
language. There are some functions of written language in daily life which
will influence the text produce. Those are:
a. Writing for Action
It could be explained that written language used in public
signs, product label and instructions, recipes, maps, television and
radio guides, etc.
b. Writing for Information
It could be seen in the newspaper and current affairs
magazines, public notices, advertisement, and reports.
c. Writing for Entertainment
It could be shown by light magazine, comic, strips, fiction
books, poetry and drama, newspaper features, film subtitles, and
From the description above, it can be concluded that writing
are important to be learnt as it helps students solving and improving
other skills in learning language. Furthermore, writing is very useful
for enhancing students’ language skill through different types of
writing activities.
4. Steps of Writing
Harmer (2004: 4-5) states that there are four elements in writing
process, those are:
a. Planning
Experience is the beginning to write. Before starting to write or type,
they try decide what is they are going to say. When planning, the
writers have to think about the main issues, they are:
1) Purpose: considering the purpose of their writing since this will
influence not only the type of the text they wish produce, but also
the language they use, and the information they choose to include.
2) Audience: what is the writing for, since this will influence not only
the shape of writing ( how it is laid out, how the paragraph are
structured, etc), but also the choice of language, for example it is
3) Content: considering the content structure of the piece that is, how
to sequence the facts, ideas, or arguments which they have to
decide to include.
b. Drafting
We can refer to the first version of a piece of writing as a draft.
The purpose of the first drafting in writing process is for helping the
people to write their ideas and decide what should come first until the
last.
c. Editing (reflecting and revising)
Once writers have produced a draft, then they usually read
through what they have written to see where it works and where it
doesn’t perhaps the order of the information is not clear. Perhaps the
way something is written is ambiguous or confusing. They may then
move paragraphs around or write a new introduction. They may use a
different form of words for a particular sentence. Revising and
reflecting are often helped by other readers (or editor) who comment
and make suggestions. Another reader reaction to a piece of writing
will help the author to make appropriate revision.
d. Final version/draft
Once writers have edited their draft, making the changed they consider
to be necessary, they produce they final draft. This may look
because things have changed in the editing process. But the writer is
now ready to send the written text to its intended audience.
5. Aspect of Writing
There are some aspects to measure writing ability of students in
teaching writing. This aspects to evaluate writing with appropriate,
someone needs to know to evaluate writing first. According to
Nurgiyantoro (2001: 307) the aspect in writing that can be evaluated are:
a. Content (the agreement with the title chosen)
Content is the substance of writing have related with the title
and ideas expressed.
b. Organization (paragraph unity, coherence, and cohesion)
In writing is how paragraphs are arranged to be a good text and
content.
c. Vocabulary ( the precision of using vocabulary)
Style in writing means vocabulary choice to be used in
arranging sentences. The students should choose appropriate words
and arrange the word into paragraph.
d. Language (tense and structure)
Means how sentences are written appropriately to the function.
Therefore, the sentence can work properly.
Mechanic is how all the words are developed in correct
spelling, it is also about correct punctuation in writing.
6. Purpose of Writing
Before starting writing the students have purposes after having the
purposes in writing. Hopefully, they can express their ideas correctly and
clearly. There are some cases for people to write. Morsey (1976: 13) as
cited in Tarigan (1994: 20) explains that writing is used by educated
people to record, convince, to report, and to persuade; and those purpose
can be reached by people who can organize well their thought and express
it clearly, this clearance depends on the thought, organization, diction,
sentence used. Every writing activity has purpose. The meaning of
purpose in writing is the respond from readers towards writers’ work.
In relation to the purpose of writing, Hugo as cited in Tarigan (1994:
24-25) also summarize the purpose of writing, such as:
a. Assignment Purpose
Writers will start writing when someone asks writers to write
about something. Therefore, the idea which will be written by the
writers does not come from writers itself.
b. Altruistic Purpose
It can be used to entertain the reader, to reduce the reader
sadness, to help the readers to understand and comprehend the feelings
c. Persuasive Purpose
It has purpose to ensure the reader about the truth idea given.
d. Informative Purpose
The information and explanation will be given for the reader in
this writing.
e. Self-expressive Purpose
The purpose is to introduce the writer to the reader.
f. Problem-solving Purpose
This writing is used to solve problem faced by the writer.
Writers want to explain and observe carefully about his thought and
idea to be understood and accepted by the reader.
( Tarigan, 1994: 24-25 )
7. The Problems in Writing
Writing ability means the ability to communicate thoughts or ideas
through written symbol. Its means that writing as the written
communication tools and it is hoped that the other person understand what
the writer intends to.
When the students write they are often confuse what they want to
write, the students are not confidence about their writing. According to
Nurgiyantoro (2001: 289-299) there are some problems in writing, such
a. Organizing Idea
Most of the problem faced by the students in learning writing
is in organizing idea. They usually have difficulties in organize the
idea into sentence. Besides that, they usually write the content which
is not suitable with the topic. This problem probably occurs, because
of the students get difficulties in developing their idea and sometimes
they do not know what they will write.
b. Lack of Vocabulary
Most of students often write sentences which are not
communicative and they usually choose incorrect word when they
write something. This problem happens because they are not mastering
vocabulary. Vocabulary also becomes an important part in writing. If
the vocabularies are not mastered well, the students will get
difficulties in writing.
c. Grammatical Mistakes
Generally, most beginner students do not master English
grammar’s well, they only start to learn English so their writing skill is
still weak especially in grammar. It becomes problem when they have
B. Feedback
1. Nature of Feedback
Feedback is very important aspect of teacher talk. Feedback is a
fundamental element of a process approach to writing. It may have definition
of input from a reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to
the writer for revision, usually in the form of comments, questions, and
suggestions (Keh, 1990). Through feedback, the writer may learn the reader’s
confusion caused by the writer’s insufficient information, illogical
organization, poor development of ideas, or even inaccurate usage and choice
of words and tenses. In line with Cole and chan (1994: 44) state that feedback
is the last stage in the communicative process feedback involves giving
response to the sender. Its means when teacher gives some information, the
students will get the information and they use a response in form of feedback
to the teacher as a sender. Thus, there are communication processes in
teaching learning process.
Learning writing is through writing. Major types of feedback in
writing process approach are: peer feedback (Dheram, 1995; Keh, 1990; Mei
& Yuan, 2010), conference and comment (sometimes, evaluation, and error
2. The Forms of feedback
According to Cohen (1909: 109) proposes two forms of feedback.
Those are:
1) Oral feedback
Oral feedback, also known as teacher-students conferencing, refers to
personal consultation between teacher and students during the evaluation of
composition. The major problem in conducting this feedback is that the
teacher needs to have sufficient time.
2) Written feedback
In written feedback, comments, correction and/or marks are given to
students’ written work draft. The marks may be on words or quick symbols
such as underlining, circles, and other signs. The teacher should provide the
specific comments on students’ errors with suggestion about how to improve
3. Kinds of Feedback
a. Oral Feedback
Recast is an implicit corrective feedback and in this type of correction, teacher implicitly reformulates the students’ erroneous utterance or reformulates all part of the students’ utterance (Lyster and Ranta, 1997), an example of recast:
S: I have 15 years old.
T: I am…….
(Partial recast)
(Adapted from Lyster and Panova, 1998 ) S: I can land your pen ?
T: What?
S:Can I lend your pen? T: Can I borrow your pen?
(Conversation recast)
(Adapted from Lyster and Panova, 1998 ) 1) Explicit correction
The teacher provides the correct target form. Explicit correction is
teachers’ explicit provision of the correct form after clearly indicating that
what students said was incorrect (Lyster and Ranta, 1997). For example:
S: She go to the school every day. T: It’s not “she go”, but “she goes”. (Adapted from Lyster and Panova, 1998)
Explicit correction is also characterized by “Oh, you mean …”, “You
(Adapted from Lyster and Panova, 1998)
Further, this type of feedback also seeks the clarification of meaning:
S: Yesterday is rained.. T: I’m sorry?
In fact, “I’m sorry?”, “Pardon me”, “I don’t understand”, or repetition of the error as in “What do you mean by?” etc. are seen as typical feature for this type of feedback.
3) Metalinguistic cue
Metalinguistic cue refers to “comments, information, or questions
related to the well-formed of the students’ utterance, without explicitly
providing the correct form.” (Lyster and Ranta, 1997: 46), an example of metalinguistic cue comes as follow:
S: “two students walks together.” T: “Do we say “walks”?”
(Adapted from Danie, 1998)
4) Repetition
In this type of oral feedback, teacher repeats the ill-formed part of the
students’ utterance, usually with a change in intonation to draw student’s
attention to it or shows the location of the students’ error. (Lyster and Panova, 1998), as illustrated in this example:
S: “I sitted on that chair.” T:”I SITTED on that chair.”
(Adapted from Danie, 1998)
b. Written Feedback
Cited in Hiroko Saito (1994) said that the available literature
shows that there are various ways providing feedback that are
commonly practiced in both L1 and L2 situations: teacher
correction (with comments), error identification, commentary,
teacher-students conference, peer correction, and self-correction.
Description:
c. Teacher correction: the teacher corrects all the surface (main
grammatical) errors by crossing out pecieved errors and providng
d. Commentary: the teacher provides feedback by makingwritten
comments or questions on the margin or in between sentences. No
error corrections are made.
e. Error identification: The teacher indicate the place where
perceived error occurs by underlying or circlingit. But no
corrections are made.
f. Peer correction: Students evaluate each other’s work in pairs or
with a whole of class.
g. Self-correction: Students evaluate their own work by using a
checklist, computers, etc.
h. Teacher-student conferencing: The teacher and students discuss a
piece of students writingindividually during the writing of
composition, and after it finished.
4. Types of Feedback
There are three types of feedback which are introduced by Hyland
(2005: 178), they are teacher written feedback (teacher correction),
teacher-student conferencing, and peer feedback. Teacher written feedback (teacher
correction) is the teacher gives some notes such as a comment, correction, and
suggestion in students’ writing. According to Patthey
-Chavez,Matsumura,andValdés(2004),teacherfeedback, mainly a written
feedback (Ferris, 1997), plays an important role on students’writing because
students to improve their writing. Teacher-student conferencing is teacher
gives opportunity to students to get feedback on their writing through
face-to-face conferencing. The teacher asked student to come forward one by one and
then teacher gives correction to students. Teacher tells students the error in
their writing after that student should revise their mistakes in their writing.
Peer feedback is defined as feedback that is given by peer. In writing activity,
peer feedback means the students have the other students’ writing to read and
then give feedback on what other students has written.
Written corrective feedback is usually divided in twomethod by the
researchers, that is direct feedback(explicit feedback or overt feedback)
method and indirectfeedback (implicit feedback or covert feedback)
method(Hendrickson, 1980; Laland, 1982; Ferris, 1995a, 1995c;Sheen, 2004;
Erel and Bulut, 2007). Ferris (2001) as cited in Ahmad et al (2015, p. 115)
describes that “direct feedback is whenteacher provides the correct form for
the student writer; ifthe student revises the text, and he / she needs only
totranscribe the correction into the final version”. Indirect feedback has two
sub-categories, coded and uncoded feedback.
i. Coded feedback
Coded feedback points to the exact locations of an error, and the
type of the error involved is indicated with the code ( for example
Jeremy Harmer (2004, p. 126) some teachers use code and can
then put these codes either in the body of the writing itself, or in
corresponding margin. Frequently used symbols of this kind refer
to issues such as word order, spelling, or verb tense n the following
In line with Pratiwi W.D the teacher gives coded feedback to the
Figure 2.2. taken from Pratiwi (2013, p. 23)
j. Uncodedfeedback
In uncoded feedback when the teachers underline or
circle errors, the teacher leave the students to diagnose and
correct the error on their own (Ferris, 2002). This feedback is
more complicates in that students correct their errors
byidentifying them and use their acquired knowledge to self
correct such errors as cited in Pratiwi (2013, p. 23-24).
Figure 2.3. taken from Pratiwi (2007, p. 24)
5. The Function of Feedback
According to Sommer, 1982, stated that, “Comments create the motive
for doing something different in the next draft: thoughtful comments create
the motive for revising without comments from their teacher or from their
peers, student writers will revise in a consistently narrow and predictable
way. Without comments from readers, students assume that their writing has
of their text. Further, (Hendrikson 1979: 05) stated the errors should be
corrected because when students read over their written work, they generally
are unable to identify many of their errors. Students need some guidance in
recognizing deviant forms and structure in their work. If the errors are
ignored in the early stages, it will be more difficult to deal with them later on.
6. The Ways in Giving Feedback
Every teacher has different ways of giving feedback but it depends on
student reaction to teachers’ feedback. If the students have good respond in
teachers’ feedback so it will be easier for teacher in giving feedback. Hyland
(2006:83) states that there are four ways in giving feedback. First, if the
students have incorrect answer, the teacher will call other students to answer
the questions. Second, the teacher gives explanation, comment, or suggestion
to the students’ writing about their mistakes in orally. Third, the teachers
giving marks, symbol, or circle in students writing mistakes and sometimes
the teacher gives note like a short comment in written form. Fourth, teachers
combine oral and written feedback in giving students corrections. Thus the
teacher gives mark in students writing mistakes and orally if there in mistakes
C. Basic Assumption
Writing skill has to be mastered by the students because it has many
advantages. One of the advantage of writing is students can make a proposal
in English. Having good writing skill requires some steps. The steps are
planning, drafting, revising, editing. In the revising stage the teacher give
feedback on students’ writing to improve their writing ability because they
will know the mistakes from it. Based on those reason, it is assumed that
students’ improvement in writing depends on their perception toward the
teacher’s feedback. If the perception is positive they will feel enthusiastic in
learning something new from their mistakes and not to repeat it in next
writing, but if it’s not, they do not have enthusiastic feeling in learning from
