Peer -Editing: A Strategy to Enhance EFL Students' Paragraph Development

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Peer-Editing: A Strategy to Enhance the EFL Students’ Paragraph Development (A Case Study Conducted at English Education Program of

Galuh University)

Yusuf Hidayat [email protected]

Didih Faridah [email protected]

English Education Program, Galuh University

Abstract

This paper was aimed at investigating the effects of peer-editing technique as a strategy to enhance the EFL students’ paragraph development during the third semester, academic year 2011-2012. The students were learning how to develop a paragraph through peer-editing technique. The course of writing paragraph was conducted during third semester in academic year 2011-2012 for all sophomores who were studying at the English Education Program, Galuh university. In this present study, the writer addressed two research questions, those are: (1). Does peer-editing technique give the effective results to the students’ paragraph development? (2). To what extent does peer-editing effect to the students’ ability in writing paragraph? Related to those research questions, the writer then utilized qualitative design particularly case study design to gain the data, where he administered questionnaire and interview to twenty sophomores as the respondents. The respondents themselves were selected purposively from 2E up to 2G. The results of the present study showed that most of the students got benefits from the use of peer-editing technique in their writing paragraph. Then, peer- editing technique also gives a quite significant contribution to students in understanding how to develop a paragraph. Even though the students feel enthusiastics that learning writing can be effective not only guided by the teacher but also guided by their classmates or peers. In short, learning through student-centered approach gives more joyful in creating interaction between peers to edit their work.

The results mentioned in the preceding point are very important for the writer as the teacher that student-centered learning particularly the use of peer-editing technique can enhance the effectiveness of teaching writing particularly in writing paragraph development. Nevertheless, the writer is also aware that the teacher’s review is needed to be the final assessment to check the students’ work and understanding to get the maximal results in their learning process particularly in developing their paragraph.

Key words: peer-editing, teaching writing, student-centered learning,

Introduction

Writing is not easy for EFL students in Indonesia, particularly for the students in Galuh university. The fact of it is proved by the students’ score of writing. The score itself is taken from their writing mid-term and final test. This phenomenon is caused by a complicated and multifaceted task of writing which has to be learnt by the students. Thus, they need a long period of time to learn and practice it. During the time, the students should learn various writing rules such as punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, diction, the mechanics and also the five-stage sequential patterns of writing, for instance: pre-writing (generating), drafting, revising (evaluating), editing (reviewing) and publishing (Jenks, 2003:1 as quoted in Lin and Tsai, 1995:78). But in line with the writer’s present study, the steps of writing paragraph only do in four steps, such as: pre-writing (generating), drafting, revising (evaluating), and editing (reviewing).

Dealing with the complicated and multifaceted task of writing as mentioned in the preceding point, it cannot obstruct the students to get success in mastering writing particularly in writing a paragraph. Even though, if the students would like to practice it well in a long period of time not only in two credits within a semester, but also have the extra time to practice it out of the classroom, for

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sure they are going to have maximal results in mastering writing paragraph. In contrast, if the students only learn within a semester without practicing it out of their classroom, it is going to cause their writing ability keeps low, because in writing paragraph the students have to notice the three parts of paragraph outline, those are: a topic sentence, some supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.

Besides the three parts of paragraph outline they have to master, the students also need to know and understand the other important elements in writing a good paragraph, such as ‘unity’ and ‘coherence’

(Oshima and Hogue, 2006:2-21).

With regard to the complex of writing rules above, many writing experts suggested approaches or methods to minimize the difficulties of writing. One of the suggested strategies is peer-editing.

Carles (1990) as quoted in Lin and Tsai (1995) pointed out that peer-editing means a strategy for students to edit or revise their composition through their own friends or peers. Furthermore, peer- editing can be defined as, “An arrangement for peers to consider the level, value, worth, quality or successfulness of the products or outcomes of learning of others of similar status” (Topping et al., 2000:150 as cited in Lin and Tsai, 1995:79). Generally, peer-editing has been regarded as one of alternative strategy to minimize the students’ writing errors and to enhance the EFL students’ writing performance through their collaborative learning as part of student-centered learning (Galvis, 2010:3;

Lin and Tsai, 1995:79; Wang, 2009:30-31; Zemach and Rumisek, 2003:21).

In relation to the present study, this research is supported by some previous studies conducted by some researchers. The first researcher is Diab (2008), he focused on Peer-editing versus self-editing in the ESL Classroom, conducted at freshman level course at an American university in Lebanon. He conducted quasi-experimental design where he took pre-test and post-test comparison group and employed quantitative and qualitative methods to gain the data. Then the results of his study reported that peer-editing can help the students to construct new knowledge through peer mediation.

Furthermore, the next researcher is Galvis (2010), in her research she focused on the implementation of peer editing as a pedagogical tool to promote collaborative assessment in the EFL writing process. She conducted the research at a ninth grade in a public school in Bogota, Colombia.

The main aims of her study were to determine the role of peer editing in the writing process and to characterize the relationships built when the students corrected each others writing. She also thought that peer editing is a technique which showed a phenomenon that often occurs naturally within the classroom, therefore the teacher has to guide systematically in implementing the technique of peer editing as a solution to solve the students’ problems in writing course. The results of her research showed that when the students were engaged in peer editing sessions they created zones of proximal development in which high achiever students provided linguistic scaffolding and empowered low achievers. It was also found that the students used thinking strategies such as noticing and explaining when they identified errors related to the formal aspects of the language.

While the last researcher is Jesnek (2011), she investigated peer-editing for freshmen and sophomore level in a particular college. In her study, the results showed that she found out the peer- editing gave benefits for the students to produce better college writing.

Dealing with the three previous studies presented above, the writer’s focus is only on peer- editing which is different from the first previous studies which concerns on peer-editing and self- editing in EFL classroom. While the second previous study concerns on peer-editing in EFL classroom for general writing. And the final previous study investigates also peer-editing for general writing. In line with the present study conducted by the writer, he would like to investigate peer-editing technique as a strategy to enhance EFL students’ paragraph development, then the present research entitled:

“Peer-Editing: A Strategy to Enhance the EFL Students’ Paragraph Development.”

In particular, this study was aimed at investigating peer-editing as a strategy to enhance the students’ paragraph development. The investigation was focused on enhancing the students’ paragraph development ability in the subject of writing namely ‘writing three’ during the third semester in 2012.

In the present study, the writer tries to answer the following research questions: (1). Does peer-editing technique give the effective results to the students’ paragraph development? (2). To what extent does peer-editing effect to the students’ ability in writing paragraph?

The present study conducted by the writer is also supported by its literature review as its theoretical foundation. To begin with, the writer would like to delineate briefly some terms used in this study. The concept of writing will be highlighted earlier as the main term in this study. Oshima &

Hogue (2006:15) may be defined as, “The process of an ongoing creative act roughly in four steps. In

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the first step is creating ideas, in second step is organizing ideas, in the third step is writing rough draft, and in the final step is polishing rough draft by editing and making revision.” In addition, Harmer (2004:5; 2007:325-326) implicitly defined writing as, “A process where a writer produces the written form which involves four stages beginning from planning, drafting, editing, and final draft.”

Regarding two aforementioned definitions, the writer then infers that writing is a process of producing a written text through some stages begun with planning and ended by final draft. Then, to deepen our understanding of what writing is, the writer would like to present other writing definition expressed by White & Arndt (1996) as quoted by Galvis (2010:2). They (1996) defined writing as, “A recursive process involving sub-processes such as generating ideas, drafting, revising, editing and error correction.”

After analyzing all definitions of writing above, the writer concludes that writing can be defined as a process of representing language in visual or tactile form, which involves at least sub-processes beginning from generating ideas, drafting, revising, and editing by correcting the errors, and finally produces a final draft.

After discussing the term of writing, in the following part, then, the writer is going to discuss what paragraph is. Related to the term of paragraph, Oshima & Hogue (2006:2) defined, “A paragraph is a group of related sentences that discuss one (and usually only one) main idea. A paragraph can be as short as one sentence or as long as ten sentences.” In addition, a paragraph can be defined as a group of sentences which begins with a topic sentence, followed by some supporting sentences, and ended by a concluding sentence (Zemach & Rumisek, 2003:11).

Dealing with the preceding definitions, the writer would like to elaborate and simplify that paragraph is a group of related sentences which has only one main idea, and it consists of a topic sentence, some supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.

The last term which is also essential to be discussed in this article is peer-editing. White &

Arndt (1996) as cited by Galvis (2010:2) defined peer-editing as, “A tool that help students assess their own writing assignments.” Furthermore Zemach & Rumisek (2003:21) defined that peer-editing is “Showing your work to another student is a very useful way to improve your writing.”

Based on the definitions above, the writer can infer that peer-editing is a technique to edit and evaluate a student’s writing done by the other student or peer. In short, it can be called as editing peer’s writing by the other peer.

In addition Zemach & Rumisek (2003:22) explained that peer-editing should be implemented by the teacher in the classroom because of two reasons, the first is to get the readers’ opinion about your writing. And the second is to share your writing with others and to read more of your writing.

While the steps of conducting peer-editing can be done as follows:

a. Read your partner’s work several times, the first time just read from beginning to the end. Ask yourself, what is it about? And what is the writer’s purpose?

b. On your second reading, go more slowly and look at specific parts of the writing and make notes.

c.

Do not look for grammar or spelling mistakes. Pay attention just to the content and organization of the work. (Quoted from Zemach & Rumisek, 2003:22).

Based on the rule of implementing peer-editing in the classroom as suggested by Zemach & Rumisek (2003:22) above, the writer modified it becomes:

a. All students write a simple paragraph, the topic is free they are interested in;

b. Then, they sit in a group of two;

c. After that, they interchange their paragraph each other;

d. Next, the student read carefully and check the error of his peer’s work;

e. Then, if the student found the incorrect word(s), phrase(s), and sentence(s), he/she directly puts a marking on it and writes a suggestion on how to correct it.

Methods

In this present study, the writer utilizes case study because the writer employed two instruments.

The first instrument is questionnaire, particularly open-ended questionnaire, and the second is interview. The questionnaire was administered to twenty respondents, while the interview was given to ten respondents such as suggested by Yin (2003); Woodside (2010).

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Participants

Dealing with the participants, in this present study the writer took twenty sophomores which were chosen purposively from 2E up to 2G at the English Education Program as the participants of this research. The reason for choosing sophomores as the participants is because the third semester is a proper time for them to learn paragraph development, and then it was investigated by the writer as their lecturer to know whether peer-editing technique help and solve their difficulties in writing paragraph or not.

Data Collection Procedures

In this data collection procedure, the writer would like to explain how the data was collected.

The data of this present study were gained by administering the questionnaires to twenty sophomores.

Each questionnaire consists of nine questions. Then, these questionnaires were distributed after lecture time finished, two days later the students submitted them to the writer. Then, the writer interviewed them by taking seven questions to fifteen from twenty students. The interview spent three hours for all students.

Data Analysis

In this data analysis, the writer then analyzed the data qualitatively. Nevertheless, quantification was also used to describe the data from questionnaires in percentage, while the data from interview is described in detail.

Results

In interpreting the data, the writer analyzed all the answers which were written by the respondents from the questionnaire. Such has mentioned by the writer in part of data collection procedure, the questionnaire consists of nine questions. Then, the data can be described as follows:

Question number 1: Have you ever done ‘peer-editing technique’ in your writing paragraph class? According to this question, 100 percent of the respondents answered that they have ever done ‘peer-editing technique’ in their writing paragraph class. From the answer above, the write infers that all sophomores at third semester have ever learnt writing paragraph through peer-editing technique.

Question number 2: Do you find out that your peer’s title of the paragraph grammatically correct? According to the second question, 70 percent of the respondents answered ‘yes’, that their peers’ title is grammatically correct. Meanwhile 30 percent of the respondents answered ‘no’. It means that their peers’ title is grammatically incorrect. Based on the second answer above, the writer concludes that not all students can write a title in grammatically correct.

Question number 3: Based on your peer’s paragraph, is each sentence begun with a capital letter? Regarding to the third question, 90 percent of the respondents answered, ‘yes’, while 10 percent of them answered, ‘no’. From the answer of number three above, it can be concluded that most of the students have understood of capitalizing rule in writing grammatically correct sentence.

Question number 4: Based on your peer’s paragraph, is each sentence ended by a punctuation mark? From the question above, 60 percent of respondents answered, ‘yes’. And the rest of 40 percent respondents answered, ‘no’. Dealing with the answer of question number four, the writer can infer that there are some students still not understand to the usage of punctuation mark.

Question number 5: Based on your peer’s paragraph, is the paragraph indented? Based on the question number five above, 95 percent of respondents answered, ‘yes’. And the rest of 5 percent of the respondents answered, ‘no’. From the answer above, the writer can conclude that only some students do not understand to the usage of indentation in writing a paragraph.

Question number 6: Based on your peer’s paragraph, does the paragraph have only one topic sentence? From the answer of number six above, 90 percent of the respondents replied, ‘yes’.

But 10 percent of respondents answered, ‘no’. Based on the answer above, the writer can infer that almost the students understand of how to decide only one topic in a paragraph.

Question number 7: Based on your peer’s paragraph, is the topic sentence supported by at least three supporting sentences? Referring to the question of number seven above, 80 percent of the respondents replied, ‘yes’. And 20 percent of the respondents answered, ‘no’. It means that some of the students write the supporting sentences less than three sentences. Dealing with the answer above,

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the writer can conclude that most of the students are able to write more than three supporting sentences for their topic sentence.

Question number 8: Based on your peer’s paragraph, does the paragraph have a concluding sentence? Based on the question of number eight above, 90 percent of the respondents replied, ‘yes’, while 10 percent of the respondents answered, ‘no’. Based on the answer above, it can be concluded that most of the students understand that at the end of a paragraph it should be ended by a concluding sentence.

Question number 9: After applying ‘peer-editing’ technique in your writing paragraph development, do you agree that ‘peer-editing’ technique help and minimize your mistake in writing a paragraph? From the question of number nine above, 85 percent of the respondents answered, ‘yes’. And 10 percent of the respondents replied, ‘no’, while 5 percent of the respondents answered, ‘not sure’. From the answer of number nine above, the writer can infer that most of the students thought that peer-editing technique can help their understanding in developing their paragraph, while some of them thought that peer-editing technique cannot help their understanding in developing their paragraph. And some other thought that they are not sure peer-editing technique can help or even make them confuse in developing their paragraph.

After describing the data taken from the questionnaire, then the writer would like to describe the data taken from the interview. The interview itself comprised of three items. For this interview session, the writer only involves ten from twenty respondents as the representative. The questions and answers from the interview can be seen in the following description:

Question #1: “When you were learning a paragraph development, did you find it any problems?

If yes, what they are?”

Student 1: “Yes, I did.”

Student 2: “Yes, I did, it can help me to understand the use of transition signals”

Student 4: “Yes, I did, it can improve my error in writing supporting sentences.”

Student 5: “Yes, I did, it can help me to know my mistake in writing phrase or sentences.”

Student 10: “Yes, I did, peer-editing can give a chance to share knowledge between friends to edit our paragraph each other.”

Based on the answers of question number one above, the write infers that all students found out difficulties in writing a paragraph, and through the use of peer-editing it can a little bit help them to minimize their problem in writing a paragraph.

Question #2: “After implementing peer-editing technique as a strategy to overcome the problems in writing a paragraph, did you find it useful for your study? If no, why?”

Based on the answers of question number two above, the write concludes that all the students agreed that peer-editing technique can overcome their problems in English writing particularly in writing a paragraph.

Question #3: “Do you think, is peer-editing technique useful and helpful for your writing paragraph development? Why?”

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Student 1: “Yes, I do, because it helps me to know my wrong in my writing, and I can ask my peer.”

Student 2: “Yes, I do, because by using peer-editing my friend will evaluate my task, and then I can correct it.”

Student 3: “Yes, I do, because we help each other.”

Student 4: “Yes, I do, because through this technique I can know my mistake in writing a paragraph.”

Student 5: “Yes, I do, because it makes me understand about my writing paragraph.”

Student 6: “Yes, I do, because peer-editing will help me in correcting my paragraphs’ mistake.”

Student 7: “Yes, I do, because after writing I can check once more my paragraph, maybe some words are wrong, or the structure of sentence is not relevant with the grammar.”

Student 8: “Yes, I do, because this strategy is the way for understanding the mistakes of my writing paragraph.”

Student 9: “Yes, I do, because it helps my writing if there are wrong on structure of sentence.”

Student 10: “Yes, I do, because with peer-editing we can share our knowledge each other so we can complete each lacking.”

Based on the answers of question number three above, the writer infers that all of the students thought that peer-editing technique is helpful for them in learning paragraph development.

Question #4: “Regarding to your opinion, what are the benefits of peer-editing technique for your writing 3 course?”

Student 1: “It can help me to write a paragraph well.”

Student 2: “The benefit of peer-editing technique is helping to evaluate my paragraph, correcting its mistakes, and helping how to make a good paragraph.”

Student 3: “We know more our false in writing a paragraph.”

Student 4: “The benefit of peer-editing is to improve my writing paragraph, helping how to correct to be better paragraph.”

Student 5: “The benefit is to improve my writing skill, and add my knowledge in utilizing punctuation, and the sentence structure of writing a paragraph.”

Student 6: “It can help my problem, and guide to correct each incorrect paragraph between peer.”

Student 7: “It can correct my paragraph from my peer.”

Student 8: “The benefit is I can know my mistake in writing a paragraph, and my peer can suggest me to change my mistake with the correct one.”

Student 9: “It can correct my mistake in structure of my paragraph based on my friend’s ability.”

Student 10: “The benefits are: I can share my knowledge in writing with my friend, and my friend and I can correct each other to each paragraph.”

Based on the answers of question number four above, the writer concludes that peer-editing technique can give huge benefits between student and student in correcting their error in writing a paragraph.

Question #5: “To what extent does peer-editing technique influence to your writing skill?

Mention it (if possible).”

Student 1: “I can understand how to write topic sentence, and how to develop it to be a good paragraph.”

Student 2: “In my opinion, peer-editing technique is quite significant in influencing my writing skill particularly in writing a paragraph.”

Student 3: “With peer-editing, I can know the mechanic of writing, such as punctuation, grammar etc.”

Student 4: “Peer-editing can add knowledge of how to write basic paragraph between friends, and can improve my ability in writing mechanics.”

Student 5: “This technique can increase my writing skill, particularly in writing a paragraph, and add my ability in understanding the basic rule of writing a paragraph.”

Student 6: “Peer-editing technique can give sharing knowledge between peers of how to write a good paragraph.”

Student 7: “Peer-editing technique can give a chance to my friend to correct my incorrect sentences in my paragraph.”

Student 8: “Through peer-editing technique I can correct each other with my friend to each paragraph if there is a mistake in it.”

Student 9: “My peer can correct my error in my sentence in my paragraph.”

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Student 10: “This technique can give my friend and I a big chance to correct each other to my friend’s and my mistakes in our paragraph.”

Based on the answers of question number five above, the writer can infer that peer-editing technique gives a quite significant influence to the students’ ability in develop their paragraph.

Discussions

This study aims at investigating the effects of peer-editing technique as an alternative strategy to enhance the students’ paragraph development during third semester. The data was taken from the sophomores of English Education Program, Galuh university, and the population consisted of twenty students.

With regard to the results of the present study, it can be inferred that the use of peer-editing technique can overcome and minimize the students’ problems in writing a paragraph, where each student can share his/her ability in writing with his/her peer. Besides that they can edit their paragraph each other through marking the errors of word(s), phrase(s), transition signal(s), and also sentence(s) in general. Next, they put the comments to suggest how to correct the errors. Through the data analysis, the writer would like to answer the questions raised in the research questions, those are: (1).

Does peer-editing technique give the effective results to the students’ paragraph development? (2). To what extent does peer-editing effect to the students’ ability in writing paragraph? Based on the data analysis aforementioned, the writer can argue that the answer for the research question number 1 is:

yes, it does, peer-editing gives a quite effective result to the students’ paragraph development.

Meanwhile, the answer for the research question number 2 is: peer-editing technique gives a quite significant influence to the students’ ability in developing their paragraph. The answers of research questions above are based on the data gained both from questionnaire and interview as showed in the preceding section.

After answering the research questions, the writer can infer that although peer-editing technique gives a quite effective result and gives a quite significant influence to the students’ ability in developing their paragraph, but it also needs the teacher’s feedback and assessment to give the further explanations of students’ works to get better results of teaching writing through peer-editing technique.

Conclusions

With regard to the aforementioned results and discussions, it can be concluded that the use of peer-editing technique can overcome and minimize the students’ problems in writing a paragraph. But, however peer-editing gives a significant influence to the students’ writing ability particularly in writing a paragraph, the teacher’s feedback and assessment are needed to align the students’

understanding if there are contradicted opinion between students in understanding a particular case of writing mechanics, grammar, and all related to writing rules, in this gap then the teacher can give feedback by correcting the students’ mistakes if they have not known a particular case related to the academic writing rule. Hence, it is essential for the teacher in order to guide his/her students in every activity they do in the classroom.

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