USING INDIRECT FEEDBACK IN CORRECTING

STUDENT WRITING

PAPER

Submitted as a partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Strata One (S1)
Degree at the English

By:
Seng Rianto
06040142

ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT
COLLEGE OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

2010

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 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A .Background of the Problem

Nowadays, in modern society, English becomes more important as a tool of

communication. English as a global language sets the important role in teaching English at

school from elementary school until senior high school and even in university. From these facts,

students are not only expected to speak English fluently but they also have to be able to fulfill

four language skills; speaking, writing, reading, and listening. These four skills are integrated

and related to each other.

Based on KTSP, all skills in teaching and learning English that are integrated each other

must be learnt and taught by students and teacher, including writing skill. Writing will help

students mastering the other skills and of course in mastery English completely. The students are

sometimes afraid and shy to speak what they want to say but they can tell what they think and

what they want to say into draft or writing before speaking. Thus, if students are having problem

in expressing an idea, he/she can write it down. Then, student itself or possibly the reader will

understand it.

There are still some teachers who haven’t given their attention on this case completely. If

teacher want to help the students to be a good writer in English, he / she must be able to teach

writing effectively in the classroom. Teaching writing is always related to how to give feedback

directly or indirectly on writing in a good way, especially by the teacher.

Roger (2001) tells that some feedback from teacher serves unhelpful feedback to student

they are too generalized or unclear, subjective and focused on some aspect of performance that

make the students cannot change. That is why giving feedback to students’ writing is important

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skill that is seldom taught. Through feedback, we can help students compare their own

performance with the ideal and to diagnose their own strength and weaknesses.

B.Limitation of the Problem

There are so many Assessment that can be used by the teacher in teaching writing ,

for example: Self correction, pair correction, Interactive, direct feedback., Indirect Feedback

and others assessment.

Based on the background above, the limitation of the problem in this paper is limited

in using Indirect feedback to develop senior high school students writing ability in

reproducing a descriptive text.

C .Formulation of Problem

The problem can be formulated in the following question “How to use teacher’s

indirect feedback to improve student ability at senior high school.

D.The Significance of papers

For teacher, this paper could be a valuable contribution in how to correct students’

writing using teacher’s indirect feedback. Meanwhile For students, is hoped to be able to

correct their own writing independently.

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 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Nature Writing

1. Definition of writing

Writing is one of important skills that language learners need to learn as an

essential component not only for their academic practice but also later in their

professional life. Teaching or learning how to write successfully gets even more

complicated and challenged for both language teachers and students. However, many

teachers agree that in the classroom, writing should get much attention as reading,

speaking and listening. Yet many teacher and students alike consider writing to be most

difficult subject of language skill to learn. ( Hasyim, 2002).

The teaching of writing is a matter of prescribing a set of predetermined tasks or

exercises to the students. When teachers teach writing course not only teach about how to

develop ideas in writing, but also need a serious attention of how to write English

sentences grammatically and systematically. So, teaching writing will be good if depends

on the teachers' ability how to teach writing effectively which can make the students’

ability being improved.

According to Lee (2005), in improving the effectiveness of writing, there are

some important notes must be noticed in teaching writing and assessment. In teaching

writing, the teaching should engage students in peer /self-evaluation. When they apply

the criteria, they become better informed about the requirements of good writing (for

specific genres) and Provide students with a language for discussing their writing. In

assessing writing, teacher should respond to writing based on criteria that have been

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 communicated and taught to students and responses to errors. To respond the error

teacher can use a feedback that contains specific criteria for the writing task and criteria

that have been taught and communicated to the learners.

2. Writing process

Gardner and Johnson (1997) describe the stages of the writing process:

"Writing is a fluid process created by writers as they work. Accomplished writers move

back and forth between the stages of the process, both consciously and unconsciously.

Young writers, however, benefit from the structure and security of following the writing

process in their writing”. Additionally, as Campbell points out, "there is no single writing

process" (1998), there are three basic stages writers go through: prewriting, drafting, and

revising.

Besides, three basic stages in writing also delivered by Ron White (1987) states

that the stages of writing process consists of planning, drafting, and revising. Planning is

a series of strategies designed to find and produce information in writing planning is any

orderly procedure used to bring about a desire result. In this stage, the author/writer just

builds basic of a topic that should depends on the writer/author’s knowledge, ideas and

experiences.

Drafting is a series strategy designed to organize and develop a sustained piece of

writing. In here, the writer can explore and improve his/her idea. This stage also

concentrates to the content tan punctuation, grammar, or spelling. Revising is a series of

strategies designed to re-examine and re-evaluate the choices that have created a piece of

writing. The revising always comes up after giving feedback to the writing. The feedback

is important to tell which the words/sentence should be changed or need correction.

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 Revising writing can be started by making decisions about how you want to improve your

writing, looking at your writing from a different point of view, and picking places where

your writing could be clearer, more interesting, more informative and more convincing to

the reader.

Appelebe in Mappe (2000) states more complete stages, that “there are different

views on the stages that the writers go through in producing a piece of writing, but a

typically through model identifies four stages: pre-writing, drafting, revising and

editing”.

The description of each stage is shown as follows:

1 Pre-writing

In this stage, students involve the activities, such as reading, brainstorming, mind

mapping, discussing, fast writing, questioning, interviewing, encourage them before they

write their sentences in the first draft. A typical pre-writing activity in the process approach

would be for learners to brainstorm on the topic being provided. By this way, students

would get motivation to write because they feel that they have something matter to say.

(Richard & White in Mappe, 2000).

2 Drafting

In this stage, students would select among ideas during pre-writing and structure.

The result of brainstorming session to provide a plan of description of topic. The content

might be written without considering the grammatical aspect first.

3 Revising

In this stage, the students review a draft to check content and organization based

on the feedback from him or herself and teacher or peers. Biaael in Mappe (2000)

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 emphasizes that revision is a process in which writers not only polish their style, but also

develop their ideas. In this stage, the teacher help the students through the revision to

shape and reshape the text into final form, and it’s focused more on audience, mood,

voice, length, clarity, completeness and consciousness.

4 Editing

This is where the role of teacher in giving indirect feedback will be applied. In this

stage, the students check their final text for some mistakes they have made based on the

feedback given, such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, and all presentation. Shih in

Mappe (2000) classifies three stages of editing for grammar: editing at discourse level,

sentences level and word level”.

Editing at discourse level is meant the writer needs to make changes in one

sentence, such as making the subject plural instead of singular. Editing at sentence level is

to find out the errors in sentences, such as: phrase, clause and sentence pattern. Editing at

word level, editing morphological errors require checking to see that affixes and

grammatical function words, such as: auxiliary verb, articles and preposition correct. The

writer needs to focus his/her special attention on the ends of words in order to catch the

missing of an incorrect ending: s/es, d/ed, -ing as well an awareness of different points of

view.

B. Feedback

1. Definition of feedback

One of the ways to make students be able to create good writing is the teacher

should provide constructive feedback to their writing. In this section, the writer wants to

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explain what kind of feedback that important to students’ writing, the advantages and

disadvantages of the feedback itself.

Feedback is kind of assessment that concern to the giving information about

students’ writing performance. Ur (1996) says that “in the context of teaching general,

feedback is information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of the

learning task, usually with the objective of improving their performance”.

In addition, Roger (2001) says “Feedback is not just about weaknesses. Student

will respond if teachers are encouraging as well as allowing mistakes, emerging

capabilities, and give ideas for directing further learning”. From these definitions, it is

clear that feedback is very useful in teaching and learning process, besides students will

learn how to evaluate their self (self-evaluate), it also help students to take greater

confidence of their learning and increasing the students’ performance.

In providing feedback, teacher should encourage students to continue writing, in

order students feel good with their writing and carry the activity through completion

(Grabe and Kaplan). So, in process writing teacher must motivate students to do more

toward their writing.

2. Type’s of teacher’s feedback

Feedback consists of some types. One of them is teacher’s feedback/correction.

Feedback from teacher on the students’ writing could play a vital role especially in

teaching process. In this case, teacher recognizes that teachers’ feedback is essential

element in helping students improve, and an essential part of the teaching process

(Anderson, 1982). It indicates that under teacher’s feedback, students will know the

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appropriate of the language feature for their composition, how their composition should

be arranged and their composition will be better.

There are two kinds of teacher’s feedback; they are direct and indirect feedback.

Direct feedback is a technique of correcting students’ error by giving explicit written

feedback. While, indirect feedback is when the teacher/tutor alerts students to error using

general comments, but gives students the opportunity to fix errors themselves Ferris,

(2002 ). Lee (2005) defines Direct feedback is provided when the correct form is written

on student’s paper whereas indirect feedback is provided if the teacher indicates the

location of the error indirectly on the paper by underlining, highlighting or circling, or

indirectly by indicating in the margins that there is an error on that line but without

providing the correct form.

3. Direct feedback Vs indirect feedback

Although there are some types of feedback, there must be the difference when

using direct or indirect feedback on students’ writing. Frodesen (2001) says that indirect

feedback is more useful than direct feedback. Students are able to express their ideas

more clearly in writing and to get clarification on any comments that teachers have made.

Similarly, Fulgor (2006) states that in indirect feedback, students appreciated its

beneficial effect on their learning and direct feedback to be more helpful when revising

syntax and vocabulary, whereas they felt that indirect feedback was useful in encouraging

them to reflect on aspects of their writing and to develop improvements.

Moreover, some research evidences suggest that indirect feedback is more helpful

on students’ long-term writing development than direct feedback (Ferris, 2002). The

results showed that indirect feedback with student self-editing contributes to accuracy

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more than direct feedback. Others have reported that indirect feedback may be more

beneficial to students than direct feedback in editing, because indirect feedback can guide

learning and help the students solve problem by themselves (Lalande, 1982).

From those statements, the writer believes that indirect feedback will be more

increasing the students’ ability in writing and students who get indirect feedback will be

preserved in his/her brain in a long time. While, direct feedback will be kept in their mind

in a short time. If the students are only provided by direct feedback, the student will not

have opportunity to reflect and correct the errors for themselves; they only note the note

of the errors from the teacher.

To make indirect feedback is more effective, Lee (2004) state that indirect

feedback can be done by a symbol representing a specific kind of error (T=verb tense,

Sp=spelling) and to reduce student confusion, teachers can consistently use a standard set

of symbols or markings to indicate place and type of error and train the students in what

kinds of corrections to make based on each symbol. Furthermore, teachers should

familiarize students with the system so they will not be surprised when new symbols are

occurred.

Hasyim (2002) gives the symbols or code that can be used to indicate error in

indirect feedback can be seen as follows:

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Table 1 Correction codes used to indicate error types in indirect feedback

No Code Meaning Kinds of errors

The words are inapplicable with the
1 WC Word choice
sentences/ meaning
2 PREP Preposition Wrong preposition
verb tense or GR =  more
3 VT Wrong tense/ use another tense
general grammar problems
4 S/V A subject verb agreement subject and verb don’t agree
Wrong spelling/punctuation your
5 SP spelling error
spelling
Use article a, an or the for singular
6 ART Article
noun
7 N.P new paragraph Unorganized paragraph
8 ^ missing word There is a missing word need to insert
I can’t understand this. The meaning is
question mark) unclear
9 ? not clear. Write in another way to
meaning
make the meaning clearer.
You have something good here: a good
10 Good Good idea, good detail
word, idea, detail, etc
the words in this sentence are in the
11 WO word order
wrong order
12 NN Not Necessary Word The word is not necessary

C.The role of teacher in providing indirect feedback to Students’ writing

The students cannot write alone and writing also not only a single step but a process. To

pass the process , they need guidance, supporter to make their writing better. Therefore, they

need someone to check about the mistake that they made. It could be from teacher or peer

because writing usually involves one person for another to help them in expressing their ideas in

writing form. Even though peers feedback is more advantageous, the teacher’s feedback is

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eventually needed to provide a whole class impression before they are engaged in an individual

writing as practice. Here, teacher can be as describer when he/she gives feedback. But before

that, teacher should be a reader and as advisor for them.

The patterns of feedback and responses given by the writing teacher depend very much

on the teacher’s conception of the composing process and his/her understanding of learner’s

errors. Teachers may, on the one hand, present themselves as helpful facilitators offering support

and guidance; on the other hand, they may act as an authority imposing critical judgment on

writing products, Ferris ( 2002).

Teachers can offer self–correction opportunity for their students by providing indirect

feedback on student’s grammatical errors ,Chandler ( 2003 ). The assistance and feedback given

by the teacher should not be confined to the last stage of the writing process. The marking of

products should always open more opportunities in which students can redraft their work. By

depriving them of their opportunity for redrafting and reassessing, the students cannot have the

chance of correcting the wrong behavior and re-practicing the correct behavior.

In addition, students are able to express their ideas more clearly in writing and to get

clarification on any comments indirectly that teachers have made to their writing, because here

the teacher as advisor that can help them to improve their writing

D .Procedure of giving indirect feedback on students’ writing

The procedure in application of indirect feedback as follows:

1. Teacher explained about the descriptive text in general and explains the codec error that

was given in their composition.

2. Students draft and ‘monitor’ their texts

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 3. Students write their composition

4. Teacher responded by giving feedback of all aspects but more concentrate on the body of

text in area of language use and organization .

5. Teacher used indirect feedback to correct students’ composition,

6. After the teacher give feedback to students, the students rewrote their compositions and

corrected their own mistakes.

7. The teacher provided grade and praise to students’ final draft.

D. The Assessment Technique of Students’ Writing

In assessing the students’ writing Quality, Jacob (1981) suggests five components or

criteria to evaluate the students’ writing quality: content, organization, vocabulary, language use

(grammar) and mechanics.

Content of Writing must be knowledgeable, substantive, , relevant to assigned topic.

Organization of Writing must be fluent expression, idea clearly stated/supported, well-

organized, logical sequencing, . Vocabulary of Writing must be sophisticated range, effective

word/idiom choice, and usage, word form mastery, and appropriate register. Language use

(grammar) in writing activity, the students will create the sentences based on their ideas and the

words in the sentences must be arranged grammatically which deals with tenses and agreement.

The last is Mechanics of Writing which consists of Spelling and Punctuation (Capital letter,

Period {.}, Question mark {?}, Exclamation mark {!}, Comma {,}, semi colon {;}, Apostrophe

{‘}).

E. EVALUATION

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In evaluating the students’ writing the researcher used the ESL composition profile proposed by

Holly Jacobs, et al (1981), in which the evaluation of writing consist of four component but the

writer only focused on two component of writing, they are language use and organization. Here

are the criteria of ESL composition:

Aspect of Writing Criteria

1 Excellent to Very good ; fluent

expression, ideas clearly stated/ supported,

, well organized, logical sequencing and

few error in grammar

,punctuation,article ,pronoun and

preposition.

2. Good to average; several errors in

Organization and
grammar, punctuation , article .loosely
Language use(grammar)
organized but main ideas still stand out.

3. Fair to poor; no fluent, ideas confused or

disconnected lacks logical sequencing and

development , frequent errors of negation,

agreement, tense, number, word

order/function, article, pronoun,Preposition.

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 CHAPTER III

DISCUSSION

In this chapter the writer discusses how to improve students’ writing ability by using

assessment of Teacher’s indirect feedback. The teacher starts the learning process by giving

students copies of model text. Then the teacher instructs students to learn the model of text. After

that, teacher asks students to discuss about the generic structure and language feature of the

model text.

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 In discussing about introduction, the teacher asks the students’ opinion about the pattern

of descriptive text. Here students give the respond to teacher’s command by delivering what they

read in the text. They mention that the generic structure which provided in the text consists of

orientation, description, and re-orientation/conclusion. After that, the teacher explained what

should be written in each part of descriptive text.

Teacher explains to the students that in descriptive text, the subject of writing could be

ordinary or extraordinary. It means that they have to make it as interesting as possible by

emphasizing what makes it interesting or new and unusual. The teacher continues the

explanation about the organization. The teacher tells them, when they want to create a clear

pattern of descriptive text, the introduction should be started from general to specific description

It has several paragraphs that is developed and described the topic and then in conclusion, The

teacher also notices them that they can use their sense to describe the subject.

After discussing about the characteristic of descriptive text, the teacher then explains the

language feature in descriptive text. in discussing language feature, teacher asks some students to

identify and show what these that the text model use, for example the teacher says “can you tell

me what tense does the text use?” some students respond by saying “simple continuous tense”,

“passive voice present” and other students say “simple present tense”. After that, teacher clarifies

the wrong answer by showing the sentences taken from text and teacher himself. Teacher say “if

you want to describe about something or the person activity or condition in the present, you have

to use simple present tense and the characteristic where Do, Does, V1, Vs/es, to be”. The teacher

also gives some related example (he eats banana every day, I go to the market every Sunday, he

goes shopping twice a week) and the adverb frequency (sometimes, usually, always, never, etc).

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 After discussing about the organization and language feature of descriptive text and also

give them the model text, the teacher asks students to write a descriptive text. Some topics are

prepared by the teacher, such as “my favorite thing”, “the most important person in my life”, and

“my favorite place”. Their composition consists of 3 or more paragraphs and each paragraph can

consists of 3-4 sentences. Then the teacher explains kinds of feedback will be used. In here, the

teacher explains what indirect feedback is, the function of indirect feedback , and how later the

teacher will give indirect feedback to their writing then The teacher explains about each symbols

are used in part of language use and tell them in part organization the teacher will comment the

introduction, description and conclusion. So the students can correct their writing and add their

knowledge.

The teacher takes note about students’ questions, their strength and their weaknesses

during the process. After explanation of the material to the students, the teacher asks them to

write their composition about the topic they have chosen before,

The teacher monitors the process during students composing and the teacher sometimes

helps them when they have problem with the vocabularies or words in English. The teacher

collects the student composition and chooses one of them and the teacher asks one of the

students to write down his /her writing in front of class and discusses it together by using indirect

feedback like below.

My brother

I have brother.(PUNC) But one that I’m very(NN)like. He have name is Ramadhan(S/VA).

He is policeman.. He live(S/VA) in jl. Ir. Soekarno number 42T. he is the most important

person in my life because he that(NN) always to(NN) pay me to school. He already have(S/VA)

family now.

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 He have(S/VA) one boy. He very(WO) like(S/VA) to play by her boy. Bedidest(SP) he also

like(S/VA) sports. Sports that he likes is badminton, football and table tennis (GR). Although he

often sports (WC) but her person very biggest and fat(GR). He don’t(S/VA) like if see peoples (WC)

that always to(NN) play dice(PUNC) he always(NN) teach(S/V)A

me about lessons, that I don’t know.

So(PUNC) he don’t(S/VA) like if I don’t go to school one day. His always angry to me about

it(?????).

From the example above ,the writer can correct some mistakes by giving a code that is made by

student and ask the student to recheck their composition . Finally the teacher give score to the

student writing

BAB IV

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

A .Conclusion

Based on the discussion, it can be said that the implementation of teacher’s indirect

feedback in assesing writing can improve students’ writing quality. It can be seen on students’

progress during the process. In the first draft, the students started to make a composition by using

descriptive text pattern and they produced disorder organization and lack in language use

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although they had been taught about the generic structure and the language feature of the text.

And they started to write a composition by using descriptive text. In here they were already able

to produce good organization after the teacher gave them indirect feedback that showed their

problem in writing, even tough, they were still lack in language use aspect. Then, they were

taught about the language use more intensively and the result is in the third draft, students had

produced good organization and correct language use. This result shows that the students did

improve in their practices.

B .Suggestion

After conducting this paper, the writer offers several suggestions for further writer as

follow:

1. For the next researcher who wants to conduct the same design, may conduct the study in

the same level by using different kind of feedback. The researcher also may take the other

aspect of writing of descriptive text because this study is focused on organization and

language use aspect of writing.

2. The next researcher who wants to take the same approach for the same level, she/ he may

take other kinds of genre because in this study, the focus is descriptive text.

3. For teacher, especially teachers of senior high school, it is better for them to apply

indirect feedback in assessing teaching writing.

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 REFERENCES

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267-296.

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Dunsford, Deborah W. 2006. Feedback Follow up: The Influence of Teacher Comment on
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second or foreign language (3rd ed.) (pp.233-248). Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle.

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Hopkin, D. 1993. A Teacher Guide Classroom Research. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

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Ur, Penny. 1996. A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory. Cambridge Teacher
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Alhamdulillah, praise to ALLAH SWT because of the mercy the writer can finish this

paper with the title “ Using Indirect Feedback In Correcting Student’sWriting ”. It’s written to

fulfill one requirement to get “Sarjana” Degree in English teaching at the English Department .

The writer would like the deepest gratitude to the advisor Shanti Octavia S.PD for her

enormously valuable inputs, comments, and guidance for the writer to finish this paper. Also,

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thanks to as my academic advisor for her suggestion and advice during the study. Then, thanks

to as the chairman of English Department. Finally, thanks to all of the lecturers who taught and

gives me advice and suggestion during the study at

The writer further would like to express her grateful thanks to all of friends who have

supported him in completing this paper. His sincere gratitude addressed to my parents, my

beloved brother and sisters who have sacrificed for my success in finishing this paper.

Finally, the writer is sure that the paper is not perfect yet. It still has much weakness in

substantial material technical writing and other aspects of writing. Therefore he invites some

critics and suggestion from the reader.

, 10 August 2010

Writer

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