THE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHER FEEDBACK

IN IMPROVING EFL STUDENTS WRITING

SKILLS
A PROJECT WORK FOR ADVANCED GROUP
INTERNATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMME-52

ARDIANA
INDONESIA

THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

HYDERABAD, INDIA
MARCH, 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE OF TITLE ........................................................................

TABLE OF CONTENT.................................................................

ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1............................................................................Bac
kground of the Study ..........................................
1
1.2............................................................................Stat
ement of the Problem .........................................

1.3............................................................................Obje
ctive and Benefit of the Study ............................

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1............................................................................Nat
ure of Writing
2.1.1 Definition of Writing......................................
2.1.2 Component of Writing ..................................
2.1.3 Process of Writing.........................................
2.1.4 Genre of Writing...........................................
.....................................................................

1
1

2.2............................................................................Teac
her Feedback
2.2.1 Teacher Feedback ........................................
2
2.2.2 Teacher Feedback in Foreign Language Writing:
A review of Literature ..................................
3
CHAPTER III THE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHER FEEDBACK IN
IMPROVING EFL STUDENTS WRITING SKILLS
3.1............................................................................Type
s of Feedback Used in Writing Class ...................
4
3.2............................................................................The
Importance of Teacher Feedback in Improving EFL
Students Writing Skills .......................................
4

CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION AND RECOMMEDATION

4.1............................................................................Con
clusion ................................................................
4
4.2............................................................................Rec
ommendation .....................................................
4
BIBILOGRAPHY.........................................................................

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1.

Background of the Study

Writing is a crucial part of communication. In many aspects of life, people need to

express their ideas in the form of writing instead of spoken words. Through
writing, people can convey meaning accurately and effectively to the reader.
Messages, postings, letters, memos and e-mails are some of the popular means of
written communication that people are currently using nowadays. Writing skill,
therefore, has become an essential language skill for people in general and
students in particular to develop.
The mastery of writing skill will definitely help people to achieve their
goals in life, particularly in relation to their future academic career and
employment opportunities. Plenty of career fields require employees to possess
good writing skills. Many employees are required to write a review/report, a l
project proposal, or a business plan. There are many other kinds of written tasks
which are essential for the institution or company where they are working. Even
before people can get a job, they must demonstrate good writing competence
through resume or an essay to fulfill the basic requirements for certain job
position. Good writing skills can be a measure of intelligence and competency. A well-

written resume or essay with no grammatical mistakes and broad, proper

vocabularies might help to select qualified candidates.
For students specifically, writing skill is a primary need. Almost every day
in school or college life, writing activities are demanded. Students are supposed to
write lesson notes, academic essays, or scholarly papers which all require good
writing skills. Even at the undergraduate level, students must write a hundredpage thesis as one of the requirements for getting the formal degree from a college
or university. If they master the skills of writing, they will probably gain better
achievement. Also, writing skill is a great investment for them if they want to
continue for higher education since all entrance examinations involve writing as
one of the important tests.
Ironically, most students conceive writing as the most difficult skill to
master, even in their own native language. If they are asked to write in foreign
language, it is for them more complicated and a difficult task. Writing in a foreign
language is not the matter of translating. They do not only switch words, but they
also must pay attention to the standard writing conventions used in the foreign
language they are using. They have to deal with a wide range of principles related
to organization of ides, sentence structures, word choices, and mechanics of
writing which are probably different from what they have in their native language.
They are required to be able to use the language as explicitly as possible since
they are not going to explain it directly to the readers; the readers are expected to
comprehend what they have written. The failure in the use of appropriate language
rules and conventions may lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. AlMekhlafi (2011: 17) affirms that writing in a foreign language is not an easy task
and requires a lot of practice and training because students have to produce a wellaccepted written form that is readable and understandable.
In Indonesia, where English is taught as a foreign language, most students
really find it arduous to produce a good piece of writing in any form. They

encounter some problems regarding how to make a good, meaningful sentence

construction as well as how to appropriately use grammar rules and other standard
writing conventions, such as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in order to
properly express what they think. These problems are generally resulted from the
interference of the students mother tongue, i.e. Indonesian language and
inadequate linguistic knowledge in the target language that is English. In terms of
content and ideas organization, most students cannot express their ideas in a
systematic order and they frequently put too many ideas in one paragraph or
include ideas irrelevant to the topic in their writing.
The good news is that like the other language skills, writing skill can be
honed and improved. A lot of research has been conducted in order to find,
examine, and evaluate methods, techniques and strategies that are used in writing
classes to develop students writing skills. One of them is Teacher Feedback.
Teacher Feedback is information given by the teacher about how students have
performed on a task, usually in the form of comments or suggestions in order to
improve the quality of students writing. The feedback can be positive or negative,
written or oral depending on how the teacher wants to encourage the students. The
positive feedback focuses giving praise/encouragement when students have done
well, while negative feedback points out or underlines the parts where students
have made mistakes and need improvement. Teacher may combine the two in
practice. In this case, the teachers should understand about what kind of feedback
works well in their class.
Teacher feedback has been considered useful in broadening students
perspective of their own writing product. Feedback tells the students about the
quality of their writing. Although the teacher is not the only source of learning in a
class, nevertheless, s/he is still the most dependable corrector for the students.
Corrective feedback from teacher makes the students realize about their strong
and weak areas and how they can make improvement on it. These also work as a
pointer to the students limitations in writing. Moreover, it helps them enhance

their self-efficacy to create better writing since the feedback indirectly informs
them the key to get high mark in writing class. Therefore, teacher feedback will be
a very necessary tool in the process of developing good writing skills.
Based on the above background, the writer is interested to examine more
deeply about how important the teacher feedback is in improving EFL students
writing skills, particularly in Indonesian context where the researcher is working
as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language.
1.2.

Statement of the Problem

In Indonesia, at the undergraduate level, most students are still not able to produce
good writing. Even though they have learned English for years in school, they still
make a lot of errors in their writing. Therefore, it is crucial to put more effort in
encouraging the students to write better; otherwise they will find it difficult to
succeed in their future career. In writing class, teacher should make use of
appropriate strategies to help the students improve their skills in writing. One of
the ways is by giving effective feedback for their work. Feedback seems to be
inseparable to the teaching and learning writing. Feedback, particularly which
comes from teacher, is believed as a valuable source of learning for the students.
Based on the assumption, the researcher formulates the following question:
1. What is the importance of teacher feedback in improving EFL students
writing skills?
2. What strategies can be used in providing effective feedback?
1.3.

Objective and Benefit of the Study

This study aims at finding out the impact of teacher feedback in improving EFL
students writing skills. Then, the result of this study is expected to give useful
information about feedback and how it can help the students in producing better
writing product. Also, this study is expected to motivate teachers who have not
employed feedback yet to start applying it in their classes.

CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This chapter presents several theories related to writing skills, teacher
feedback, and review of several related literatures in the use of feedback in
writing classes.
2.1 Writing Skill
2.1.1 Definition of Writing
Generally speaking, writing is an activity of expressing thoughts and
ideas on a paper or computer screen. Linse (2005: 98), Bryne (1997: 1),
Swales & Feak (1994: 34), and Brown (2000: 337) agree with this point. They
emphasize that writing is the process of constructing messages and meaning
by using graphic symbol to form words and sentences which are organized
based on certain rules and conventions in a language. The words and
sentences, then, semantically present what they think, feel, and perceive. In
addition, Wagner (2002: 27) reveals that writing is the way people make their
thinking visible to the world. Writing makes a permanent product. Once
people write, they make a record that can be read and evaluated by other
people.
Writing provides people with different ways for communicating to
others. Through writing, people can convey meaning and message to the target
reader. The Ministry of National Education of Indonesia (2009: 3) reinforces
that all written types have two things in common: first, they are written to

communicate a particular message, and second, they are written to

communicate to somebody. Hyland (2009: 20) also contends that writing is a
non-linear, exploratory and generative process whereby writers discover and
reformulate their ideas to approximate meaning. The content and who people
are writing to influence what is written and how it is written.
From the explanation above, the researcher can conclude that writing
is an activity of forming and arranging words, sentences, and paragraphs with
the reference to certain rules and conventions to express and communicate
thoughts, ideas, perception, and feelings to others.
2.1.2 Genre of Writing
Writing can be used for many objectives. The form of writing may be
different depending on why it is written, to whom it will be presented, and
where it is written. There are many types of genres of writing. Brown (2003:
219) classifies genres of writing into three, namely academic writing, jobrelated writing, and personal writing.
2.1.2.1 Personal writing
Some people write for the sake of themselves; so the written
product can be composed in a very informal way. It can appear in the form
of letters, e-mails, greeting cards, invitations, messages, notes, calendar
entries, shopping lists, reminders (e.g., checks, tax forms, loan
applications), forms, questionnaires, medical reports, immigration
documents, diaries, personal journals, and fiction (e.g., short stories,
poetry).
2.1.2.2 Job-related writing
In many working fields, writing is an essential activity. An
employee may be required to write to the chief, colleagues, or clients. The
examples of job-related writing are messages (e.g., phone message),
letters/emails, memos (e.g., interoffice), reports (e.g., job evaluations,

project reports), schedules, labels, signs, advertisements, announcements;

and manuals.
2.1.2.3 Academic writing
Academic writing is the piece of writing produced through an
academic circumstance. This genre of writing is usually performed by
scholars at schools or colleges. It can be composed in the form of papers
and general subject report, essay and composition, academically focused
journals, short-answer test responses, technical reports (e.g., lab reposts),
and theses or dissertations.
2.1.3 Elements of Writing
It is important to identify the elements which altogether form a writing
product for the sake of evaluation and improvement. The elements deal with
what constructs a text and how to construct the text. They often appear in the
form of rules and conventions of writing. The rules and conventions are
beneficial, especially for school and college where they are employed as the
basis for scoring students writing.
There are many experts which have been presented their theory about
the elements of writing. According to Harmer (2001: 255), besides grammar
and vocabulary, to produce an expected writing product, a writer should
consider about issues of letter, word, and text formation, manifested by
handwriting, spelling, and layout and punctuation. In addition, Brown (2000:
335) states that there are five criteria for measuring a students final writing
product, namely content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical use, and
mechanical consideration such as spelling and punctuation.
Heaton (1975: 13) proposes five general components or main areas of
writing. Those five components are, then, compressed to be five items namely

content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and writing conventions.

They are:
1. Language use: the ability to write correct and appropriate
sentences.
2. Mechanical skills: the ability to use correctly those conventions
peculiar to the written language-e.g. punctuation, spelling.
3. Treatment of content: the ability to think creatively and develop
thoughts, excluding all irrelevant information.
4. Stylistic skills: the ability to manipulate sentences and paragraphs,
and use language effectively.
5. Judgment skills: the ability to write in an appropriate manner for a
particular purpose with a particular audience in mind, together with
an ability to select, organize and order relevant information.
Huhges (1993: 91) mentions five aspects of writing, they are: (1)
grammar, that is an element of writing that which deals with a set of rule to
have a writer construct sentences that makes sense and acceptable in English;
(2) vocabulary, that is a list of words and their meaning; (3) convention that is
the rules in writing which is related to punctuation, spelling, capitalization,
and mechanics. (4) fluency, that refers to the ease and the style of the
composition; and (5) form, that is logical sequence and cohesive organization
or the flow of ideas being put into written language, to make unified
contribution to the whole paragraph.
Raimes (1983: 6) describes what writers have to deal with as they
produce a piece of writing; those are content (relevance, clarity, originality,
etc.), syntax (sentence structure and boundaries, stylistic choices, etc.),
grammar (rules for verbs, agreement, articles, pronouns, etc.), mechanics
(handwriting, spelling, punctuation, etc.), organization (paragraphs, topic and
support, cohesion and unity), word choice (vocabulary, idiom, tone), purpose
of writing, audience or target readers, and the writers process (getting ideas,
getting started, writing drafts, revising). The combination of the features is
used to create clear, fluent, and effective communication of ideas.

Based on the above theories, the researcher concludes that writing has
to do with five main elements, namely organization (paragraphs, topic and
support, cohesion and unity), content (relevance, clarity, originality, etc.),
grammar, mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.), and
vocabulary.
2.1.4 Process of Writing
A good piece of writing is not created through a one-step activity. In order to
compose a well-written work, a writer should follow several steps. The steps
will give the writer opportunity to read and examine what s/he has written.
Going through the steps can help the writer to find out mistakes and make
corrections wherever necessary.
According to Brown and Hood (1989: 6), writing process depends on
who you are writing for (reader), why you are writing (purpose), what you are
writing about (content), where you are, how much time you have, how you
feel (situation), etc. Based on that view, they, then, propose that there are three
main steps of writing, namely prewriting, drafting, and revising.
Instead of three, some other experts explain five steps in writing
process. According to their view, the process of writing continues until it is
published. They add editing and publishing steps. Hence, the process of
writing will be prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing (Linse,
2005: 105-109, Kessler, 2006: 42). Every step has its own purpose and
specific activities to be done. Therefore, a writer should pay attention to each
step.
2.1.4.1 Prewriting
Prewriting is the initial step in writing. In this stage, writers
generate ideas and put their thoughts in order (Kessler, 2006: 43). It can
involve various activities, such as reading passage about the topic,
brainstorming, discussion with friends/peers or teachers/lecturers. Kessler

(2006: 43) mentions three ways of doing prewriting, namely bubbling,

outlining, and drawing/writing a captioned cartoon strip.
Bubbling is also called mind web and is used to brainstorm ideas as
many as possible. Writers will put the topic on the center of the page and
circle it. After that, they connect related ideas like quote bubbles. The
ideas connected directly to the central topic may represent paragraphs in
the draft, and the bubbles to these will likely become ideas that support the
paragraphs. Outlining is another way of conducting prewriting. In
outlining, writers describe the function and contents of each paragraph by
organizing ideas into topic sentences and supporting details. Cartoon strip
is the form of prewriting activity employing pictures by pictures in order
to describe the flow of what to write. This way is usually effective to write
narrative story.
In classroom setting, each student may have different interest about
prewriting activity. A Teacher should be able to lead the students identify
which prewriting activity that makes them easier to collect and organize
ideas. The teacher may also design the template of prewriting activities
that can be used in class in connection with the topic that the students are
going to write about.
2.1.4.2 Drafting
The next step in writing is developing ideas onto paper which is
called drafting step. Drafting is where a writer really begins writing
(Brown and Hood, 1989: 5). In this step, some writers may spend much
time. Here, the role of prewriting will be very obvious. If a writer has
effectively formulates ideas in the first step, s/he probably will not
encounter too many difficulties in arranging them into sentence and
paragraph.
In fact, drafting is not a perfect writing. The writers, in this step,
should only focus on the flow of ideas, not grammatical or spelling errors.

The ideas can be rearranged, added to, and edited later. It is important to
write down ideas related to the topic to keep the paragraph coherent. Some
new writers may write description or explanation that they think funny but
completely unrelated to the topic.
2.1.4.3 Revising
When a draft is ready, it is the time for revising. Revising is the
step in which writers check out what they have written down in the draft.
This activity can be done by the writers themselves or by asking the
teachers or lecturers to give feedback. As long as the writing is readable,
writers should focus only to the content. In addition, Brown and Hood
(1989: 20) state that there are some things writers can do in revising
process:
- changing the order of parts to make the content or purposes clearer;
- adding parts (especially to link ideas);
- taking out parts which are not necessary;
- saying the same thing in a different way;
- substituting one word for another;
- combining two or three sentences into one, by taking out
-

unnecessary words or phrases;

making long sentences into two or three shorter ones; and
changing parts which are inappropriate for the situation, the
purpose or the audience (too friendly and informal, too formal,
etc.).

2.1.4.4 Editing
The fourth step is editing, which is also known as proofreading. In
editing, writers concern is on the conventions such as spelling,
punctuation, and grammar (Kessler, 2006: 56). That is what distinguishes
editing from revising. To differentiate the product of the two activities,
writers may use different color pencils, for example green for revising and
red for editing. Like in the revising step, editing can be done by the writers
themselves or more effectively by peers and teachers.
2.1.4.5 Publishing

After a piece of writing has been edited, it is ready to be published.

This is the activity in which writers rewrite their draft, preferably on a
computer, and produce a final draft. Publishing step makes it possible to
let the written product read by other people. With the same tone, Linse
(2005: 109) refers publishing to putting the writing in a final finished
format where it can be shared with others.
In the context of writing class, publishing may be rarely done. The
writing activity usually ends with submitting the final writing product to
the teachers to be examined and get marks. However, publishing actually
can be a great motivator for students since they may consider publishing as
a reward for their effort to write. Also, students can have some benefit
from reading the other students works. Here are some ideas for publishing
students works given by Kessler (2006: 63):
-

hanging published work around classroom;

publishing in the campus newsletter;
creating a class magazine; and
submitting to local or national newspapers or magazines.

2.2 Teacher Feedback

2.2.1 Nature of Feedback
Feedback is generally regarded as information about someones
performance on a task. Feedback is given once a task has been completed, and
it is usually in the form of comments or suggestions in order to make
necessary changes or improvement in the subsequent performances. Feedback
is normally something which happens as a result of some learning-oriented
actions (Race, 2001: 2). Thus, feedback exists whenever a better performance
is in demand from time to time, such as at offices and schools or colleges.

The source of feedback can be from anywhere. Hattie & Timperely

(2007: 81) contend that feedback is conceptualized as information provided by

an agent (e.g. teacher, peer, book, parent, self, experience) regarding aspects of
ones performance or understanding. They, furthermore, explain that a teacher
or parent can give corrective information, a peer can provide an alternate
strategy, a book can provide information to clarify ideas, a parent can provide
encouragement, and a learner can look up the answer to evaluate the
correctness of a response. With the same tone, Mottet in Maarof, Yamat, and
Li (2011) defines feedback as information from a source to a recipient in the
form of information about the correctness, accuracy, or appropriateness of the
recipients past performance.

In the context of teaching and learning, feedback can be the source of

learning for the students. Feedback provides the students with understanding
of performance on a task they have accomplished. It tells them in what aspects
they did well and which aspects need improvement. By identifying that, they
know what they should learn more. Ur (1996: 242) defined feedback as
information that is given to the learners about his or her performance of the
learning task, usually with the objective of improving their performance.

Feedback helps the students to know what level of learning they are
already reached and what they should do to come to the next level relative to
the learning goals. Narciss (2008: 127) affirms that feedback is all postresponse information that is provided to a learner to inform the learner on his
or her actual state of learning or performance.
Furthermore, Irons (2008:7) contends that feedback is closely related
to assessment, especially formative assessment that is given throughout the
process of teaching and learning, not only in the end of the learning period.
Feedback enables the students to learn from the formative assessment. He,

then, uses the term of formative feedback and defines it as any information,
process or activity which affords or accelerates student learning based on
comments relating to either formative assessment or summative assessment
activities.
2.2.2

Teacher Feedback in Foreign Language Writing: A Review of

Literature
Feedback has been considered as a key feature of teaching and learning

writing. It has been proven by the results of a lot of research done by teachers
and other academic practitioners regarding the influence of teacher feedback
in students writing skills.
Purnawarman (2011) investigated the impact of providing teacher
written corrective feedback on first semester ESL/EFL students writing
accuracy and writing quality. He employed four feedback strategies, namely
indirect feedback, direct feedback, indirect feedback followed by direct
feedback with explicit corrective comments and no feedback at all. The
findings of the research suggest that providing teacher corrective feedback
was effective in reducing students grammatical errors on their essays. All
three treatment groups also gained in writing quality scores in the new essay
indicating that, to a certain extent, there was an effect of teacher corrective
feedback on students writing quality.
Binglan & Jia (2010) also examined the impact of teacher feedback on
the long-term improvement in accuracy of EFL student writing. They
employed experimental and control group. The experimental group was
treated by using correction method, while the control group received no error
correction. They found out that the control group made less progress in EFL
writing accuracy, while the experimental group demonstrated much
improvement in their writing accuracy.
Barik (2011) found out the similar results from his masters degree
thesis. He investigated

CHAPTER III
THE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHER FEEDBACK IN
IMPROVING EFL STUDENTS WRITING SKILLS

3.1 Types of Teacher Feedback

A teacher can give feedback on students writing in different ways.
Feedback can be in the form of pointing out the mistakes or errors in students
writing through written notes or by underlining or encircling the wrong parts. It
can also be done by providing the correct form or the appropriate ones in a given
context. It can also be done by drawing the attention of the student to the
erroneous use of a word, a verb form or a syntactic structure and then through
different cues helping the student to get the right form through self correction.
Feedback can be given instantly or later, after the task is completed. In the
teaching and learning context, each class may have different learning conditions
due to the differences among the students level of intelligence, interest,
motivation, self-esteem, etc. For the sake of the students comprehension, teacher
should be able to identify what type of feedback which can work best in the class
regarding to the learning goals which have been determined. A teacher does not
need to be stuck in one way; s/he may combine two or more types of feedback.
Teachers adopt various commenting strategies which vary according to the type of
essay assigned, the point of the semester in which feedback is given, and the
prociency of the student (Ferris in Hyland & Hyland, 2006: 80).
Teacher feedback is a powerful source of information for the students.
Teacher feedback simply means the feedback which is provided by the teacher for
the students. Teacher feedback is inclined to be corrective; it intends to correct

what is wrong in the students work. Lightbrown and Spada (2013) point out that
corrective feedback is any clue or expression to the learners that their use of target
language is incorrect. This includes various responses that the learners receive.
They, furthermore, give a description that when a language learner writes, she
clean the room every day, corrective feedback may be explicit, for example, no,
you should say cleans, not clean, or implicit yes, she cleans the room every
day, and may or may not include meta-linguistic information, for example do
not forget to make the verb agree with the subject.
3.1.1

Written versus Oral Feedback

Written feedback is the most common way of providing feedback

employed by writing teachers. Written feedback usually refers to the teachers

handwritten notes on the students paper of work, but it does not always
happen to be so. A teacher can also use a printed form of feedback. Race
(2001: 5) points out that there are several advantages of written feedback,
particularly when it uses handwriting as a tool: (a) feedback can be personal,
individual, and directly related to the particular piece of work; (b) feedback
may be regarded as authoritative and credible; (c) the feedback can be
tailored to justify an accompanying assessment judgment; (d) students can
refer to the feedback again and again, and continue to learn from it; and (e)
such feedback provides useful evidence for external scrutiny.
On the other hand, oral feedback is feedback which is given in the
form of oral communication from teacher to students. Oral feedback can be
given to students one by one to make sure they understand about the feedback
given to them. In addition, Brookhart (2008: 48) suggests some of the most
common ways to deliver oral feedback to an individual student which are
stated below.

- Quietly, at the students desk, while the rest of the class is working.
- At your desk, either informally (asking one student to come to your
desk) or as part of conference time when students systematically come

to your desk to discuss their work. Zamel in Telceker and Akcan (2010)
affirms that many writing teachers believe that one-on-one writing
conferences with students are more influential than handwritten
comments and corrections no matter what aspect of student writing the

teacher and the student discuss, be it content, organization, or errors.

At a specially scheduled out-of-class time, such as after school.
In addition, giving feedback to the whole class is also useful,

especially in a large class. Oral feedback helps the teacher to save time and
energy; it has room for interaction and negotiation, and it is an effective
means of communicating with students who have an auditory learning style
(Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005). Teacher will explain about the common mistakes
made by the majority of students in the class, so s/he need not repeat the
same words to different individuals. The students also can learn from their
peers mistakes that the teacher highlights. The students will have more
opportunity to clarify misconception they have raised in their mind.

Both written feedback and oral feedback bring about the same aspects
of correction. In both forms, teacher can address the correction for all aspects
of writing which are examined, such as content, organization, punctuation,
and grammar. The only difference existing between the two is that when the
teacher is speaking instead of writing, s/he has less time to make decisions
about how to say things, and once they are said, they cannot be replaced
(Brookhart, 2008: 47). Hence, teacher must consider about the right time and
the right place to give the feedback to the students, and make sure whether
the students are ready and willing to receive the feedback.
3.1.2

Direct versus Indirect Feedback

Srichanyachon (2012: 10) highlights that direct feedback is a technique

of correcting students error by giving an explicit written correction.

Elshirbini and Elashri (2013: 7) also point out that direct teacher feedback
simply means that the teacher provides the students with the correct form of
their errors or mistakes whether this feedback is provided orally or in written
form. It shows them what is wrong and how it should be written, but it is
obvious that it leaves no work for them to do and chance for them to think
what the errors and the mistakes are.
Direct feedback seems to be intended for students with weak English
skills. According to Ferris (2011), direct feedback is appropriate, (1) for
beginner students; (2) when errors are untreatable, i.e., errors not amenable
to self-correction such as sentence structure and word choice and (3) when
teachers want to draw students attention to other error patterns which require
student correction. Ko and Hirvela in Elshirbini and Elashri (2013: 7) argue
that direct feedback is the least effective method in providing feedback for
errors and mistakes.
Instead of using direct feedback, many teachers prefer to give indirect
feedback to their students. Indirect feedback is defined as the feedback which
indicates that an error has been made by means of an underline, circle, code,
etc. The teacher does not simply provide the correct form of an error, but s/he
just gives marks indicating that there is something wrong and need to be
corrected. Srichanyachon (2012: 7), in his study, summarizes the advantages
of indirect feedback. First, indirect feedback can guide learning and help the
students solve problem by themselves. Second, students are able to express
their ideas more clearly in writing and to get clarification on any comments
that teachers have made. Third, students feel that indirect feedback is useful
in encouraging them to reflect on aspects of their writing and to develop
improvements.
Indirect feedback can be done by a code representing a specific kind
of error. When giving indirect feedback, teachers underline errors and use
codes to indicate the type of error such as SP (spelling error), P (fault in

punctuation), and VT (wrong verb tense). Teacher may design their own
codes or use the widely used convention. This method provides the students
the opportunity to correct the errors themselves. However, teachers should
familiarize their students with the codes, so that they will not be surprised
when they see teacher written comments. The following table is the example
of error checklist with codes used by Telceker and Akcan (2010), in their
study:

3.2 The Importance of Teacher Feedback in Improving Students Writing

Skills

Teacher feedbacks objective is to give information to the students about

their achievement in one task. Feedback informs them what they did well and
what they did wrongly and how they should fix them. Feedback provides space
for them to check and reformulate, if necessary, the concept of learning that they
have understood. If they receive feedback, they can get clear description about
what she already knows and what she need to learn more. They also may clarify
the misconception that they had in mind.
Feedback cannot be separated from the learning of writing. Students use
feedback as a source of learning. When students get feedback from teacher, they
are provided with knowledge that they can use to improve their next writing task.
If it is done continuously, it will prevent them from error fossilization in mind.
Feedback helps the students to elaborate the knowledge that they have got
with the new knowledge they get from the teacher.
Feedback from teacher is effective because. A lot of research has been
proven that students put high values on teachers feedback. It cannot be denied
that although nowadays the teaching and learning is leaner-centered, the function
of the teacher as one of the trustable source of information . Teacher can
employ any type of feedback as long as it.
It is also essential for the teacher to make sure that the students understand
what s/he means the correction. When the teacher uses codes to indicate error,
they should
Feedback must be given immediately after the task has been done.

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

4.1.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that teacher feedback can give invaluable information for
the students relative to the task they have been completed in the classroom.
Feedback can encourage learning and enhance students performance in
writing since they get information about what is wrong and how to deal with
the mistakes. They can develop their own control on the learning process.
Teacher should be aware of the importance of feedback to the students
development.
4.2.
Recommendation
This paper examined the importance of teacher feedback in the teaching and
learning writing. For its importance, it is recommended for the teacher to
provide feedback in the writing class in order to help the students learn and
develop their writing skills.
For the students, it is essential to pay attention to the feedback which is given
by the teacher since they can use that for correcting the mistakes they may
have made in their writing.

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