Providing Feedback in Teaching Writing

Providing Feedback in Teaching Writing

 disusn oleh : Misfakul Janah

PBI 2oo5 R

 

1. A.           Background

Learning of language involves three parts of emphasize “learning language, learning through language, and learning about language” (Michael Halliday, 1987). It means that language has an important role in learning the others curriculum subject such as science and history besides language just as a means of communications. Therefore teaching and learning of English Language, as a second language has been important among the other lessons in Indonesia nowadays.

In teaching English language, four aspects must be mastered, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In teaching writing, the learners have to product a written language as well as possible to practice what they learn about language, what they listen, and what they have spoken a language. In this case the teacher must guide the learners to express the idea, the structure of the words that the learners used in his writing task.

In giving written assignment to the students, the teacher usually doesn’t have care about what the student do during the process of writing. The writing process is needed the teacher guiding so that the students can mastery the topic they developed and the structure they used in this sentence patterns. The teacher usually do an evaluation in the final written assignment, didn’t pay attention in the student’s drafts.

By providing feedback on the student’s written assignment, is expected to give method that is more effective in teaching writing, so the student can create the written task perfect with the error as little as possible.

1. B.           Review Of Literature
   1. TEACHING WRITING

The writing systems can be define a set of visible or tactile signs used to represent units of language in a systematic way, with the purpose of recording messages which can be retrieved by everyone who knows the language in question and the rules by virtue of which its units are encoded in the writing system. (Florian Coulmas, in the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems). Thus, writing is a process of the people to represent the unit of meanings of a language to contribute messages to the others in symbols (letter). It is one of the ways of communications, the communication between the writer and the reader.

In A History of Writing, Steven Roger Fischer argues that no one definition of writing can cover all the writing systems that exist and have ever existed. Instead, he states that a ‘complete writing’ system should full fill all the following criteria:

1. Complete writing must have as its purpose communication;
2. Complete writing must consist of artificial graphic marks on a durable or electronic surface;
3. Complete writing must use marks that relate conventionally to articulate speech (the systematic arrangement of significant vocal sounds) or electronic programming in such a way that communication is achieved. (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd)

Teaching writing is the activities to guide and give instruction to the learners how to product a written language well. In teaching writing there are many tasks of the teacher to apply many methods to teach in writing systems so that the learners can write a text by themselves without broke the meaning of the idea they want to present to the readers.

1. 2.             FEEDBACK

Written feedback is an essential aspect of any English language-writing course. This is especially true now with the predominance of the process approach to writing that requires some kind of second party feedback, usually the instructor, on student drafts. So dependant is current writing instruction on instructor feedback that Kroll (2001) describes it as one of the two components most central to any writing course with the other being the assignments the students are given. The goal of feedback is to teach skills that help students improve their writing proficiency to the point where they are cognizant of what is expected of them as writers and are able to produce it with minimal errors and maximum clarity. The most prominently used methods feedback fall into two common categories:

1. feedback on form and
2. Feedback on content.

 ( http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Williams-Feedback.html –)

The feedback do to prevent the direct corrections that makes the students didn’t have aware and learn more about his faults that occurred in the writing assignment. It purposed the student could improve their writing ability, their writing style by the instruction and teacher guidance.

 

1. C.           DISCUSSION

In the writing process, direct correction is more effective than indirect correction. It is included the correction in form or the grammar and in the content of the text that the student created. The teacher should do the better method to improve the student’s writing ability. By providing feedback, the teacher has hard duty to give guidance during the student’s writing process. The teacher and learners must be active to share each other.

1. I.                    Teacher Roles

• The teacher gives instruction to the children what the student do in the writing assignment. The teacher explains to the students the writing process.

Here are the following writing processes:

1. Prewriting
2. Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information (e.g., interviewing people, researching in the library, assessing data).
3. Although prewriting is the first activity, you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process.
   1. Drafting
   2. Drafting occurs when you put your ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Here you concentrate upon explaining and supporting your ideas fully. Here you also begin to connect your ideas. Regardless of how much thinking and planning you do, the process of putting your ideas in words changes them; often the very words you select evoke additional ideas or implications.
      1. Revising 
      2. Revision is the key to effective documents. Here you think more deeply about your readers’ needs and expectations. The document becomes reader-centered. How much support will each idea need to convince your readers? Which terms should be defined for these particular readers? Is your organization effective? Do readers need to know X before they can understand Y?
      3. At this stage, you also refine your prose, making each sentence as concise and accurate as possible. Make connections between ideas explicit and clear.
         1. Editing
         2. Check for such things as grammar, mechanics, and spelling. The last thing you should do before printing your document is to spell checks it.
         3. Don’t edit your writing until the other steps in the writing process are complete.

          (http://web.mit.edu/writing/Writing_Process/revising.html)

• The teacher must give a concern to the student writing draft, in this stage the teacher will give feedback to the children.

The most common methods of feedback on form are outright teacher correction of surface errors, teacher markings that indicate the place and type of error but without correction, and underlining to indicate only the presence of errors. The first requires students to copy the corrections and the latter two require students to correct the errors on their own. Feedback on content consists mainly of comments written by teachers on drafts that usually point out problems and offer suggestions for improvements on future rewrites. Students are usually expected to incorporate information from the comments into other versions of their papers. (http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Williams-Feedback.html –)

• It will be more effective when the teacher ask to the student in conference to discuss the feedback that the teacher has done.
• After giving a feedback to the students, the teacher ask to the students revise their written assignment.

1. II.                 STUDENTS ROLE

• The student must be active to give their draft to the teacher in order the teacher will provide feedback.  Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) mention that students want to have some kind of feedback pertaining to the content of their writings.
• The student should ask the teacher to do a conference so that the students now the some error or mistake in their feedback they got from the teacher. Brender (1998) asserts that students want to take part in conferencing and find it more effective than written comments.
• The students have to revise their written assignment after they get feedback from the teacher by themselves.

1. D.           CONCLUSIONS

Based on the explanations above, the writer make conclusions as following :

1. Providing feedback in teaching writing is needed in guiding the student in the production of the text.
2. Providing feedback in teaching writing do by a teacher as the act to give indirect correction of the error the written tasks of the students that is followed by student to revise the written tasks themselves
3. The students will be more active to create their written task more perfect when their teacher give feedback
4. the student can know their improving of their written ability as soon as possible when the teacher proving feedback

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

(http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Williams-Feedback.html –).  Accessed on 28 April 2008

(http://web.mit.edu/writing/Writing_Process/revising.html). Accessed on  22 April 2008

(http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd). Accessed on  22 April 2008

Carter, Ronald, & Carthy Mc. Michael. (1994). Language as Discourse: perspective in language teaching. United Kingdom : Longman Group