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IMPROVING STUDENT’S GRAMMAR MASTERY BY USING

TEACHER’S FEEDBACK

(A Classroom Action Research in SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in Academic

Year 2009/2010)

Written by

Written by:

ARIF NUR SIDIK

K2203002

A THESIS

Submitted to Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret

University as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement

for the Undergraduate Degree of Education

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY

SURAKARTA

2011


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ABSTRAK

Arif Nur Sidik. K2203002. MENINGKATKAN PENGUASAAN TATABAHASA SISWA MENGGUNAKAN UMPAN BALIK GURU (SebuahPenelitian Tindakan Kelas di SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta Tahun Ajaran2009/2010). Skripsi, Surakarta: Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu PendidikanUniversitas Sebelas Maret , Januari 2010.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan sejauh mana umpan balikguru meningkatkan penguasaan tata bahasa siswa dan kelebihan dan kekuranganumpan balik guru yang diterapkan dalam kelas di SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta.

Pendekatan yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitiantindakan kelas. Penelitian tindakan dilaksanakan dalam dua siklus. Tiap siklusterdiri dari empat langkah: perencanaan, tindakan, pengamatan dan refleksi.Untuk mengumpulkan data, peneliti menggunakan pengamatan, catatan lapangan,gambar, percakapan, daftar percakapan, dan tes. Tes yang diberikan merupakanpre-test and post-test. Kemudian, peneliti menganalisa skor rata-rata tes. Tes nyadigunakan untuk menemukan peningkatan pengusaan tata bahasa siswa setelahpenelitian dilaksanakan.

Hasil dari penelitian menunjukkan bahwa umpan balik guru dapatmeningkatkan penguasaan tata bahasa siswa dan umpan balik guru memilikikelebihan dan kekurangan. Peningkatan penguasaan tatabahasa siswadirefleksikan dalam skor tes. Skor rata-rata dari hasil pre-tes adalah 53,9, untukpost-test 1 adalah 58,78 dan 68,48 untuk post-test 2. Kelebihan umpan balik gurudiantara nya adalah (1) umpan balik guru membuat siswa lebih akurat dalammenulis. (2) umpan balik guru membuat siswa lebih memperhatikan tata bahasapada tugas menulis. Sementara, beberapa kekurangn nya adalah (1) penerapanumpan balik guru membutuhkan banyak waktu, (2) siswa mendapat kesulitandalam menghafal semua kode umpan balik kesalahan.

Berdasarkan hasil kajian diatas, peneliti menyarankan bahwa guruBahasa Inggris lebih baik menerapkan umpan balik guru di kelas agar supayamembantu siswa meningkatkan penguasaan tata bahasa.


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MOTTO

“DREAM BIG and TAKE RISKS.”

(Ron Clark)


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DEDICATION

With deep profound love, this thesis is dedicated to:

My beloved Father and Mother, no words can

represent how grateful I am to be your son!

My beloved brothers, thank you for your support

and prayer,

My Best of the Best Friends in Damai Hijau,

Mafia Kost and Ganesha Operation Surakarta,

Myself and my bright future


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Alhamdulillahirabbil’alamin. Praise be to Allah SWT who has given His

blessing to the writer so that he can complete the writing of this thesis. In this

occasion, the writer would like to express his deepest gratitude and appreciation to

the following.

1. Prof. Dr. H. M. Furqon Hidayatullah, M. Pd., the dean of Teacher Training

and Education Faculty, for his advice and his approval of this thesis.

2. Drs. Suparno, M. Pd., the head of the Art and Language Education, and

Drs. Martono M.A., the head of English Department of Teacher Training

and Education Faculty, for their advice and their approval of this thesis.

3. Prof.Dr. Joko Nurkamto, MPd., the first consultant, and Kristiandi, S.S.,

the second consultant, for their priceless guidance, advice, suggestion,

encouragement and patience.

4. Drs. H. Sudadi Mulyono, M.Si., the headmaster of SMA Negeri 8

Surakarta for facilitating the writer in collecting the data.

5. Muh Haris,SPd., the English teacher of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta, who has

helped the writer to do the research.

6. The eleventh grade students of IPA 4 SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta who have

participated well during the research.

7. His beloved family, for their supports, caring, prayer, and helps.

8. His friends in English Department of year 2003, for their everlasting

friendship. His friends in Damai Hijau Kost (Pakdhe, Fajar, Rintis,

Achmad, Bayu, Pondra, Arif BC, Handis,Radit, Ari) and in Mafia Kost

(Omen, Arin, Amin,Adit, Fajar, Bayu, Wajid)

The writer realizes that this thesis is still far from being perfect. He hopes

and accepts every comment and suggestion. Hopefully, this thesis will be useful

for the readers.

Surakarta, 31 Januari 2011

‘Arif Nur Sidik’


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TABLE OF CONTENT

TITLE .......................................................................................................... i

APPROVAL ................................................................................................ ii

LEGITIMATION ........................................................................................ iii

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................... iv

MOTTO ...................................................................................................... v

DEDICATION ............................................................................................ vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................... vii

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

LIST OF APPENDICES............................................................................... xi

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .............................................................. 1

A. Background of the Study ............................................. 1

B. Problems Statements .................................................... 7

C. The Objectives of the Study ......................................... 8

D. The Benefits of the Study ............................................. 8

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE RELATED THEORIES......................... 9

A. Grammar......................................................................... 9

1. The Meaning of Grammar ........................................... 9

2. The Scope of Grammar................................................ 10

3. The Teaching Grammar in English Language Teaching 16

4. Grammar Mastery ....................................................... 18

B. Error Correction Feedback……………………………… 19

1. Meaning of Error Correction Feedback ...................... 19

2. Types of Feedback: Direct and Indirect Feedback ....... 23

3. Strategies for Feedback……………………………….. 26

4. Teacher’s Feedback…………………………………… 27

C. Writing............................................................................ 30

1. Definition of Writing ................................................. 30

2. The process of Writing................................................ 31

3. Types of Text.............................................................. 33


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4. Micro skill of writing…………………………………. 39

D. Review on The Related Study ......................................... 40

E. Rationale......................................................................... 40

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ........................................ 43

A. Research Setting ............................................................. 43

1. The Place of the Research .......................................... 43

2. The Time of The Research.......................................... 44

B. Subject of The Research..................................................... 44

C .Method of the Research .................................................. 45

D. The Model of Action Research ........................................ 47

E. The Procedures of Action Research ................................. 48

F. The Technique of Collecting the Data…………………… 52

G. The Technique of Analyzing the Data…………………… 54

CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION ....................... 56

A. Research Findings .......................................................... 56

1. Introduction ................................................................ 56

2. Research Implementation ........................................... 57

3. Findings……………………………………………….. 76

B. Discussions and Justification of Research Findings ......... 77

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION AND SUGGESTION ........ 82

A. Conclusion ..................................................................... 82

B. Implication...................................................................... 84

C. Suggestion....................................................................... 85

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................... 87

APPENDICES.............................................................................................. 90


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LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Pre Research Observation ...................................................... 91

Appendix 2: Field Notes............................................................................. 98

Appendix 3: Interview Notes...................................................................... 126

Appendix 4: Lesson Plan............................................................................ 129

Appendix 5: List of Students’ Names ......................................................... 137

Appendix 6: The Result of the Study......................................................... 138

Appendix 7: The Sample of the Teaching Learning Process ....................... 140

Appendix 8: Questionnaire......................................................................... 145

Appendix 9: Data of analysis of students’ survey questionnaire.................. 146

Appendix 10: Students’ Worksheet .............................................................. 149

Appendix 12: Legalization ........................................................................... 152


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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English teaching has the goal to help students to acquire the four language skills namely

listening, speaking, reading and writing. To gain four skills, it is very important for students to

have an experience in practicing and applying English grammar. Students can not master the

language well which is being studied without mastering its grammar. Grammar is guideline for

language learner in using the language, involving how to put words in order in the sentences.

Therefore, it is important for the learners to study grammar. People or the learners who

decide to study grammar because they want to be better writers or because they want to speak a

more standard dialect. By studying grammar, we will learn the makeup of the language and so be

able to apply what we learned as better listener, readers, speaker, and writers. Penny Ur, a

teacher trainer and author of Grammar Practice Activities says there is no doubt that knowledge-

implicit or explicit- of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of language. In the

curriculum 2006 (p:308), it is stated that on e of the ultimate objective of English instruction for

Senior High School or MA students is to develop the English communicative competence to

reach the informal level in order that students are able to access many information and

knowledge with language. The communicative competence covers four competences namely

grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic (Savignon, 1997:40).

Then the scope of English instruction for Senior High School or MA students is

supporting competence in which one of the aspects is linguistic or grammatical competence. This

competence deals with knowing how to use the grammar and vocabulary of the language to

achieve communicative goals, knowing how to do this in socially appropriate way (Thornbury,

2001:18). The importance of having grammatical competence, as stated by Hymes, supported by

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Canale and Swain ( in Lock, 1996:266), is as one of the four types of competence that should be

included in any definition of proficiency.

A proper understanding of the concept of communicative competence would have

revealed if it gives no endorsement for the neglect grammar (Widowson in Lock, 1996:266).

There is no doubt that to be able to use English in real communication, students should master its

grammar. Also this is in line with curriculum 2004 (p:19) stating that curriculum emphasizes on

the need of mastering English grammar because the purpose of teaching and learning English at

senior high school level is to prepare the graduates to attend the university. Learning at this level

is to study in the context of the language use. Its target gives students the ability to use English

that satisfies the need of English for the international level.

For the 2nd language learner, English is the foreign language that is difficult to learn.

Brown (1994:193) stated that a principal barrier for 2nd language acquisition is the interference of

the first language system. Language system includes form and meaning. The form of language

involves the grammatical structures of language. It is obvious that English grammar is quite

different from the grammar of the Indonesian language. In mastering the English grammar, there

are many different and complicated rules of the language that must be mastered by the students.

They cannot gain the English grammar just by memorizing the rules and trying to understand the

explanation from the teacher. The important thing which must be given a special attention is that

in learning a foreign language, we must study the rules of language, practice the rules mush and

apply them often in the communication. Terrel in Khalid (2003) states;

“Language consists of set of rules with an associated lexicon. It follows logically from

the model that foreign language students must learn rules of grammar. The suggested sequence

is study the rule, practice the rules and then apply the rules in meaningful interactions in the

target language”.

Considering the explanation above, grammar will be learnt effectively if it is practiced by

the student actively. Teaching English grammar to students is they point to study English. In

order to convey meaningful ideas and information, students must understand how to make

correct sentences. Without correct grammar, the meaning cannot be transferred correctly.


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Therefore, grammar is important part in studying a certain language. So, it becomes the English

teacher’s duty to teach grammar as good as possible.

Learning a language is complicated activity. A lot of researches have been done in to how

to make learning effective but, as yet, it remains surprisingly difficult to say with certainty what

methods are truly more effective, but it is largely inconclusive. One certain way to raise a group

of language teacher to heated discussion is to question their attitude to correction. The question

of teacher’s attitude to error and correction is probably the single most important issue in

language teacher’s professional development. The kind of activities the teacher encourages in the

classroom, and the kind of which the teacher avoids or minimizes, will be strongly influenced by

the teacher’s views of the role of error correction in learning.

In high school, students may not have received comments on language problems, or they

may have received only global remarks such as "you need to keep working on your grammar."

In order to help students continue to acquire academic English and to correct patterns of error

that may persist in their writing, they need structure help. Reid (1982:xi) says that naturally ESL

students even at advanced level continue to have grammatical weaknesses. Further he said that

grammatical problems that are usually found in writing are; punctuations, and sentence structure,

a subject-verb agreement tenses, prepositions and so forth. Another supportive statement comes

from Ferris and Leki in Hong (2004) who say that ESL students whose interlanguage are still

developing, probably need and expect grammar feedback on error from their teacher.

In teaching learning process of English as a foreign language, errors made by students

have always been a significant concern to almost all language teachers. Errors refers to those

features of learner’s utterances which differ form those of any native speakers (Corder,

1973:260). Error made by the foreign learner is natural. It means that error in learning foreign

language is usually found. Student always make errors in their foreign language use. This

problem makes the teacher have to think what he has to do to solve the problem in his foreign

language teaching. Teacher becomes confused whether he has to continue the next material or to

correct their error and make the remedial course. Most people agree that making mistakes is

apart of learning and they also agree that correction is a part of teaching. Many errors always

occur in different aspects of language learning. They occur as natural phenomena, for example:


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in speaking as well as in writing. The correction of spoken language is also for the correction of

written language. If teacher looks carefully at the mistakes the student makes, he will find that

the errors cover many different things that happen in language use, and the errors will lead to a

misunderstanding. The linguistic mistakes our students make are an important and necessary part

of their language learning.

Teacher often finds mistakes or errors in their written task for example; the use of

grammar and vocabulary. The absence of teacher’s feedback that is expected by the students on

their composition may result in ignorance whether the grammar they use in correct form or not.

By investigating the students’ error in their writing task, teacher can understand the quantity and

the quality of error in their writing task. Those errors of course can be taken as supportive

feedback to their students in order to reduce errors made by the students in their coming writing

task. Any correction will help them become more accurate in their use of the language.

In giving feedback to his students, the teacher may use different kinds of correction

techniques. Firstly, the teachers put the certain marks or symbol on the free margin that can be

understood clearly by the students. Secondly, the students are given oral explanation and they are

asked to study the error they make. So, by putting certain marks or symbol and by giving the oral

explanation or some information on their errors, the teacher can help students identify and

correct hem in their composition.

Edge (1997:50) states that correction should mean helping people to become more

accurate, not insisting completely standard English. Involving learning in judgement about

correctness also helps them become more accurate in their use of the language. As English

teachers at school, they need to provide the students with the information dealing with students’

language learning development, or by giving help to correct the error they create in composition.

According to ideas presented by the writer, students can master well the English language

if they understand the rules or grammar of its language. When they make errors or mistakes,

teacher should overcome this problem by giving feedback in the form of error correction. There


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are many errors and mistakes the students make and factors that cause this problem, so teacher

should pay attention to it.

To support these ideas, the writer had conducted a pre-observation for two weeks on

February 6th -13th 2010 in the XI IPA 4 students of SMA N 8 Surakarta. He got the results that

the students get many problems in learning grammar. For example, they are difficult to

understand the pattern of English sentence. Even, the students can not remember it for a long

time. This case causes them to make a lot of mistakes in doing the assignments. It can be shown

in the result of their pre-observation test score. The mean of the score is 3, 47 which indicates

that their grammar mastery is still low.

The condition of students’ grammar mastery is supported by the teacher statement, he

says “Secara umum untuk grammar saat ini, terus terang, tidak mendapatkan perhatian yang

khusus sehingga belum mendapatkan hasil yang memuaskan, karena memang kita belum

menemukan teknik yang sesuai untuk bagaimana anak agar dapat mengingat terus dan paham

tentang grammar.”

Meanwhile, from the students themselves, they have problems with the grammar. They

said that they are still confused in some grammar points like the use of modal, the use of

pronoun, and the use of past tense. As what has been said by some students “Saya masih

bingung mas untuk menggunakan tenses past sehingga masih salah dalam menuliskan kata kerja

nya”. The other students say; “Apalagi kalau disuruh menulis, kita pasti kesulitan dan banyak

salah nya di grammar”.

Based on the finding, the writer concludes that the students’ grammar mastery needs to

be improved. Teacher should solve the problem students have and some factors that cause it.

This must be one of the teacher’s considerations in maintaining good English teaching process,

how to help student’s problem in their grammatical errors.


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According to the facts above, the writer is interested in conducting a classroom action

research by using teacher’s feedback in order to improve the student’s grammar mastery of the

eleventh grade of IPA 4 students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta.

B. Problem Statement.

Based on the description in the background of the study and the fact in the 11th grade of

IPA 4 students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in 2009-2010 academic year. The writer finds some

problems arising which are identified as in the following.

1. Does and to what extent teacher’s feedback improve the students’ grammar mastery of

the eleventh grade of IPA 4 of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta?

2. What are the strengths and the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback?

C. The Objective of the Research

Based on the formulation of the problem, the general objective of this research is to

improve students’ grammar mastery by using teacher’s feedback. Particularly, this research is

aimed to find out:

1. Whether teacher’s feedback can effectively improve the grammar mastery of the

eleventh grade of IPA 4 students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta.

2. The strengths and weaknesses of teacher’ feedback.

D. The Benefit of The Study

This research hopefully will give some contributions to the process of English teaching.

There are some expected benefits of the study for the English teacher and students.

1. For the English teacher

It will hopefully make teacher

a. know the contribution of feedback to the students’ error so that the teacher realizes

and is able to find the way to overcome the problems concerning the students’ errors.

b. apply the error correction feedback on students’ composition


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2. For the students

It may enable students to

a. identify kinds of errors in their composition.

b. correct their errors in their composition.

c. be more confident to write with good grammar.


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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE RELATED THEORIES

A. Grammar

1. The Meaning of Grammar

According to Richards, Platt, Heidi (1987:161), grammar is defined as a set of rules and

lexicon that describes a knowledge (competence) of which a speaker has of his or her language.

In other point of view, they also defined grammar as follows: Grammar is description of the

structure of the language and the way in which linguistics units such as words and phrases are

combined to produce sentences in the language. It may not include the description of the sounds

of a language.

Brown (1994:347) has the same idea about grammar. He states that grammar is a system

of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationship of words in a sentence.

Widdowson (1990: 84) says grammar is the name we gave to the knowledge of how words are

adopted and arranged to form sentences. Another linguist, Ur (1984:4) defines grammar is the

way words are put together to make correct sentences. The need of language learner to learn

grammar is essential, since the grammar is the central part of language. Each language has a

highly complex system that differs from language to language, that is why language is different.

Therefore, grammar is very important for one who wants to study language.

Another definition comes from Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary that defines

grammar as the study or the science of rules of the combination of words into sentences (syntax)

and the forms of words (morphology). This definition is supported by Lock (1997:4) who states

that grammar is viewed as the study of the syntax-how the words are combined to form a

meaningful sentences, and morphology- the system of rules that cover the formation of words.

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While, Penny Ur in another book (1998:4) tells that grammar may be roughly defined as the way

a language manipulates and combines words in order to form larger units of meaning.

Those definitions view grammar not only on the forms of the rules of language, but also

on the meaning. Based on the definitions above, the writer can conclude that grammar is a study

of language rules as the way how language constructs and combines words and how words are

arranged to form larger unit of meaning. In conclusion, grammar is defined as the description of

language rules dealing with the forms and the structure of words (morphology) and arrangement

of phrases and sentences (syntax) and includes how to the larger meaning is formed.

2. The Scope of Grammar

In this chapter, the writer tries to present the scope of grammar proposed by some

linguists. Chomsky (in Crystal, 1997: 88) divides grammar into three aspects namely phonology

and semantics, and syntax as the more specific notion.

Grammar

Phonology syntax semantics

A diagram of grammar’s aspects by Chomsky

Meanwhile, Joseph and Droste (1991: 6) point out that grammar covers three distinctive

aspects. They are syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Based on Lock idea, grammar is a set of

rules, which specify all the possible grammatical structures of the language. It includes two

aspects: (1) the arrangement of words and (2) the internal structures of word (1997:1). It is

supported by Thornbury (2001: 2) who states that grammar is conventionally seen as the study of

the syntax and morphology of sentences.


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In his study, the writer prefers to discuss the scope of grammar involving morphology

and syntax.

A. Morphology

Radford (1997: 1) states that morphology is the branch of grammar that studies how words are

formed out of smaller units. In addition, Crystal (1997:90) gives the examples below;

Unhappiness un-happi-ness

Horses horse-s

Talking talk-ing

Yes yes

Crystal explain that ‘Yes’ has no internal grammatical structure. One could analyze its

constituent sounds, /j/, /e/, /s/, but none of these has a meaning in isolation. By contrast, horse,

talk, and happy plainly have meanings, as do the element attached to them (the ‘affixes’) : un-

carries a negative meaning, -ness expresses a state or quality; -s expresses plural; and – ing helps

to convey a sense of duration. The smallest meaningful elements into which words can be

analyzed are known as morphemes, and the way morphemes operate in language provides the

subject matter of morphology.

From the four examples above, we can make a broad distinction between two types of

morphemes. They are free and bound morpheme. Yule (1996: 75) explains that free morpheme is

morphemes, which can stand by themselves as single words, e.g. happy, horse, talk, and yes.

Bound morpheme is morphemes, which cannot normally stand alone but, which are typically

attached to another form e.g. un-, -ness, -s, and –ing. It is an easy matter to analyze those

example words into morphemes, because a clear sequence of elements is involved. But not all

words can be analyzed into morphemes so easily, for example, it is difficult to know how to


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analyze irregular nouns and verbs: mice is the plural of mouse, but it is not obvious (vague) how

to identify a plural morpheme in the word, analogues to the –s ending of horse (Crystal,

1997:90).

Generally, there are two main fields that are recognized within morphology, namely, inflectional

and derivational morphology (Crystal, 1997: 90). Inflectional morphology studies the way in

which words vary (or ‘inflect’) in order to express grammatical contrast in sentences, such as

singular/plural or past/present tense. Boy and boys, for example, are two forms of the ‘same’; the

choice between them, singular vs. plural is a matter of grammar, and thus the business of

inflectional morphology. Derivational morphology, however, studies the principles governing the

construction of new words, without reference to the specific grammatical role a word might play

in a sentence. In the formation of drinkable from drink, or disinfect from infect, for example, one

can see the formation of different words, with their own grammatical properties.

B) Syntax

Crystal (1997: 94) infers that syntax is the way in which words are arranged to show

relationship of meaning within (and sometimes between) sentences. According to him most

syntactic studies have focused on sentence structure, for this is where the most important

grammatical relationships are expressed. A sentence itself is defined as the largest unit to which

syntactic rules apply. Then, he suggests three aspects of sentence syntax including clauses,

phrases, and coordination vs. subordination. The following is the brief explanation of each.


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a) Clauses

The various units that make up the structure given functional labels, such as Subject (S), verb

(V), complement (C), Object (O), and Adverbial (A). A number of clauses types can be

identified in this ways, such as:

S + V The dog is running.

S + V + O The man + saw + a cow

S + V + C The car + is + ready

S + V + A A picture + lies + on the ground

S + V + O + O I + gave + John + a book

S + V + O + C He + called + John + a fool

S + V + O + A Mary + saw + John + yesterday

Several approaches to grammatical analysis make use of elements of this kind, though

there is considerable variation in definition and terminology. Languages are also very greatly in

the way in which these elements are identified. In English, word order is the main factor, with

only occasional use being made of morphology e.g. he (subject) saw (verb) him (object).

b) Phrases

A phrase is group of related words that does not contain a predication (Funk. 1991: 120). Most

phrases can be seen as expansions of a central element (the head), and these are often referred to

as ‘endocentric’phrases:

cars

the cars

the big cars


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all the big cars

all the big cars in the garage

Phrases, which can not be analyzed in this way, are then called ‘exocentric’: inside/the cars. On

the other hand, the internal structure of an endocentric phrase is commonly described in a three-

part manner:

All the big cars in the garage

Pre-modification Head Post Modification

c) Coordination vs. Subordination

Coordination is one of two main ways of making sentences more complex; the other is

known as subordination, or ‘embedding’. The essential difference is that in the former the

clauses that are linked are of equal grammatical status, whereas in the later, one clause functions

as part of another (the ‘main’ clause). For example:

Coordinate clause:

The boy left on Monday and the girl left on Tuesday.

Subordinate clause:

The boy left on Monday when John rang.

The phrase on Monday is part of the clause, giving the time when the action took place.

Similarly, the unit when John rang is also part of the clause, for the same reason. But when John

rang is additionally a clause in its own right.


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3. The Teaching Grammar in English Language Teaching

It is helpful for the students to be aware of grammatical information about language

included in it is the role of grammar. In general terms, Harmer (1997: 3) divides the role of

grammar into two concepts.

A) Covert

Coverts grammar teaching is where grammatical facts are hidden from the students –

even though they are learning the language. In other words, the students may be asked to do an

information gap activity or read an English text where new grammar practiced or introduced, but

their attention will be drawn to the activity or to the text and not to the grammar. With covert

grammar, teachers help the students to acquire and/or practice English, but they do not draw

conscious attention to any of the grammatical facts of the language.

B) Overt

Overt grammar teaching means that the teacher actually provides the students with

grammatical rules and explanations. The information is openly presented. Some techniques for

the presentation of new language, for example where the teacher explains how present simple

questions need do or does, are extremely overt.

With the overt teaching, the teacher explains explicitly and openly about the grammar of the

language, but with covert teaching he simply get students to work with new language in this case

English and hope that they will more or less subconsciously absorbs grammatical information

which will help them to acquire the language as a whole.

Hormer (1997: 7) adds that at the beginner level, the students do quite a lot of structure

teaching and practice and less really free communicative activity. The teaching of grammar at


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this stage is likely to be fairly covert since the main aim is to get students to practice and use the

language as much as possible. At the intermediate levels the students would be involved in more

communicative activities and would have less and would have less grammar teaching. The

teaching of grammar of this stage would be more overt and as students get more advanced they

can actively study grammar in more overt ways.

In other case, there is no doubt that knowledge –implicit or explicit- of grammatical rules

is essential for the mastery of a language: you cannot use words unless you know how they

should put together (Ur, 1998: 4). The learning of grammar should be seen in the long term as

one of the means of acquiring a thorough mastery of the language as a whole. As stated

previously in curriculum 2006 (KTSP) that the objective of English language teaching is to

develop communicative competence, and for Hymes supported by Canale and Swain (in Lock,

1996: 266), the grammatical competence is one of the four types of competence they should be

included in any definition of proficiency (the other three being sociolinguistics competence,

discourse competence, and strategic competence). A proper understanding of the concept of

communicative competence would have revealed that it gives no endorsement for the neglect of

grammar (Widdowson in Lock, 1996: 266).

Lock (1996: 267) explains more about the importance of grammar in English language teaching.

He states in order to communicate, the teacher needs to be able to (1) represent what it is he

wants to talk about and to locate it in time, which means selecting appropriate process types,

participants, circumstances, and tenses; (2) make the content interpersonally relevant and

appropriate; which means selecting appropriate moods, modalities, and polarities; and (3) make

the whole message relevant to what has been said previously and to the situational context. Seen


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from this perspective, grammar is not an optional add-on in language teaching but it lies at the

very heart in communication that should be taught effectively.

4. Grammar Mastery

Webster (1990:732) defines mastery as skill or knowledge that makes one master of a

subject. In line with her, Quirk says that mastery is full power to control something or great

skill/knowledge in a particular subject (1998:644). Thus, grammar mastery is great skill or

knowledge (competence) that makes one master of a particular subject. Related to grammar,

Chomsky in Rod Ellis (1996:8) asserts:

Competence consists of the mental representations of linguistics rules that constitute thespeaker-hearers’ internal grammar. It is evident in the intuitions which speaker-hearer hasabout the grammaticality of sentences (1996:8).Sandra J Savignon (1997:40) says that person demonstrates grammatical competence not

by stating the rules, but by using rules. According to her, grammatical competence is mastery of

linguistics codes, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological

features of a language and to manipulate these features to form words and sentences. It involves

the ability to apply the grammatical rules in order to form grammatically correct sentences.

Further explanation is stated by Richard who writes:

Grammatical competence was the knowledge underlying our ability to produce andunderstand sentences in a language. We call upon our grammatical competence toexpress meaning in ways that are native-like in target language (1985:144).

Thus, grammar mastery can be defined as great skill or knowledge that makes one masters a

system of language rules to produce, understand, and apply the grammatical rules in order to

form grammatically correct sentences.


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B. Error Correction Feedback

1. Meaning of Error Correction Feedback

Teacher’s treatment of learner’s error is an important aspect of second and foreign

language acquisition. Every teacher will have different views on this because this treatment can

be used as an input from readers to writer that provides information for revision (Reid, 1993:

218) and an effective means to communicate to the students about their writing (Chaudron,

1984:2) and different ways of correcting their students’ error and it is a case of finding out what

teacher and students feel comfortable with. The skill of writing in a first (L1) or second language

(L2) is a complex issue, as becoming a proficient writer entails mastering elements of content,

style, and organization in addition to surface elements such as grammar, vocabulary, and the

actual mechanics of writing. While surface errors are generally of secondary interest in L1

writing, they have been a focus of L2 writing research for sometime. One important area of

research in L2 writing is that of error/grammar correction, specifically, whether learners actually

benefit from the feedback that they receive from instructors and which type of feedback is most

important.

Harwood (2002) states that feedback is the part of writing program which is either

underused or misunderstood. Feedback is limited to the overt correction of errors and the

provision of comments and/or grades by the teacher. Feedback can (and should) be a learning

experience, which provides the link between the consecutive writing lessons. During feedback,

learners are invited to identify the merits and shortcomings of their writing performance,

understand the reasons for these shortcomings and the discussion of possible improvement.

When learners become familiar with feedback procedures, feedback activities can also be set as

homework.


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Then, Lummeta (2005) stated that feedback is a process by which the teacher provides

learners with information about their performance for the purpose of improving their

performance.

According to Heidi (1982:62), feedback generally refers to the listeners’ or readers’

response given to learners’ speech or writing. One type of feedback is correction. Edge (1997:59)

says that correction means helping people to express themselves more accurately. Correction

should not mean insisting on everything being absolutely corrected. It helps the students to

become more accurate in their use of language. Hendrickson (1979:5) states that he gives

correction to ESL student’s composition by giving marks to the errors in order that they would

be able to identify many of their errors and recognize the deviant form and structures in their

written work and finally reconsider their errors into correct sentences. Also, Wingfield, as quoted

by Byrne (1998) has pointed out that the teacher should choose correcting techniques that are

most appropriate and most effective for individual students. He lists five techniques for

correcting written errors.

1. Teacher gives sufficient clues to enable self-correction to be made.

2. The teacher corrects the scripts.

3. The teacher deals with errors through marginal comments and footnotes.

4. The teacher explains orally to individual students.

5. The teacher uses the error correction as an illustration for a class explanation.

In short, it can be stated that error correction feedback is the teacher’s act to deal with the

students’ performance on writing by marking the errors on their composition by giving certain

marks to the errors so that the students recognize their errors and can discover deviant, forms and


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structures of the target language learned. It helps the students to become more accurate in their

use of language.

In association with the error correction, error analysis is needed. Hendrickson (1979:3)

stated that errors are always produced by language learners and these errors can provide

significant insights into how languages are learned if they are studied systematically. In other

words, students frequently make grammatical error in their communication and by studying the

grammatical error made by students, teachers are able to infer the nature of students’ knowledge

of grammar (Corder, 1985:257).

Dealing with the correction feedback by teacher, Vengadesamy (2002) wrote that when

responding to form in students’ essays, teachers normally make one of three types of correction.

1. Firstly, they might indicate only location of an error in the students’ essays.

2. Secondly, they may choose to indicate both the location of the error and the type of error

that the students has made (for example, by writing ‘tense’ to indicate that the wrong

tense had been used, or ‘SVA’ to indicate a subject verb agreement error)

3. Thirdly, the teacher’s response gets even more salient in the third type of response, where

they opt to indicate not only the location and type of error, but also provide a model of

the correct version.

Li (2006) stated that giving effective feedback is a central concern for any teachers of

writing and an important area for L2 writing research. Feedback itself is always viewed as the

essentials of writing since it impulses the writers to refine their first writing draft into a final

complete draft.

Kepner (1991:141) defines feedback in general as any procedures used to inform a

learner whether an instructional response is right or wrong. For the purpose of the teacher’s


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assignment, however, feedback will strictly refer to the written feedback given teachers as a

response to their student’s error in writing. Form feedback which is also be known as grammar

feedback and surface-level feedback is the type of feedback that looks into issues like grammar,

spelling…etc. to ensure whether grammar feedback is necessary. Grami (2005) states that some

of the studies (form feedback) give practical evidence that grammar correction in fact does help

students to improve their accuracy.

Kepner ( 1991:305) believes that error correction in second language teaching is

perennial concern to L2 teachers. He notes that many L2 teachers fear the fossilization of error

and that teachers feel normally obliged to correct all mistakes in their L2 student’s work. While

Ferris (1999) noted that L2 students are very much concerned on accuracy and they will ask for

their errors to be corrected by the teacher.

Hyland and Hyland (2001) also note that providing written feedback to students is one of

the ESL writing teachers’ most important tasks. In the same manner, ESL students were also

reported to overwhelmingly desire their linguistic errors to be corrected and they strongly believe

that it is teacher’s responsibility to provide such feedback. In short, ESL teachers have to correct

surface-level errors and students want their teachers to do so. As Ferris (2002) stated for such an

attitude by ESL students is that L2 writers are aware of their linguistic limitation and thus more

likely to focus on word or sentence level accuracy.

2. Types of Feedback : Direct and Indirect Feedback

Giving feedback to students’ grammatical errors is the teacher’s responsibility in order

that students will not make same mistakes and errors they ever made. In this study, there are two

types of feedback dealing with the treatment of grammatical error, namely, direct and indirect

feedback. According to Hendrickson (1984), the purpose of indirect feedback is to indicate either


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the presence or the specific location of errors. Direct feedback means not only to indicate the

presence or location of errors, but also to suggest correct forms. If the students are only provided

with direct feedback on their final draft, they do not have an opportunity to reflect and correct the

errors for themselves; they only note the errors marked by the teacher. This is one reason why

indirect feedback has received more support among researchers ( Ferris, 2002; Hendrickson,

1984; Lalande, 1982; Robb et al., 1986). Roob et al. (1986) suggested that teachers should not

waste time giving direct feedback to students if both direct and indirect methods are more

equally effective.

Frodesen (2001) also suggested that indirect feedback is generally more useful than direct

correction in correcting. He advised L2 writing teachers not to provide correction on all errors

because it makes students feel overwhelmed and reduces their motivation for learning. 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 to solve problems by

themselves (Lalande, 1982). In the case of Hendrickson (1984), the combined method of indirect

and direct feedback was considered most beneficial for the students in the revision process,

because some types of errors could be more readily corrected by students and others could not.

For example, if the students make an error concerning a noun ending, they can correct their own

error by using the cues that the teacher gives, or by referring to a grammar book. However, they

have more trouble choosing appropriate words in context and using acceptable sentence

structures if only the location of errors are indicated without any guidance as how to correct the

forms as shown in the study of Ferris et al. (2001). Depending on their linguistic competence and

exposure to language use, students have differing levels of difficulty when asked to correct errors

if teachers do not give them enough information.


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Supposing indirect feedback is superior to direct feedback for pedagogical reasons, the

next issue may be the level of explicitness or salience of indirect feedback (Ferris et al., 2001).

Robb et al. (1986) explored whether the salience of indirect feedback influenced student’s

accuracy, fluency, and grammar. They classified indirect feedback into three subcategories;

coded, non-coded and marginal feedback. Firstly, coded feedback is a a method in which

teachers provide a coding scheme that indicates the types of students errors, such as noun ending

and tense, etc. and students are supposed to correct the errors themselves. Secondly, non-coded

feedback only marks the location of the errors by underlining or circling them; teachers do not

specify the error types or correct forms. Thirdly, marginal feedback signals the number of errors

per line by writing in the margin. The students have to both discover and correct their errors. It is

reasonable to consider that the marginal feedback is the most challenging method for ESL

writers.

In conclusion, both types of feedback, direct and indirect feedback are necessary to help

students learn and solve the problem on their linguistics’ competence.

3. Strategies for Feedback

A. Teacher-Editing

For beginner student who starts writing essays toward the end of the first term, it may be

difficult to do the self and peer editing. The teacher may provide guidance during editing or she

may do the editing and proof-reading with the student to set an example.

(http://www.temple.edu/gradmag/fall98/loewen.htm)


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B. Peer-Editing

Here, the texts are interchanged and the evaluation is done by other students. In the real

world, it is common for the writers to ask friends and colleagues to check texts for spelling, etc.

in the classroom environment, the students can exchange their papers and comment on each

other’s paper.

Students exchange their first drafts of a text and point out changes which are needed to

help the reader (e.g. better organization, paragraph divisions, sentence variety, vocabulary

choice). They can also act as each other's editors spotting vocabulary repetitions, grammatical

errors, spelling mistakes, etc.

Peer editing is a useful tool for any level of learner, although its specific application can

vary from level to level. For example, at lower level teacher would generally use this to highlight

the grammatical problems, whereas for higher levels this would be used to assess how

effectively an essay question has been answered. Rollinson. 2008. Strategies For Feedback.

(http://www.temple.edu/gradmag/fall98/loewen.htm)

C. Self-Editing

Generally, it is very common for the writers to miss their own mistakes. This is why it is

recommended to sleep on it for a night. After putting the paper aside for some time, emptying the

mind dealing with some other work, the writer is able to approach her paper with a clear mind. In

the classroom environment, teachers can have the students write their essays one day, collect the

papers, and have the students edit and proof-read the paper the next day.


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4. Teacher’s Feedback

Teacher’s feedback is a kind of information the teachers can say to their students

about the drafts essays they have produced; this information is much more helpful if it is

provided on preliminary and intermediate stage, rather than the final one, and cooperation

between teacher and students is very necessary for the successful implementation of feedback.

The most prominently used feedback methods fall into two common categories:

feedback on form and feedback on content. 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. Here are some types of teacher’s feedback on form and content:

A) Marginal Feedback versus End Feedback

Marginal feedback is a kind of feedback that is written in the margin or between

sentence lines of the students’ paper. It refers to the teacher’s immediate intervention in discrete

parts of the students’ draft. By contrast, summary feedback at the end of the paper is normally an

overview of more consideration in an essay. According to Ferris and Hedgcock (1998) there is no

conclusive evidence that either marginal or end comments are preferable or more effective.

However, in case teachers can only give one form of commentary given the overwhelming


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number of papers and severe time constraints, a comprehensive and clear end note is strongly

recommended. When time permits, writing teacher should try to make a combination of both to

give the students more chance to revise their writing.

B) Negative Feedback versus Positive Feedback

Much research has been done into the effect of positive and negative comments on

the students’ revision. In these studies, the researchers found out that the students remember and

appreciate encouraging remarks made by their teachers. The students would have better attitudes

towards writing if they receive positive feedback. However, some researchers some described

critical comments as being positive since they all helped them improve their papers. It is clear

that, although the students appear to enjoy and appreciate praises, they expect to receive

constructive criticisms and are not necessarily offended by this.

The question is a good teacher must know how to keep a balance between these two

kinds of feedback. Too many praises, especially at the early stage of the responding process, may

actually discourage the students from revising (e.g., “My teacher liked this part, so I shouldn’t

change it) or may lead the students to resent receiving low marks (e.g.,” My teacher said that

there are a lot of good things about my essay, so why I get such a low grad?). Being excessively

negative to the students’ writing is also a disincentive to the student writers. Therefore, the wisest

course of action is the teachers should strive for a balance, providing some praise for the students’

efforts, but not forgetting their crucial instructional role of helping the students to revise, to

improve on what they have done badly.


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C) Text-specific Feedback versus General Feedback

Text-specific feedback is a kind of comment that directly relates to the text at hand;

whereas, general feedback can be attached to any paper. Many experts in that field argued that

teacher feedback is more helpful if it is text-specific. According to Reid, feedback should be

informative and detailed enough to help the student writers return to the task of writing but not so

overwhelming that they cannot form a revision plan. As they write, receive response, and revise,

students should be able to feel good about what they have done well and realize that they can

improve on what they have not done effectively (1993: 225). There is a role in teacher

commentary for general responses. A general response of encouragement is no doubt better than

none.

C. Writing

1. Definition of Writing

Peter Elbow as quoted by Brown (1994:4) says ‘Writing as two-steps process. First you

figure out your meaning, and then you put it into language. Second, you figure out what you

want to say; don’t start writing till you do; make a plan, use an outline, begin writing only

afterward.

In another case, Done Byrne (1997:1) defines writing as the act of forming letters or

combination of letter: making sign of flat surface of some kind.

Furtermore, Nurgiantoro in Rahayu (1998:7) writing activity is the manifestation of

language competence and skills, which are required by students after three other skills; reading,

listening and speaking.


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Basically, writing is means of communication between reader and writer. For this reason,

writing may be said to represent an attempt to communicate with the readers (Raimes, 1983:4)

From the ideas above, the writer concludes that writing is a complex process for

conveying or delivering ideas, thoughts, opinions and feeling using combination of letter in

written language that other people can understand.

It is complex because we have to consider about grammar, spelling accurately,

punctuating meaningfully, linking ideas and information across sentences to develop a topic, etc.

Writer means that we have to organize our sentences into a coherent text whole which is possible

and complete in it, so that we are able to communicate successfully with our reader through the

medium of writing

2. The Process of Writing

Writing is a process of expressing thoughts and feelings, of thinking, and of shaping

experiences. It requires putting words and larger units into pattern or arrangement for the

purpose of expression.

Some experts have identified that writing is commonly seen as a three stage process. Petty and

Jensen (1980: 363), for example, note that writing consists of three phases: prewriting, writing,

and rewriting. Similarly, Tricia Hedge nominates that the process of writing is often described as

consisting of three major activities or group of activities: prewriting, writing, and post writing or

revising (Hedge, 1998: 21).

A. Prewriting

The prewriting phase helps writers gathering information and ideas. It includes discussion

of proposed writing, namely the theme or topic, ideas and related words, and feelings and

thoughts.

In this phase, the writer should consider two important points. The first one is the purpose

of his writing. It has something to do with function. Is it a report, which the writer hopes will be


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persuasive and stimulate action? Is it an explanation of how something works, which has to be

careful, detailed, and clear? Is it a letter of invitation or a letter applying for a job?

The second important point is the target reader. The reader may be an individual, one you know

well, or a group of colleagues, an institution, and so on. Considering the target reader helps the

writer to select the most appropriate style and word choices- formal, friendly, serious, or

tentative.

B. Writing

The writing phase includes pausing and rereading as the writing occurring, interaction

with others (further discussion), consulting resources (looking up word meaning or spelling, for

example), and reformulating the ideas and organization of composition.

Good writers tend to concentrate on getting the content right first and leave the details

like correcting, spelling, punctuation, and grammar structures, until later the writing phase

focuses primarily on what the writer wants to say, while rewriting progressively focuses on how

to say it most effectively.

C. Post writing or Revising

Post writing phase means rewriting, rewriting, and then rewriting some more. This phase

consists of reading through and trying to apply a reader’s perspective in order to access how

clearly readers might flow the ideas. It means that this phase guides the writer to make final

readjustment and checks accuracy so that the text written is maximally accessible to the readers.

3. Type of Text

According to Tri Wiratno (2003) in his book Kiat Menulis Karya Ilmiah dalam Bahasa

Inggris there are several types of text namely as follows:


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a. Narrative Text.

Generally speaking, narrative text (i.e., fiction) is easier to comprehend and remember

than expository text (i.e., factual and informational material). The narrative text uses story to

inform and persuade, For one thing, the content of a narrative is usually more familiar than the

content of an exposition. Most research on narrative text has focused on teaching students to

utilize story structure as an organizing framework for understanding critical aspects of the stories

they read. Even preschool children use story structure to aid their comprehension. As they get

older, children improve in their ability to use it. The most familiar and most studied text structure

is narrative text or stories. Although there is no prevailing consensus on the definition of

narrative text and some debate over the features of a story, narrative text depicts events, actions,

emotions, or situations that people in a culture experience. A story is written to excite, inform, or

entertain readers and may report actual or fictitious experiences.

While there are no clear boundaries between categories, narratives include myths, epics,

fables, folktales, short stories, novels, tragedy, and comedy. The depictions of events are

organized so that the audience can eventually anticipate them. That is, readers must be able to

infer motives of characters and the causal relations among events. Most research on narrative

text has focused on teaching students to utilize story structure as an organizing framework for

understanding critical aspects of the stories they read. Even preschool children use story structure

to aid their comprehension. As they get older, children improve in their ability to use it.

However, students with learning disabilities are slower to develop this ability. They may not be

good at certain tasks, such as picking out important story information, making inferences, and

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identifying story themes. Here are instances of Imaginative narrative: Anecdotes, Diary entries,

Captions Journal entry, Personal letters Dialogues / monologues.

1) The Characteristics

This technique has been applied by using story maps and by asking generic questions

based on story grammar. It has also been used to move beyond the plot level of stories to teach

students with disabilities to identify story themes, a more abstract comprehension level than is

typically taught to students with learning disabilities. Narratives normally involve

a) Animate beings as characters with goals and motives

b) Temporal and spatial placements usually presented at the beginning of the story.

c) A problem or goal faced by the main character that imitates a major goal.

d) Plots or a series of episodes that eventually resolve the complication

e) Impacts upon the reader's emotions and arousal levels

f) Points (e.g., justice, honesty, loyalty), morals, or themes. In particular, narrative is such

a fundamental and ubiquitous form that it may be especially problematic to treat it as a genre.

b. Description Text

Description is also often called elaboration. It aims to elaborate what things are as they

are or what things do as they do. In other words, description is an elaboration of what real

something is. What are elaborated are the form, size, element, and the characteristics. If only it

deals with living being then the elaboration can complement with its habitual life. In addition, if

it covers something gone or missing, description such is identical to narration. A description

text can manifest as elaboration of the process as the process of rain or a procedure about how

thing is done like how to operate the washing machine. At glance, the process of rain seems as

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procedure, but factually it does not. In the process of rain, the sequence starts in any points like

from the evaporation, dew or from the fall of rain itself. The process like that is tending to be

cycle rather than the procedure that cannot be placed randomly as in the procedure of how to

make a paper. Occasionally for describing something needs

definition and classification. What is defined usually as technical term, particular term contains

definition or certain concept in certain specialized science. Whereas the classification is the

group of something into its class, it is suitable with certain criteria. In context of science,

description text holds a prominent role. It is able to give illustration in table, figure, graphic,

diagram, object or area of study.

1) The Characteristics

Linguistically, description text has features as follows:

a) It is dominated by simple present tense. This is caused by a factual of description text itself.

Exemplified if the temperature in the desert in the day is hot then every people will say it hot.

b) It does not exploit human kind so that the more important is the main what is described not the

man who describing.

c) Conjunction such as firstly, secondly is used merely for setting the idea not for stating the

sequence.

d) Adjective is a good device for describing form, feature, and the primary elaborated situation.

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e) It usually reflects the partial or holistic relation. For instance, if what is described the tree then

it will be a relation between the tree and the parts of tree like root, trunk, leaves, and branch. It

much more makes use of relational and material verbs. Besides for stating identification in

description, relational verb is also used for making a definition. e.g. Deserts are very dry and hot

regions where only few animals and plants can live.

c. Exposition Text.

There are two kinds of this text, namely analytical and hortatory. First is hortatory which

has the communicative purpose to persuade the readers by presenting arguments. The

characteristic of this kind is the use of:

1. Emotive words such as alarmed, worried.

2. Words that qualify statement such as usual and probably.

3. Words that link arguments such as: firstly, however, on the other hand, therefore

4. Usually present tense

5. Compound and complex sentence.

Another text is hortatory which has communicative purpose to persuade the readers or

listener that something should or should not be the case. The characteristic of this text is the use

of:

1. Emotive words such as alarmed, worried.

2. Words that qualify statement such as usual and probably.

3. Words that link arguments such as: firstly, however, on the other hand, therefore

4. Usually present tense

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5. Compound and complex sentence.

6. Modal verbs: can, may, certainly, get, stop.

7. Subjective opinion using pronouns: I and we.

d. Spoof text

Spoof is a text which tells factual story, happened in the past time with unpredictable and

funny ending. Its social function is to entertain and share the story. Spoof has generic structure,

namely orientation in which the characters, setting and time of the story are established, events

which tell what happened, twist which is unexpected thing or funny thing. The characteristic of

spoof is the use of:

1. Focusing on people, animals or certain things.

2. Using action verbs; ate, run.

3. Using adverb of time and place

4. Using pst tense

5. Told in chronological order.

4. Micro skill of Writing

1. Follow conventions of spelling, punctuation and capitalization.

2. Use an acceptable core vocabulary and appropriate word order.

3. Use acceptable grammatical systems (i.e. tense, agreement), patterns and rules.

4. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms, with a variety of

sentence structures.

5. Use cohesive devices in written discourse.

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6. Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse.

7. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according

to form and purpose.

8. Convey links and connections between events. Communicate such relations as

main ideas, supporting ideas, new information, given information, generalization

and exemplification.

9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.

10. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text.

11. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the

audience’s interpretation, using pre-writing devices, using paraphrases and

synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback and using feedback, for revising

and editing.

D. Review on the Related Study

According to the study by Hong (2004) “The Effect of Teacher’s Error Feedback on

International Student’s Self-Correction Ability”, teacher’s feedback was the most significant

factors influencing student’s self-correction, compared to proficiency level and performance on

the grammar test. It helps ESL learners’ self correct grammatical error.

E. Rationale

In learning a foreign language, students may think that writing is the most difficult

language skill to be learned since it tends to attach more importance to correctness of every kind

(word choice, punctuation, and text cohesion, for example). Tribble (1996:3) says that writing is

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a language skill which is difficult to acquire. It is a process that occurs over a period of time,

particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking that precede

creating an initial draft. The result of these difficulties is that students try to avoid writing and

they do not try their best whenever they are asked to write. They always complained whenever

they were asked to write. They seemed to be discouraged to have writing lesson. In short, they

tried to avoid it because they were afraid of making many errors in writing and got a bad score.

According to the teacher, the problem faced by the students was actually resulted from the lack

of grammar mastery.

The condition of students’ grammar mastery is supported by the teacher statement, he

says “Secara umum untuk grammar saat ini, terus terang, tidak mendapatkan perhatian yang

khusus sehingga belum mendapatkan hasil yang memuaskan, karena memang kita belum

menemukan teknik yang sesuai untuk bagaimana anak agar dapat mengingat terus dan paham

tentang grammar.”

Meanwhile, from the students themselves, they have problems with the grammar. They

said that they are still confused in some grammar points like the use of modal, the use of

pronoun, and the use of past tense. As what has been said by some students “Saya masih

bingung mas untuk menggunakan tenses past sehingga masih salah dalam menuliskan kata kerja

nya”. The other students say; “ Apalagi kalau disuruh menulis, kita pasti kesulitan dan banyak

salah nya di grammar”.

However, writing is a basic language skill that must be learned by students. Therefore,

English teachers should find and use the ways that make writing lesson effective. It is very

difficult for students to produce a good piece of writing since English is very difficult from

Indonesian. In addition, the teacher has not implemented method in teaching writing which can

36

facilitate the students actively correcting their own writing, so that students know what they have

done wrong or right.

There is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for second language learners to

master. The difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also translating these

ideas into readable text. In many cases, the students would need intervention from the teachers

in terms of not only their writing instructions but also their comments on their submitted drafts

in order to identify their own strength and weaknesses, which, in the case of the latter, will make

the students know how to go about improving themselves and become effective writers. Thus

feedback can be considered a pedagogical tool for the students’ writing improvement.

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. Kroll (2001) describes feedback

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.

By considering the reason above, it can be concluded that teacher’s feedback can improve the

students’ grammar mastery on writing.

37

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Research Setting

1. The Place of the Research

This classroom action research was carried out in SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta. It is located

at Jln. Sumbing VI / 49, Mojosongo, Jebres Surakarta. SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta has three grades

of class, namely the tenth grade, the eleventh grade and the twelfth grade. Each grade consists of

five classes and each class consists of 39 up to 40 students. Beside fifteen classrooms, the other

buildings are library, teacher office, headmaster office, administration office, computer room,

language room and mosque.

SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta uses KTSP (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pelajaran) curriculum as

the basis of teaching and learning processes. Instructional processes are done in six days from

Monday up to Saturday. The students start to learn at 07.00 a.m. They finish the lesson at 01.30

p.m on Monday to Friday, except on Friday they learn from 7 a.m to 10.15 a.m. The students of

this school come from different social background but most of their parents work as merchant

and factory employee.

37

38

2. The Time of the Research

This research is conducted in 5 months from February 2010 to June 2010. It includes the

pre research, action and activities after the action. It can be arranged as follow:

No. Activity Time of research

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Pre research (interview, and observe

English teaching)

Preparation of thesis proposal

Pre test

Action 1

Post test 1

Action 2

Post test 2

Analyzing the result

February 2010

February to March 2010

April 2010

April 2010

May 2010

May 2010

May 2010

June to July 2010

B. Subject of The Research

The subject of the research was the students in the eleventh grade of Science Class of

SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta. The eleventh grades are divided into four classes. They are class IPA 1

up to IPA 4. In this research, the writer chooses IPA 4. This class consists of 33 students, 17

boys and 16 girls.

39

C. The Method of The Research

The method used in this study is classroom action research. For a starting point, it is

necessary to give a definition of action research. Relating to his study, the writer uses action

research method. Kemmis in Hopkins (1993 : 44) defines the action research as follows:

“Action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in socialsituation in order to improve the rationally and justice of their own social or educationalpractices, as well as their understanding of this practices and the situation in which thesepractices are carried out.”

In addition, Hopkins (1993: 44) says that action research combines as substantive act

with a research procedure; it is action disciplined by enquiry, a personal attempt at understanding

while engaged in a process of improvement and reform. Heidi Watts considers the definition of

action research as stated in http: //www.madison.kl 2.wi.us/sod/car/carisandisnot.html, action

research is a process in which participants examine their own educational practice systematically

and carefully using the techniques of research. It is based on the following assumptions:

1. teachers and principals work best on problems they have identified for themselves;

2. teachers and principals become more effective when encouraged to examine and

assess their own work and then consider ways of working differently;

3. teachers and principals help each other by working collaboratively;

4. working with colleagues helps teachers and principals in their professional

development.

40

The other definition comes from Wiersma (2000: 11). He states that action research is a

research usually conducted by the teachers, administrators, or other educational professionals for

solving a specific problem or for providing information for decision making at local level.

There is a view that an action research is essentially done collaboratively or participatory.

Burns (1999: 34) explains that it is important to bear in mind that action research may be carried

out through different combinations of people working together: by group of teachers working

with university researchers; by teacher-researchers pairs or group working together; by teachers

working in partnerships with administrators, students, parents or community members. Cohen

and Manion (1994: 189) outline the range of possible roles which can be adopted by action

researchers as follows.

“First there is the single teacher operating on her own with her class. She will feel theneed for some kind of change or improvement in teaching, learning or organization, forexample, and will be in a position to translate her ideas into action in her ownclassroom…Second, action research may be pursued by a group of teachers working cooperativelywithin one school, though of necessity functioning against a bigger backdrop than theteacher working solo…And third, there is the occasion…where teams of teachers work alongside a researcheror researchers in a sustained relationship, possibly with other interested parties likeadvisors, university departments and sponsors on the periphery…”

From the explanation above, the writer makes conclusion that action research is a

systematic study and it is a form of self –reflective inquiry undertaken or carried out by the

teachers or participants in order to overcome educational problems or to change the things

related to educational problems for better improvement.

41

D. The Model of Action Research

The model of action research in this classroom action research uses the model developed

by Kemmis and Taggart (in Hopkins, 1993 : 48). There are four steps in this model of action

research namely; identifying problem and planning the action, implementing and observing the

action, reflecting the result of the observation and revising the plan for the following step. As

shown in diagram below;

Plan

Reflection

Step I

Action

&

Observation

Revised Plan

Reflection

Step II

Action

&

Observation Revised Plan

42

E. The Procedures of Action Research

According to Kemmis and Taggart (in Hopkins, 1993 : 48), the procedures of each steps

can be explained as follows.

1. Identifying the Problem

To start an action research project, the researcher needs to decide the problem. In this

research, the problems were identified after doing the pre-research and interviewing the English

teachers. It referred to the students’ grammar mastery which was still low and needed

improvement.

2. Planning

The most important outcome of the planning phase is a detailed plan of the action the

researcher intends to take or the improvement he intends to make. Here, the researcher prepared

everything needed in doing the action in order to improve the students’ grammar mastery. In this

research, the researcher was the teacher.

Since the time was limited, the use of teacher’s feedback to improve the students’

grammar mastery in this research was adapted directly to the curriculum. It means the students

were asked to write based on the topics –spoof- decided by the researcher which was in

accordance with the curriculum. Nevertheless, the teaching of the topics (the explanation of the

grammar, generic structure, and vocabulary needed) was delivered in the written and oral form

so that it would not give any burden to students.

43

The planning of the research consists of some steps, as follows:

1. The researcher gave the students a pre-test and evaluated the result of the test.

2. Then, he made lesson plans that would be used to teach the students in order to

improve their grammar on composition.

3. After making lesson plans, he provided the students with the copy of feedback

codes and its meaning and the examples in sentences. Besides, he also explained

the guidelines of teacher’s feedback.

4. The researcher implemented the lesson plans he had made.

5. Having finished applying all the lesson plans, the researcher gave a post-test and

evaluated the result of the test.

6. Then, he compared the result of the pre-test and the post-test by using the mean

score in order to identify the improvement.

3. Action Implementation

In carrying out the action, the researcher did the planning which had been made. He

implemented the lesson plans he had made. He did all the things written in the lesson plans and

changed them if things didn’t go precisely as expected. The writer did the teaching and learning

process by implementing teaching technique in improving grammar mastery on writing by using

feedback.

The implementation of the action planned in this research was held in two cycles carried

out to overcome the students’ main problem in grammar mastery. Each cycle included several

meetings. Every cycle in this research consisted of series of steps, namely identifying the

problems, planning the action, implementing the action, observing or monitoring the action,

44

evaluating and reflecting the result of the observation, and revising the plan. The real

implementation was presented as follows.

1. The researcher explained the steps of writing namely pre-writing, writing, and post-

writing or revising to students since the activity instructed dealt with composing.

2. The researcher gave examples of pre-writing by giving the topic of text located in

orientation; as the first part of spoof text. This activity was done in order that students

could make a composition based on its generic structure namely orientation, events and

twist.

3. The researcher explained the grammatically correct sentences which were taken from the

topic of spoof text. Since the sentences used mostly were in the form of Past Tense, the

researcher put much attention on verb formation (V2).

4. The researcher asked some students to make their own sentences then they were asked to

mention the verb in the past form.

5. The researcher explained the teacher’s feedback in order that students could recognize it

in the form of either underlining the errors or giving codes on the errors.

6. The researcher asked students to correct the errors which were given underlined feedback

on the composition, while on the next cycle, they were asked to correct the errors which

were given both underlined and coded feedback.

7. After doing the correction on composition, the researcher and students discussed what

they had done, reviewed materials and did evaluation.

8. The writer asked about the students’ feeling and their comment dealing with the teacher’s

feedback that had been learnt.

45

9. In the end, the writer asked students to correct the errors as the evidence that they knew

the importance of teacher’s feedback.

4. Observation

The observation phase was done during the teaching and learning process. In this

phase, the researcher asked a partner to observe all activities happening in the classroom and to

take notes related to the teacher’s feedback on students’ grammar and the teaching of writing in

general.

5. Reflection

At the end of the action implementation, the researcher reflected critically on what

had happened. There are some questions used to guide reflection in this research, as follows.

1. Is there any improvement?

2. If there is any improvement, how effective is it?

3. If there is no improvement, what are the barriers to improve?

4. What further cycle should be taken?

46

6. Revised Plan

Revised plan was needed when the action cycle didn’t make any improvement on the

students’ grammar mastery. It means that the researcher should do further cycle.

F. The Technique of Collecting the Data

In conducting an action research project, there are some techniques that can be

used to collect data. The choice of which technique to use depends on the question or problem

being asked. In this research, the problem is about the low level of students’ grammar mastery

which needs to be improved. Therefore, the researcher carries out observation, interview with

the teacher, takes field notes and photographs, and gives questionnaire and tests to the students

as the techniques of collecting the data.

1. Observation

When doing observation, the researcher observed the classroom interaction and

collected information needed related to the teaching of writing.

2. Field Notes

Taking notes or field notes is another way of collecting information about

classroom events, the teaching process, or the students’ behavior. They were used to

record activities happening in the class.

47

3. Photographs

The photographs help the researcher in coding students’ specific behaviors during the

teaching and learning processes.

4. Interview

The researcher interviewed the teacher to identify the problem and the source of the

problem faced by the students in learning writing so that he could decide the most appropriate

ways in solving it.

5. Questionnaire

The questionnaire given to students was used to know the students’ opinion and

feeling towards the implementation of teacher’s feedback in writing in the class.

6. Test

The test used in this research was an essay test which was given before (pre-test) and

after (post-test) the action. In the pre-test, the students were asked to write a composition. With

this test, the researcher would get description about the students’ grammar mastery. After the

action cycle, the students were asked to write a composition then collect it to the researcher in

order to get response or feedback on both the content and the linguistic form. After the teacher

gave the feedback codes on students’ worksheet, he distributed it to the students so that the

students could revise it based on the feedback given. It is for the post-test. The result of this test

is compared with the result of the pre-test so that the researcher can identify whether or not the

48

action has made any improvement on the students’ writing task, especially in the grammar

mastery.

G. The Technique of Analyzing the Data

The data collected were analyzed by qualitative and quantitative ways. The

qualitative data analyses were used to analyze the data that were taken during the teaching

learning process. The writer used the indicators that showed the improvement of the students’

grammar mastery. The qualitative approach was done by describing, investigating, and

evaluating the observation result, field notes, photographs, interview note, and questionnaire

result. Meanwhile, the quantitative approach was done by describing the tests results.

The quantitative data analyses were used to analyze data from the result of the

teaching learning process. It was done to compare the students’ grammar mastery before and

after the action or the result of pre-test and post-test. The results of the test were analyzed by

using the formula which is stated as follows:

The mean of the pre-test and the post-test can be calculated with the formulas as follows:

N

XX

N

YY

In which,

X = the sum of students’ pre-test scores

49

Y = the sum of students’ post-test scores

X = the mean of the pre-test scores

Y = the mean of the post-test scores

N = the number of students (Sukardi, 2003: 91)

50

CHAPTER IV

RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the researcher presents the implementation of the action. The structure of

the writing contains introduction, research implementation, and discussion. Introduction contains

the problem faced by the students and the possible causes of the problem. Research

implementation contains the implementations of the actions of the research in the field.

A. Research Findings

1. Introduction

As presented in chapter I, some problems were found in the teaching of English for

students of the X1 IPA 4 of SMA N 8 Surakarta. The main problem faced by the students was

the lack of grammar mastery. Their grammar was still low. It can be seen from the aspects like:

1) the low score of the students; 2) the grammatical mistakes on students’ composition.

The difficulties of mastering grammar were caused by some reasons. Firstly, the students

were still confused in some grammar points like the use of modal, the use of pronoun, and the

use of past tense. Secondly, the students had low level of grammar mastery so that they found

difficulties in developing their ideas into written language. The indicators of this problem could

be seen from their attitudes towards writing lesson. They always complain whenever they were

asked to write because they were afraid of making mistakes.

There were also several possible causes of the problem that could be identified by the

researcher, among others: (1) The teacher never used certain method to correct mistakes on

50

51

student’s writing, (2) The teacher seemed never encourage the students to write and told them

not to be afraid of making mistakes because they could learn from the mistakes they did before.

2. Research Implementation

The implementation of the action planned in this research was held in two cycles. Each

cycle included several meetings. Each meeting took 90 minutes. The researcher divided the first

cycle into three meetings. It was conducted from 10 to 24 of April 2010. In this cycle, the

researcher used “Funny Experience” as the topic. Meanwhile, the second cycle included three

meetings. The researcher chose “Funny Story” as the topic. The researcher conducted the second

cycle from 1 to 29 of May 2010. Every cycle in this research consisted of series of steps, namely

identifying the problems, planning the action, implementing the action, observing or monitoring

the action, evaluating and reflecting the result of the observation, and revising the plan. They are

explained in the following parts.

1. Identifying the Problem

The writer did some observations to know the pre-condition before the implementation of

the action research. Based on the result of the pre-research done in class XI IPA 4 in SMA

Negeri 8 Surakarta, the researcher could identify the problem faced by the eleventh year students

in learning writing. In the beginning of the research, the researcher conducted pre-observation

toward the teaching-learning process and interview with the teacher. He found some problems

arose in that class. The first was the students were not interested in English class; they thought

that English was a difficult lesson. The second, the students had low level of writing skill so that

they found difficulties in developing their ideas into the written language. The indicators of this

problem could be seen from their attitudes towards writing lesson. They always complained

52

whenever they were asked to write. The third, the students seemed to be discouraged to have

writing lesson. In short, they tried to avoid it because they were afraid of making many errors in

writing and got a bad score. According to the teacher, the problem faced by the students was

actually resulted from the lack of vocabulary and grammar mastery.

In this step, the researcher also conducted a pre-test of writing to know the condition

of the students’ grammar mastery. In this test, the students were asked to make a simple

composition based on their experience. The mean score of the pre test was 5.4. This score

showed that the students’ grammar mastery was still low.

In addition, based on the interview with the teacher and the pre-test result, the

researcher identified that the students’ grammar mastery needed to be improved. He decided to

improve it through a technique working in a non-threatening condition called teacher’s feedback.

Teacher’s feedback is the teacher’s act to the students’ performance on writing by marking the

errors on their composition by giving certain marks to the errors so that the students recognize

their errors and can discover deviant forms and structures of the target language learned. It helps

the students to become more accurate in their use of language. The focus of teacher’s feedback is

to improve the students’ grammar mastery on the aspect of sentence construction (dealing with

grammar structure and vocabulary) since it became the major problem faced by the students. 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.

53

2. The First Cycle

1. Planning the action

After finding the problems faced by the students, the researcher prepared to conduct

the research. He made lesson plans for the first cycle. He also chose the appropriate techniques

supporting the process of the teaching writing. Here, the researcher used lecturing, and question

and answer. The lecturing technique helped the students to understand about the spoof text and

the essence of teacher’s feedback. The researcher also prepared the teaching aids such as hand-

made poster which was containing about the list of the codes and its meaning. He prepared the

teaching material based on the topic stated in the curriculum. The material was about Spoof text

and the theme was Funny Experience. For the first cycle, he planned three meetings. The

meeting was conducted once a week. Before doing the teaching in the class XI IPA 4, the

researcher gave the students pre-test. The test was aimed to know their grammar mastery on the

composition. The test was also given in the end of the first cycle as a post-test.

2. Implementing the action

In implementing the action, the researcher played a role as the teacher. Meanwhile,

the real English teacher helped the researcher in observing the students and in overcoming the

problems faced by the researcher in the class (during the teaching and learning process). The

researcher also asked one of his fellow reserachers to observe the teaching and learning process.

So, there were two observers in the class.

The researcher did the teaching-learning process in three phases: pre-activity, main

activity, and post-activity. The pre-activity phase covered all the things done as the opening such

54

as greeting, checking the students’ attendance. In this phase, the researcher also did

brainstorming or gave some questions to students to stimulate their participation in the lesson. In

the main activity, the researcher gave explanation about the material. Then, the researcher also

asked students to tell their experience about everything dealing with the material (spoof text). In

the post activity, the researchers summarized the lesson, did reflection, and closed the lesson.

1. The first meeting

The first meeting was conducted on Saturday, April 10, 2010. The topic was Funny

Experience. In short, the teaching and learning process ran as follows. Firstly, the researcher

introduced the topic and stated the goal of the lesson. Then, he distributed the copy of the

material that was spoof text with the title Penguin in the Park. The researcher asked the students

to comprehend the copy of the material: spoof and its example. After that, he asked one of the

students to read the text loudly and then discussed the content and the generic structure of the

text. Then, the researcher gave explanation about spoof. The students had learned about spoof

text before so that the researcher didn’t find any difficulty in explaining about Spoof.

The time was about 45 minutes. Before the researcher asked the students to make a

composition in the form of spoof text, he explained the step of writing namely pre-writing,

writing, and post-writing. As pre-writing activity, then he gave an example by writing the first

sentence of spoof text as an orientation. The sentence was; “Once, a man was walking when he

came across a penguin”. He explained it to the students that this sentence could be the topic of

their composition.

55

Later, the researcher asked some students to tell their past funny experiences. At the

first time, all of the students refused to do that. They said “Nggak bisa mas, susah nhu mas kalo

disuruh menceritakannya pake bahasa Inggris, pake bahasa Indonesia saja ya mas?. Then, the

researcher encouraged the students that it would be OK if they tried it. Nevertheless, none of

them would tell their story in English. So, the researcher asked some students to tell it Indonesia.

The researcher said “Ya sudah, disampaikan dalam bahasa Indonesia saja, paling tidak kita bisa

mengetahui apa yang akan kita pelajari sebenarnya”.

Finally, some students did what the researcher asked them to do. There were some

students who willingly told their amusing experiences. Two of them were Siti and Riris. Siti

talked about his grandfather who had already been senile. She said “ Saya punyah mbah kakung

yang sudah tua. Pernah suatu malam, beliau mencari kaca mata nya yang hilang. Penghuni

rumah pun dibuat kebingungan mencari nya. Dicari kesana-sini pun tak ada. Gak tau nya

ditaruh dikepala nya. Semua anggota keluargapun tertawa atas kejadian itu”. Hearing that

story, all students laughed. Then, the researcher gave a little comment to that story

“Grandfather!” (Dasar mbah kakung). Later Siti talked about her shameful story. She said

“Pengalaman ku sebenernya memalukan buat saya mas. Kejadian nya ketika saya disuruh ibu

bikin sup ayam. Karena ini yang pertama kali, saya pun gugup banget pas bikin nya. Sampai

akhirnya saya salah menakar bumbu. Saya memasukan garam lebih banyak. Ya hasilnya pasti

asin banget. Terus ibu saya pun tertawa”. Hearing that story, one of students commented “ Wah,

kalo itu bukan dia yang gugup mas, tapi dia nya aja yang udah pengen nikah.” And other

students agreed by saying “Bener itu mas, hehehe”. Then, all students laughed too.

Then, to make learning process run well, the researcher stopped the retelling session

because the class was so noisy. It lasted for about 35 minutes. On ten minutes remaining, the

56

researcher explained that what we did before would actually be performed next in writing form.

So, “Don’t forget to bring the material I had given next week”, he said. In the post-activity

phase, AS reviewed the lesson of that day by asking some questions to the students. AS gave a

chance for the students to recall what had been learned and then they made a conclusion

together. AS asked the students whether they had questions or not. But no students asked

question. When the time given was over, AS asked the students whether they were happy or not

in the lesson. The students answered “Yes”. Then the teacher said “Thank for your attention,

Good morning and see you later”. AS closed the lesson.

2. The second meeting

The second meeting was conducted on Saturday, April 17, 2010. The topic was still

Funny Experience. The researcher started the lesson by praying. AS prepared the teaching

instruments then greeted and checked students’ attendance. The researcher reviewed what they

learnt in the last meeting to refresh students’ memory about what spoof text is. The researcher

explained the same example of spoof text that had been distributed in previous meeting. Then, he

explained the spoof text again; namely its generic structure, communicative purpose and

characteristics. He wrote the explanation on the whiteboard in order that students understood

with what they would learn.

The time was about 45 minutes. After having given the explanation, the researcher

asked students to make a composition. First, all of the students refused to do that they said “Ngga

bisa mas, kan mengarang bahasa inggris susah, nanti kalau salah semua gimana mas?”. Then,

the researcher encouraged the students that it was OK if they produced many errors in writing.

57

The researcher said “tidak apa-apa kalau membuat kesalahan, namanya juga belajar. Jangan

takut, nanti kalian malah bisa belajar dari kesalahan itu dan jadi tahu mana yang benar”

Finally, the students did what the researcher asked them to do, that was making a

composition in form of spoof. Then, the researcher distributed worksheet to the students. The

students started to write and the researcher walked around the class to make sure that all students

wrote the composition.

After the students finished writing, the researcher asked them to check their writing

again before they collected it to the researcher. He told the students that their writing would be

returned the following week. He summarized the lesson on that day and then closed it by saying

goodbye.

3. The third meeting

The third meeting was conducted on Saturday, April 24, 2010. The topic was still Funny

Experience. The researcher reviewed the last meeting to refresh the students’ memory. Then he

distributed the students’ writing from the last meeting. Before asking the students to correct their

writing, the researcher explained about what kind of error they often made and he took the

example from the students’ writing. He also took some grammatically wrong sentences on their

composition to be written on the white board. Then, he asked the students to correct their own

writing based on the underlining feedback given and then rewrite it under the underlining

feedback. Later, the students started to correct their writing. As usual, the researcher walked

around the class to make sure that all students were correcting their writing and helped the

students who was still confused about the underlined feedback.

58

Having finished correcting their writing, the students collected their writing to the

researcher. Finally, the researcher closed the lesson by thanking the students for their attention

and then saying goodbye.

3. Observing the action

During the teaching and learning process, the researcher did not only teach the

students, but also observed the things happening in the class. The following is the detail

explanation about the result of the observation based on the test, observation and interview to the

students as a consideration to make decisions dealing with the next steps.


In the first meeting, the students still looked shy to the researcher and they were not

serious and active to follow the teaching and learning process. During the activities, they paid

attention to the researcher’s explanation. When the researcher gave them the opportunity to ask

questions dealing with the material, they said they have learned about the spoof before, so they

were not confused. Some boys and girls were kept talking while the researcher explained the

material. A lot of time was wasted to make them listen. The class became very noisy when the

researcher asked them to tell their funny experience. Most students refused to do that. It was

supported by this statement;

“Nggak bisa mas, susah nhu mas kalo disuruh menceritakannya pake bahasa Inggris,

pake bahasa Indonesia saja ya mas? “Ya sudah, disampaikan dalam bahasa Indonesia saja,

paling tidak kita bisa mengetahui apa yang akan kita pelajari sebenarnya”. (fieldnote 1)

59


In this meeting, the researcher explained once again about spoof especially about its

language feature for about 15 minutes to refresh the students’ memory. He gave the same

example of spoof text. Then, he asked students to make a composition. At first, all students

refused to do it. But, they did it finally. The following statement shows their unwillingness to

write;

“Ngga bisa mas, kan mengarang bahasa inggris susah, nanti kalau salah semua

gimana mas? Tidak apa-apa kalau membuat kesalahan, namanya juga belajar. Jangan takut,

nanti kalian malah bisa belajar dari kesalahan itu dan jadi tahu mana yang benar” (fieldnote2)

When the students were writing, many of them asked about the vocabulary and the

correct form of verb which would be used. One example question is as follow;

“Mas, bentuk kata kerja kedua berfikir apa trus Bahasa Inggris nya senang apa?”

(fildnote2)

Most of the students did not re-check their writing before they collected it to the

researcher.

3. The third meeting

In the third meeting, the students and the researcher started to have a good

relationship. The students were not shy anymore to ask questions if they did not understand.

However, a few students did not understand the researcher’s instruction dealing with the

60

underlined feedback which covered their composition. One of the students’ questions is as

follow;

“Mas, kita disuruh ngapain dengan karangan kita yang sidah diberitanda garis

bawah?” (fieldnote 3)

It could happen because the researcher didn’t give enough explanation and examples

of kind of errors they made.

4. Reflecting the result of the observation

The researcher did reflection to evaluate the teaching and learning process he had

done in cycle one. After the implementation of teacher’s feedback, the researcher saw some

positive results.

Firstly, the students started to show the positive attitudes toward writing. It could be

seen from the students’ activeness and seriousness in performing the steps of writing. They

became more active in joining the lesson. They were also actively involved in brainstorming

session; some of them were very enthusiastic and also gave some inputs during the activity. In

writing activity, some students looked very serious; they did not cheat or imitate someone’s work

like most of their friends did. They used their own idea. They just asked about the vocabularies

and the verb in past form to the researcher. The researcher marked the names of those students in

observation paper. And the result, there were 17 students from 33 students or 51.5 % of the

whole students who showed the activeness and seriousness in performing the steps of writing.

This number was better than when they did pre test.

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The improvement of students’ grammar mastery can be seen from the students’

ability in correcting the errors which had been given underlining feedback. The researcher

counted the number of students who could make use the teacher’s underlining feedback to

improve the grammar and vocabulary of the composition. As the result, there were 18 students

from 33 students or 54.54 % who could improve grammar mastery of the composition based on

the feedback given by the teacher.

There were a lot of students who got score 30-50. In the pre test, the students who got

score 30-50 were fourteen students or just 42.42%. In the end of the first cycle, the number of

students who got score 30-50 was decreasing, from fourteen to nine students or 27.27%. In other

words, there was little improvement from the students who got bad score.

Nevertheless, the improvement of the students’ grammar mastery was not effective

yet since the main targets had not been achieved. The researcher had formulated the indicators of

success of this research that covered two aspects; (1) The students’ activeness and seriousness in

performing the steps of writing; (2) The students’ ability in correcting the errors of the

composition based on the feedback given by the teacher. The target of achievement for each

aspect is 60 %. And from the result of the first cycle, it can be seen clearly that those two aspects

had not reached the target, namely; (1) The students’ activeness and seriousness in performing

the steps of writing which was only 51.5 %; (2) The students’ ability in correcting the errors

based on the underlining feedback given by the teacher which was only 54.54 %.

There were also several problems that the researchers found in the first cycle, among

others are,

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1. There were some students who were reluctant to write. They seemingly did not have

self-confidence to write because they were still afraid of making many errors. One

example question as follows;

“Ngga bisa mas, kan mengarang bahasa inggris susah, nanti kalau salah semua gimana

mas?(fieldnote 2)

2. The students still found difficulties in constructing sentences. It is based on researcher’s

observation;

“ Banyak siswa ramai, tanya pada teman sebangku dan beberapa tanya pada guru nya.

Karangan ini pake kata kerja keberapa,mas? (fieldnote 2)

3. The researcher did not give enough explanation about the way to construct sentence and

about the essence of underlining feedback. It was caused by some students who ignored

the feedback given on their composition. They corrected their work but a few students

seemingly did not understand. One example question as follow;

“Mas, kita disuruh ngapain dengan karangan kita yang sudah diberitanda garis

bawah?” (fieldnote 3)

This problem is also supported by the researcher observation.

“Beberapa siswa tampak kesulitan dalam memahami penjelasan tentang feedback

karena ditulis dalam bentuk garis bawah (fieldnote 3)

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4. The researcher did not manage the class well enough so that sometimes the students

were busy with themselves and finally they did not join and understand the lesson well.

Even, they were not serious and active to follow the teaching and learning process.

This problem is also supported by the researcher’s observation;

“Para siswa berbicara sendiri karena tidak begitu tertarik dengan cara AS

menyampaikan materi. Terlalu monoton” (fieldnote 1)

5. Editing and revising phase did not run optimally. It means that almost of the students did

not edit their writing result with their own awareness. They submitted their writing result

directly without editing and revising it first. Sometimes students disregarded the

importance of editing and revising in their writing process. It was caused by the

students’ hastiness to submit their writing. This problem is supported by the student’s

statement;

“Kita masih bingung mas dengan penjelasan feedback pada kesalahan yang

digarisbawah, jadi ya kita cuma mengerjakan sebisa nya saja” (fieldnote 3)

Referring to what he identified as the weaknesses above, the researcher decided to

take the second cycle in order to make better improvement of the students’ grammar mastery.

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3. The Second Cycle

a. Revising the Plan

Based on the result of the first cycle, it was found that there were several remaining

problems which needed to be solved. The researcher decided to take the second cycle and revised

the plan.

In this cycle, the researcher tried to overcome the barriers. He decided to teach the

students by presenting the same topic, namely Funny Experience and the example of text entitled

It’s None of Your Business. He taught the students by giving enough explanation about the

grammar structure and by explaining again about the guidelines of teacher’s feedback. Before the

students corrected their writing based on the feedback given on their worksheet, the researcher

gave sometime to explain new teacher’s feedback, namely coded feedback and he took the

examples directly from the students’ writing so that it would be easier for them to understand.

Moreover, he gave two codes to the students’ writing. In this case, he gave an underlining

feedback to the wrong sentence structure and put a code on it so that the students knew the errors

they made.

The researcher became more active in managing the class so that the students could

join the class optimally.

b. Implementing the Action

The researcher implemented the action in two meetings.

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1). The first meeting

The first meeting was conducted on Saturday, May 08, 2010. The topic was Funny

Experience. The researcher started the lesson by reviewing the last discussion and then

explaining more about teacher’s coded feedback. He also wrote some of the coding feedback on

the whiteboard though all students had got the copy of coded feedback. Having finished

explaining about teacher’s feedback, the researcher asked the students, “Do you understand?”

They answered together, “Yes!”

In order that students understood to what the researcher wanted, he took some

examples of student’s errors which were given both underlining and coding feedback. There

were five coding feedback presented, namely (V) Verb Error, (NE) Noun Ending, (WW) Wrong

Word, (Art) Article, (SS) Sentence structure. Then, the researcher distributed the material

entitled “A Private Conversation”. He discussed the generic structure and language features.

Since there were a lot of errors in verb formation of past tense, the researcher decided to make a

simple game to recognize which the verb was and to make students more serious and active in

following teaching and learning process. The result was most students were interested in this

game while others weren’t. Considering that errors found were the forming of past verb, the

teacher explained one of the language features of spoof text, that was the usage of Simple Past

Tense.

The time was about ten minutes. Before AS closed the lesson, he reviewed the lesson

of that day. AS gave a chance for the students to recall what had been learnt and then they made

a conclusion together. AS also asked students to remember the coded feedback given because it

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would be used to sign errors on their composition in the next meeting. Then the teacher said

“thank for your attention, Good morning and have a nice weekend”. AS closed the lesson.


This meeting was conducted on Saturday, May 22, 2010. The topic taught was Funny

Experience. The researcher distributed one of the students’ compositions from the last meeting

which was given both underlining feedback and coding feedback. Before asking the students to

correct their writing, the researcher explained once again about the feedback codes given on their

worksheet. He also took examples directly from the students’ worksheet.

Having finished the explanation, the researcher asked the students to correct their

writing and write it under the errors which were given feedback. He walked around the class to

make sure that all students were correcting their writing and also give individual feedback to the

students. After the students finished correcting their writing, some of the students showed it to

the researcher in order to ask whether they had made the correct writing.

Finally, the time was up and the researcher closed the lesson by asking some questions

first. He asked, “Is there any question?”. The students answered,” No!” Then, the researcher

asked in Indonesia, ”Menurut kalian teacher’s feedback itu membantu kalian dalam menulis

bahasa inggris tidak?” They answered, “Yes!” Then he asked one of the students to say his

reason. He said so ” Ya, Theo menurut kamu kenapa teacher’s feedback sangat membantu?”

then Theo answered “karena tulisan kita tidak langsung disalahkan, dan kita bisa mengoreksi

kesalahan grammar kita sendiri jadi nanti nya kita tidak takut salah”. “Ok, thank you Theo”

said the researcher. Then, he closed the lesson by saying thanks and goodbye.

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c. Observing the action

The result of the observation done during the teaching-learning processes in the

second cycle is as follows.


In this meeting the students seemed to have better attitudes towards teaching and

learning process and teacher’s feedback since the researcher had explained it more clearly. It can

be seen from their expression and their response towards the researcher’s explanation about it.

Most of the students did not complain anymore when they were asked to write and they also

made use the feedback given to improve their grammar mastery

They also seemed to have better understanding about how to construct simple

sentences. Most of the students could construct sentences correctly when they were asked to

write a simple composition.

The students were more serious and active in joining teaching and learning process

since the researcher gave them a game in recognizing the verb in a sentence. This is supported by

the researcher’s observation;

“Beberapa siswa berebut untuk menuliskan kata kerja yang mereka temukan diteks

yang diberikan oleh AS. Salah satu dari mereka pun berteriak, “saya mas, saya bisa mencari

kata kerja yang ada dikalimat pertama” kata Andi. Kemudaian Hanin pun tak mau kalah dengan

siswa lain nya, langsung dia maju ke depan dan menuliskan beberapa kata kerja.” (fieldnote 4).

68


The essence of this meeting was just to ask the students to check and correct one of

the compositions they had collected in the previous meeting. Therefore, the topic was still Funny

Experience. The students found it easier to correct their writing since the researcher had put two

feedbacks, underlined and coded feedback. This is supported by the researcher’s observation.

“Para siswa tampak serius dan tertantang untuk mengoreksi kesalahan-kesalahan

grammar yang sudah diberi tanda garis bawah dan kode feedback oleh AS. Setelah selesai

mengerjakan dan mengumpulkan, AS pun bertanya pada salah seorang siswa, Theo nama nya.

AS bertanya, menurut mu teacher’s feedback itu membantu kalian dalam meningkatkan

penguasaan grammar, khususnya dalam writing? Theo pun menjawab, Iya, mas. Karena tulisan

kita tidak langsung disalahkan dan kita bisa megoreksi kesalahan grammar kita sendiri, jadi

nanti nya kita tidak takut salah.” (Fieldnote 5)

d. Reflecting the result of the observation

Referring to the target the researcher wants to achieve, which is improving students’

grammar mastery. He finds the result of the treatments and evaluations satisfying. Overall, he

can say that teacher’s feedback works well in improving students’ grammar mastery. The

improvements can be seen from some points.

The first point is the number of students who shows activeness and seriousness in

performing the steps of writing raises, from 17 students or 51.5% in the first cycle becomes 26

students or 78.78 % in the second cycle.

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The second point dealing with the achieved target is the students’ ability in correcting

the errors on composition is better. It can be seen from the numbers of the students who could

make use both teachers’ feedbacks to improve the form of the language of their composition. In

the second cycle, there were 30 students or 90.90% who could make use teacher’s feedback in

correcting the errors of composition. Compared with the first cycle, there were only 18 students

or 54.54 % who could make use the teacher’s underlined feedback in correcting the errors of

their composition. This improvement is satisfying for the researcher, because it is a proof that the

students finally knew the essence of teacher’s feedback that is they could self-correct their own

writing.

The third point is the mean score of the second post test result done at the end of the

action shows that there is significant improvement of the students’ grammar mastery. The mean

score of the second post test is 70.60%. It is better than the mean score of the first post test result

which is 58.78%. It means that the percentage rises.

The fourth point which shows the positive progress of students’ ability in correcting

errors is they are able to revise the error correctly. In this case, the errors they revised were based

on the researcher’s explanation and examples. The researcher explained to them which parts

went wrong and showed them the correct form. The positive progress of students’ grammar

mastery is also the enrichment of students’ vocabularies which happened during the process of

revising

The fifth point is that the students were actively involved in the teaching and learning

process. They asked question whenever they did not understand about the material or the

feedback given. They also could make use of both teachers’ feedbacks so that they found it

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easier to revise their writing. All students were active in joining the lesson since the researcher

did better class control.

However, these achievements do not mean that the actions done by the researcher is

already perfect and final. The use of teacher’s feedback is only one of the ways of improving the

students’ grammar mastery. It can still be improved by the teacher as long as she or he is willing

to do betterment on her/his teaching, especially in teaching writing. She or he can make use of

any techniques appropriate to the teaching of writing skill.

3. Findings

After analyzing the data, such as photographs of teaching and learning process, field

notes, interview result, lesson plan, and the score of students’ pre-test and post-test; the writer

gets some findings which answer the questions as mentioned in chapter one.

There are two findings related to research questions. The first finding is the

improvement of students’ grammar mastery. The students’ achivement of grammar mastery can

be seen from the students’ score of the tests. The mean score of pre-test was 53. 9 and it

increased up to 58.78 in post-test 1. While, the mean score of post-test 1 was 58.78 and it

increased up to 68.48 in the final post-test. From these scores, it can be seen that there was a

difference between the score of pre-test and pos-test. It proves that teacher’s feedback can

improve student’s grammar mastery. The second finding is the strenghts and the weaknesses of

of the teacher’s feedback implemented in the class.

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B. Research Discussion and Justification of Research Findings

This research aims to improve student’s grammar mastery and to know the strengths and

the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback. The research finding shows that student’s grammar

mastery was improved by implementing teacher’s feedback. In this section, this finding will be

discussed by justifying the finding with the theories from the expert. Each of the findings will be

discussed below.

1. Teacher’s feedback is able to improve student’s grammar mastery.

In the first cycle of this research, there was a little improvement achieved when the

researcher implemented one of the feedbacks, namely underlining feedback. The improvement of

students’ grammar mastery can be seen from the students’ ability in correcting the errors of

composition. This statement is supported by the following table which shows the pretest and the

post-test score. The pretest was taken at the first meeting which has all students take the test. On

the other hand, the post test was taken at the end of the class. Having carried out the research in

which the teacher uses teacher’s feedback to improve student’s grammar mastery to senior high

students, the teacher can increase the students’ achievement in English grammar competence.

The following is the table describing the student’s score result which is taken from the end of the

first cycle.

Scoring

Total Score

Mean ScoreTotal Score

Pre-Test

1780

1780/33= 53. 9

Post-Test 1

1940

1940/33=58.78

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This little improvement was caused by the lack of information given at the errors

made by the students on their composition. It is supported by the student’s comment to the

researcher when they were correcting the error. “Mas, kita disuruh ngapain dengan karangan

kita yang sudah diberitanda garis bawah? (Fieldnote 1)

This problem is also supported by the researcher observation. “Some students looked

so confused in understanding the feedback because it was written in underlining feedback.”

(fieldnote 3).

This finding is similar to what Robb et.al (1986) says about the non-coded or

underlining feedback. He said that: “Non-coded feedback is more difficult for students to use in

correcting their grammar because teachers do not specify the error types or correct them.”

Then, on the second cycle, the result of teaching learning process of English grammar

mastery by using another teacher’s feedback, namely coding feedback, showed improvement

from cycle one to cycle two. The improvement can be seen by comparing the score from the

previous post test in first cycle and the post test in the second cycle.

The following is the table describing the student’s score result which is taken from

the end of the second cycle.

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This better improvement shows the better overview of the researcher to use another

teacher’s feedback given at the errors made by the students on their composition. It gives

students more information about the presence of grammatical errors on their composition and

makes students more aware and challenged to correct the error. This result is in accordance with

Ferris et.al (2001) who says that explicit error feedback is needed to help ESL writers’ self

correction ability. Then, to support the finding about the student’s awareness of the presence of

grammatical errors, here is the observation made by the researcher during the second meeting on

the second cycle. “Students seemed serious and were challenged to correct the grammatical

mistakes given underlining and coding feedback by AS.” (fieldnote 4).

Then, another finding which can be used as an important consideration is the result of

reflection from the first cycle to the second cycle is that when the teacher was implementing

underlining feedback in the class, students were passive in joining teaching learning process.

Therefore, the researcher made a simple game as a review technique in order that the students

understood and grasped the material delivered by the teacher more easily. This simple game was

carried out in the class to enable the students in recognizing the verb form in a sentence. When

this game was being implemented, the students were more active in doing activities and they had

high motivation in joining English lesson. This finding is supported by Hadfield (1997: iii) who

Scoring

Total Score

Mean ScoreTotal Score

Post-Test 1

1940

1940/33= 58.78

Post-Test 2

2260

2260/33=68.48

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says that games is an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun. Game is not only to

education role, but game also to fun and entertain.

2. The strength and the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback.

There are some important aspects to be considered dealing with the teacher’s feedback.

The writer finds some strengths in implementing the teacher’s feedback.

1. The teacher’s feedback on grammatical error in composition improves the

student’s accuracy in writing.

It is similar to Chandler (2003) who says that teacher’s feedback has positive long term-

effect on improvement of accuracy in writing. Teacher can offer a self-correction opportunity

for their students by providing indirect feedback on students’ grammatical errors. So, it is

helpful in enabling the students to minimize the grammatical errors and improve the quality of

their writing. According to what Chandler (2003) says that many students prefer indirect

feedback because it is fast and accurate for them in making correction.

2. Teacher’s feedback makes students more aware in their writing task.

Teacher’s feedback gives students more information about their writing weaknesses on

the aspect of grammar. It is implemented either by using underlining or coding feedback on their

grammatical errors on writing. It also raises the students’ responses because they want to receive

error feedback from their teacher.

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Another aspect is the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback.

a. It requires much time allotment by the researcher to give feedback to all students’

composition.

Since teacher’s feedback is used by the researcher in the class which consisted of 33

students; considered as a big class, it needs more time and energy of the teacher to check and

give feedback to each students’ writing task, so what the teacher does by implementing teacher’s

feedback takes time and needs much effort. It is in line with Ferris et.al (2001) who stated that

providing coded feedback to students’ writing requires more time and effort.

b. Some students still find difficulties in memorizing all the error feedback codes

written and copied by the researcher.

Because there are too many codes given on the grammatical errors, students get difficulty

to remember so they often forget the meaning of each code. Also, too many codes can make

students frustrated because they have to deal with symbols and markings on their writing. Based

on the literature about students’ responses, Ferris (2002) says that students sometimes found that

teacher’s marking systems confusing or cumbersome.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND SUGGESTION

This chapter presents the conclusion, implication and suggestions of the classroom action

research conducted in the eleventh grade of IPA 4 of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta in academic year

2009/2010. It presents the final discussion from the research result.

A. Conclusion

Teacher’s feedback is a suitable technique to improve students’ grammar mastery at the

eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta. The improvement of students’ grammar

mastery is shown in students’ achievement. The research questions cover: (1) The extent to

which teacher’s feedback improve students’ grammar mastery (2) What strenghts and

weaknesses of teacher’s feedback.

The first is about does and to what extent teacher’s feedback improve students’

grammar mastery. The writer’s analysis shows that the implementation of teacher’s feedback on

writing can improve the students’ ability in correcting the errors on the composition. The

improvement of the students’ grammar mastery can be seen from the result of the tests. The

mean score of the second post-test done at the end of the action shows that there is significant

improvement of the students’ grammar mastery. The mean score of the second post test is 68.48.

It is better than the mean score of the first post test result which is 58.78.

The second is about the strengths and the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback. There are

two strengths of teacher’s feedback as follows:

(1) Teacher’s feedback makes students more accurate in writing.

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77

Since the teacher’s feedback is directed to the grammatical errors on writing, it is

helpful in enabling the students to minimize the grammatical errors and improve the quality of

their writing and it is a fast and accurate way for students in making correction. Teacher’s

feedback on coding form can be used as the clue for students to correct the errors, so, the

students recognize and correct them more easily.

(2) Teacher’s feedback makes students more aware in their writing task.

Teacher’s feedback gives students more information about their writing

weaknesses on the aspect of grammar. It is implemented either by using underlining or coding

feedback on their grammatical errors on writing. It also raises the students’ responses because

they want to receive error feedback from their teacher.

While the weaknesses of teacher’s feedback are as follows:

(1) It requires much time allotment by the researcher to give feedback to all students’

composition and is time consuming.

Since teacher’s feedback is used by the researcher in the class which consists of

thirty three students; considered as a big class, it needs more time and energy of the teacher to

check and give feedback to each students’ writing task, so, it is a hard effort for teachers to

implement teacher’s feedback as it is used in a big class.

(2) Some students still find difficulties in memorizing all the error feedback’s codes

written and copied by the researcher.

Because there are too many codes given on the grammatical errors, students get

difficulty to remember so they often forget about the meaning of each code. Also, too many

codes can make students frustrated because they have to deal with symbols and markings on

their writing.

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B. Implication

In teaching writing, teacher’s feedback has important implication on students’

preference on feedback. The use of teacher’s feedback in giving treatment on students’

composition is an effective way to improve the students’ ability in correcting grammatical errors

in composition. The teacher’s feedback can improve the student’s accuracy in writing and

improve student’s self correction in correcting the grammatical errors appearing in their

composition. The teacher can also give the treatment by giving underlining or coding feedback

based on the student’s level of English mastery.

In ESL writing teachers should implement both coded and non-coded feedbacks

continuously and have to give much attention to the students’ grammatical error. Teachers can

also ask student in correcting their error themselves and in discussing the appearance of error in

peer-editing. Student can make a group of four to find and to correct the errors.

From the process of the implementation of both underlining and coding feedback,

teacher can also make more interesting games or techniques in the class in order that students

learn English grammar more easily. Since the coding feedback needs much time to be delivered

and explained, the teacher can use another media in introducing all codes in order that students

can remember them more easily.

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C. Suggestion

Based on the conclusion and the implication stated above, the researcher would like

to give some suggestions dealing with the teacher’s feedback on grammatical errors in student’s

composition.. Hopefully, the suggestions will be useful for whomsoever willing to improve

students’ grammar mastery including teachers, students, other researchers, and institutions.

1. For teachers

. Teachers should give more attention when implementing teacher’s feedback on each

student’s writing and teacher should be more creative in implementing teacher’s feedback and in

explaining teacher’s feedback to the students. In addition, teachers should be active in giving

individual feedback to students since it will mean something important for them.

Teacher should implement teacher’s feedback not only on the aspect of grammar in

writing, but also on the aspect of organization, content and other writing aspects.

2. For students

The students should not be afraid of making errors and mistakes in the use of

language in writing because making errors and mistakes is part of learning. To improve their

grammar mastery on writing on the level of accuracy, what all students have to do is practicing

writing as much as possible. Students make errors, they can fix by themselves.

The students should also take their time to study the feedback codes in order that they

find, recognize and then correct the error on their composition more easily.

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3. For other researchers

This study discusses the implementation of teacher’s feedback as a means of

improving students’ grammar mastery in writing. It is expected that other researchers have much

time to conduct teacher’s feedback and have better media to implement this feedback. The

researcher also hopes that other researchers can apply this technique by collaborating other

techniques in delivering materials, for example by using various interactive and interesting

games in teaching grammar. Besides, other researchers can use this technique to improve

students’ writing skill focused on other aspects of writing skill, such as syntax, organization and

content. They can also conduct researches, experimental researches or comparative ones for

example, comparing this technique with other techniques in teaching writing.

4. For institutions

SMA Negeri 8 Surakarta should encourage and support the English teachers to

improve the quality of their teaching. It can be done by providing facilities needed by both

teachers and students so that the teaching and learning process runs well. The institution should

also facilitate various media and material supporting the teaching and learning process, so that it

runs more efficiently and effectively. Besides, the institution should hold regular meeting with

the English teachers in order to discuss about the problems they face in teaching and to find out

the best solutions.

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