TEACHER’S FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITING AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TOWARD THE FEEDBACK IN CLASS 8A AT SMPN 3 KENCONG JEMBER IN THE 2011/2012 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Writing is one of the language skills which are important to be mastered by the students because through writing the students can show their ideas and information in English. In writing, the students are expected to write well not only on the structure or grammatically correct but also on the content which can help the reader to understand their writing. Therefore, the English teacher used feedback as the technique to correct the students’ writing in order to help the students constructing a well-organized writing which was readable and understandable. This research was conducted to investigate the teacher’s feedback on students’ descriptive text writing and students’ attitude toward the feedback in class 8A at SMPN 3 Kencong Jember in the 2011/2012 academic year. The research subjects on this research were the English teacher and the students in class 8A at SMPN 3 Kencong Jember in the 2011/2012 academic year. There were 33 students in class 8A which were considered as high achiever students. The primary data of this research were collected from conducting observation, analyzing documents and administering questionnaire. The collected data from observation and documentation were to know the kinds of feedback used the English teacher in teaching writing. Meanwhile, the collected data from questionnaire were to know the response of the students toward the teacher’s feedback given. Based on the observation conducted for three meetings, all feedback given by the teacher was in the form of individual conference feedback in which 52.9% were given in the first meeting and 47.1% were given in the third meeting to each student. For the second meeting, there was no individual conference feedback but there was only a class discussion dealing with the topic. Meanwhile, dealing with teacher’s written feedback on the students’ sheet, the calculation showed that 59.94% direct feedback was used by the teacher to correct the students’ work which the details were 30.35% feedback on grammar, 15.48% feedback on vocabulary and 14.11% feedback on mechanics. Meanwhile, 38.39% indirect feedback by using underline (non-coded feedback) was given by the teacher and the specification of it was 26.10% feedback on grammar, 6.83% feedback on vocabulary and 5.46% feedback on mechanics. Besides, the total number of teacher’s written comment was 1.67% in which 0.91% feedback was given on grammar and 0.76% feedback was given on content. From the data above, it indicated that the teacher used direct correction more than challenged the students to correct their mistakes by themselves. In addition, the students’ attitude toward the teacher’s feedback was on the level of positive attitude in which based on Likert Summated Rating, the score of the students’ questionnaire was 2048. This score was on the level > 1650 up to < 2145 (> Q2 up to < Q3) in which the category was positive. It means that the students thought that teacher’s feedback was useful to help them to be better writers or the students could understand the feedback given by the teacher.