A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature ISSN 1412-3320 (Print), ISSN 2502-4914(Online) Vol. 16 No. 1; July 2016 Copyright © Soegijapranata Catholic University, Indonesia LOOKING INTO EFL STUDENTS’ TYPE OF FEEDBACKS ON PEER CORRECTION ACTIVITIES Yunisrina Qismullah Yusuf, Tengku Maya Silviyanti, and Rita Tauhidah Department of English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University of Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia Tel +62 82272620820 Email: yunisrina@gmail.com tgk_maya@yahoo.com rita.ahgx@gmail.com Received: 10-12-2015 Accepted: 14-07-2016 Published: 31-07-2016 67 LOOKING INTO EFL STUDENTS’ TYPE OF FEEDBACKS ON PEER CORRECTION ACTIVITIES Yunisrina Qismullah Yusuf, Tengku Maya Silviyanti and Rita Tauhidah yunisrina.q.yusuf@unsyiah.ac.id,tgk_maya@yahoo.com, rita.ahgx@gmail.com Department of English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University of Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia Abstract: This research studies the types of feedbacks made by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in a writing class. The aim of this research is to understand the needs of the students on peer correction activities in teaching writing. A number of 25 student essays were collected and analysed. The data were categorized into two types of feedbacks: responding and correcting. The results revealed that a number of 61 responding feedbacks were found in the types of support, sharing knowledge, negotiation, appreciation and criticism. Meanwhile, 142 correcting feedbacks were found in the types of coded, uncoded, a combination of coded and uncoded and direct answer. The type most used in responding feedback was support, which indicates that it is an important pursuit in these students‟ learning to drive each other into improving their writing skills with confidence. Whilst the least used was criticism, and this indicates that it was not considerably favoured to be given in the peer correction feedbacks since they restrain encouragement and cause social anxiety. The type most used in correcting feedbacks was a combination of coded and uncoded. This signifies that to provide both mark and symbol on an error can avoid confusion between the student corrector and the student writer. The least used was direct answer, which signified that it was only done by students who had high English proficiency and confidence to provide the correct answer directly on the errors. These findings suggest that students need and prefer to be given much support by their teachers in providing feedbacks towards their writing errors to reinforce their writing proficiency and confidence. 68 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 Key words: EFL Students, Feedbacks, Writing Abstrak: Penelitian ini adalah tentang jenis feedback (umpan balik) yang dilakukan oleh siswa Bahasa Inggris pada kelas Writing. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kebutuhan siswa terhadap aktifitas koreksi antar siswa. Sejumlah 25 essai siswa diperiksa dan di analisa. Data yang di dapat di kelompokan menjadi dua kategori feedback yaitu: responding (tanggapan) and correcting (perbaikan). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ada 61 feedback yang diberikan siswa termasuk kedalam kategori responding feedback. Rincian feedback ini terdiri dari support (dukungan), sharing knowledge (membagi pengetahuan), negotiation (negosiasi makna), appreciation (penghargaan), dan critism (kritik). Sedangkan untuk kategori correcting feedback, ada 142 feedback yang diidentifikasi. Feedback untuk jenis ini adalah coded (ditandai/diberi kode), uncoded (tidak ditandai/diberi kode), gabungan antara coded dan uncoded, dan direct answer (jawaban langsung). Dalam responding feedback, tipe umpan balik yang paling banyak digunakan siswa adalah support. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa sangat penting memberikan dukungan terhadap siswa di kelas untuk meningkatkan kemampuan menulis mereka. Sedangkan tipe yang paling sedikit digunakan adalah critism. Hal ini menandakan bahwa kritik sangat tidak diharapkan karena kritik bisa menurunkan semangat belajar mereka. Sedangkan dalam correcting feedback, tipe yang paling banyak digunakan adalah gabungan coded dan uncoded. Hasil temuan ini menekankan bahwa koreksi dengan simbol dan tanda bisa menghindari siswa dari kebingungan antara apa yang dikoreksi oleh siswa lain terhadap tulisannya dan apa dia telah tulis. Sedangkan tipe yang paling sedikit digunakan dalam correcting feedback adalah direct answer atau jawaban langsung. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa hanya siswa dengan kemampuan Bahasa Inggris yang bagus yang mampu melakukan koreksi jenis ini. Akhirnya, hasil penelitian ini menyarankan bahwa siswa perlu dukungan dan bantuan dari siswa lain dan juga guru untuk meningkatkan kemampuannya dalam menulis. Kata kunci: siswa bahasa Inggris, umpan balik, menulis INTRODUCTION Every student studying a language as their major for a degree in the university has the responsibility to master writing skills. In this case, they Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 69 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities have to know how to draft and revise, write structurally, and understand all the components of writing to later implement them in their future career which may require these skills. Teachers, too, seek and implement various methods and techniques to assist their students in improving their writing skills. Among the techniques used by lecturers to enhance these skills is the peer correction technique. Peer correction is a technique where students read each other‟s draft composition and provide feedbacks to the writer before the final version is compiled (Bartels, 2003). The feedbacks are to get the students to be aware of their mistakes in their writing compositions. Chen (2009) says that feedbacks from peer is an essential part in writing because it trains students to focus on different stages of writing, raise their awareness of their ability to think about what they are doing, and identify their action to improve their writing. Accordingly, feedbacks are an important aspect in the peer correction process because it is the key to improving the students‟ consciousness in reducing error in writing. Hattie and Timperley (2007) further assert that feedback is information provided by an agent (teacher, peer, book, parent and self- experience) regarding aspects of one‟s performance or understanding. In this case, feedback is organized into several types such as praise, criticism, and suggestion (Hyland & Hyland, 2001), sharing knowledge, negotiation, support, consultation and appreciation (Silviyanti & Yusuf, 2014), and those in the context of directive, expressive, referential, metalinguistic, poetic, and phatic (Ädel, 2006). The feedbacks provide different kinds of responds that can be used to encourage students in writing class. A study by Lee (2009) investigates the written feedback produced by EFL students in an academic writing program in Japan. Their comments were categorized into Hyland and Hyland‟s classification system (2001) of praise, criticism or suggestion. The findings showed that the students employed the highest percentage of suggestion, followed by criticism and lastly praise. The study concludes that praise was least used because the students were not confident on praising their peers “due to lack of experience and knowledge with peer review” (p. 137). This is different from Hyland and Hyland‟s study (2001) that had teacher participants as those providing written feedback to their students. Teachers‟ feedbacks contained more praise, followed by criticism, then suggestion. Thus, these praises were habitually used to construct their criticisms and suggestions in more pleasant 70 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 approaches. As for Iranian EFL learners, they preferred teachers‟ feedbacks to be given to them indirectly (Maghsoudi & Saeedi, 2013). Harmer (2007) further points out two ways of giving feedbacks in writing class, namely responding and correcting. In responding, the feedbacks are given by providing comments. Meanwhile in correcting, it dispenses the correction by marking the error part in the writing without any responds. The studies above reveal that feedbacks are generally given and presented in different ways. Therefore, we were further interested in understanding the implication of peer correction technique towards our EFL students. One of our colleagues has applied this technique in her writing class and found that despite students were found to often make similar errors in their writing, thus, after they were trained to give feedbacks to their peers‟ work, their awareness level was better compared to when they received feedbacks merely from their lecturer. It was also interesting to observe that their confidence increased after this activity was carried out. This was seen by their eagerness in composing their writing during class with more varied topics to be written and submitted to the lecturer. Referring to this circumstance, we were keen to seek the answer to the following research question: What are the type of feedbacks in responding and correcting made by EFL students in conducting peer correction activity? We hope the findings of this research can be beneficial to teachers in understanding the needs of the students on peer correction activities in teaching writing, especially EFL learners. LITERATURE REVIEW The teaching learning process nowadays requires students to become the main character of learning activities to distinguish it with the way of teacher-centred approach and makes student-centred approach more preferred. Therefore, student-centred and self-determining concepts in the modern and democratic pedagogy bring about peer correction as a technique which gives them freedom and autonomy in studying (Lin & Chien, 2009). This activity also brings the students to gain possibilities to read different Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 71 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities formats of thinking and arguing to activate their self-evaluation through reading their peers‟ articles. Applying peer correction and giving feedbacks enable the students to experience their weakness and similar problems in their own writing (Wang, 2009). Andreani (2009, p. 42) further notes the advantage of peer feedbacks is that it helps raise learners‟ awareness in “becoming independent self- editors”. It makes the students feel less intimidated by correcting each other‟s work (Silviyanti & Yusuf, 2014). In the learning and teaching process, feedback from peer also motivates the learners to write for an audience, train them to assess their own writing and creates it with better quality and higher accuracy (Polio, 2001). It also provides the sense of confidence for the learners by the high level potential of responds and interactions among classmates by way of a collaborative and friendly dialogue in which set the two-way feedbacks up and negotiate the thinking between two-sides (Rollinson, 2005). A. Feedbacks on Peer Correction Harmer (2007) says that feedbacks mostly occur when the students explore the writing process on the stage of editing. He also clarifies two ways of giving feedbacks, namely responding and correcting. 1. Responding In order to give the feedbacks, students are required to offer a response to each other‟s works by stating comments. They are demanded to write their ideas to respond the mistakes produced by their friends. Victoria (2001, as cited in Harmer, 2007, p. 150), suggested that the teacher needs to provide students with guidelines or a short list of sentences in order to make sure that the comment given is focused, such as “My immediate reaction to your piece of writing is…, I like the part…, I’m not sure about…, the specific language errors I have notice are…,” etc. Ellis (2009) added this activity as an act of direct feedbacks. He said that by providing the correct form of error correction, it can inform the learners on how to correct their errors with explicit guidance. The responses from this category of feedback can be divided into several types. As mentioned earlier, Hyland and Hyland (2001) divide direct responses in correction into suggestion, criticism and praise. Another study by Silviyanti and Yusuf (2014) has further extended these responses into sharing knowledge and negotiation (Brown, 2001), support (Williams & Jacobs, 2004), consultation (Hedge, 2000) and appreciation (Yau et al., 2003). These 72 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 responses were all found in their research on collaborative activities which occurred in the implementation of class blog in their writing class. Their students were to provide feedbacks on writing posts by the students‟ groups in the class blog, and these types of responses were found, respectively, in the comment threads. They have aid each student to become more aware of their limitations in writing and further make progress in future writing tasks. 2. Correcting In the correcting process, the students are required to correct each other‟s work by marking the errors in their peers‟ articles. Ellis (2009) clarifies this activity as an act of indirect feedbacks. He said that the students do not receive any direct response of the correct form. Yet, they only indicate the errors by marks and symbols. In view of that, indirect feedbacks are divided into coded and uncoded (Ferris, 2003). Coded is the feedbacks in which the teacher specifies the errors by providing coding scheme, such as tenses, noun endings, etc. (Hong, 2004), whilst uncoded is the feedback that indicates errors by underlining or circling. Harmer (2007) has further develops some symbols which are commonly used to mark the errors. They are defined as follows: Table 1: Correction Symbols (taken from Harmer, 2007, p. 149) No. Symbol Meaning Example Error 1 S A spelling error The asnwer is obvious 2 WO A mistake in word order I like very much it 3 G A grammar mistake I’m going to buy some funitures 4 T Wrong verb tense I have seen him yesterday 5 C Concord mistake (e.g the subject and the verb agreement) People is angry 6 ʎ Something has been left out He told ʎ that he was sorry 7 WW Wrong word I’m interested on jazz music 8 { } Something is not necessary He was not {too} strong enough 9 ?M The meaning is unclear That is a very excited photograph 10 P A punctuation mistake Do you like london. 11 F/I Too formal or informal Hi Mr. Franklin thank you for your letter… Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 73 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities The symbols provided by Harmer (2007) may vary according to the teacher who utilizes them in her writing class. They may be added or modified in which the teacher may introduce other appropriate symbols to be used by the students when they are trained to correct their peers‟ error in writing. B. The Advantages of Peer Correction Peer correction technique has several advantages to increase students writing proficiency. First, it is believed to increase students‟ communicative competence by encouraging the students to express and negotiate their ideas with other learners (Tsai & Lin, 2012). By exchanging papers, each student has an opportunity to communicate by reviewing their peer‟s writing. In this stage, the students who are inactive in the class are also encouraged to provide their opinion and evaluation on the text being corrected. Furthermore, the students who participate in the peer correction activity has been found to experience a more comfortable, confident, and inspiring learning environment (Lin & Chien, 2009). Supported by the first benefit mentioned above, the communication between students in reviewing each other‟s writing make them more contented rather than being reviewed by the teacher. The interaction between peers brings about the flexibility in the learning process. It drives them to become more confident in giving their ideas about errors in writing. This activity also inspires the learners to learn more and compose a better writing (Rollinson, 2005). By receiving feedbacks from their peers, the students can gather ideas to enrich their knowledge in composing a good writing. Peer correction can also make the students aware of their own mistakes. Involving them in an activity to correct the error in their peers‟ essays can assist them in thinking critically. They are able to indicate their own errors; such the correct use the sounds, syntax, and grammar of a written language (linguistic competence). The students can improve their linguistic competence in English writing from peer correction activities (Hong, 2004). In short, the implementation of peer correction offers benefits to the students. It helps them share knowledge with their friends on the mistakes and errors produced. Furthermore, involving them in this activity can elevate their analytical assessment to affirm their own mistakes and develop their ability to write better. 74 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 C. The Disadvantages of Peer Correction Peer correction technique also bears disadvantages to both teachers and students. Teachers, most of the time, are uncertain on the quality of corrections provided by the students to their peer‟s writing. This, too, applies to the students. Tsai and Lin (2012) said that low achievement or proficiency of the learners typically correct their friend‟s work falsely. In this case, when they review their peer‟s work and take the role of giving comments or corrections, they tend to give unrelated comment and wrong correction. It brings about the discrepancy between the writer and the corrector. It is common that some learners usually depend more on teachers for corrections and feel uneasy conducting peer correction activity (Sultana, 2009). On the other hand, the responding and correcting given by students may also lack of honesty because of fear for affecting their peers‟ final score (Lin & Chien, 2009). In order to balance the imperfection of the peer correction activity, Lin and Chien (2009) suggested that teachers should instruct the students to express all their ideas honestly on their peers‟ writing before peer correction activity starts. Lin and Chien further said that teachers should also assure the students that their final score would not be affected because of the negative comments they may give. Besides, Sultana (2009) also offered that the teacher should train the students to give the correct feedbacks by observing and reviewing the students‟ work in applying peer correction technique. She also recommends teachers to create a flexible class environment to make the students comfortable in conducting the peer correction activity. METHOD This research was conducted at the Study Program of English Education at Syiah Kuala University Banda Aceh. The data was from writing tasks or essays of students who were in the fifth semester and undertaking the course Argumentative Writing. The lecturer of this course had implemented and trained the students with peer correction activity in class. These students were informed on the way peer correction works before the activity started, i.e. what to comments, how to start comments, and the use of the coding scheme prepared by the lecturer (hereafter coded as YND in this paper). Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 75 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities A number of 25 essays (within 360-500 words each) with the topic “Places for Vacation” were collected from YND. Each of these essays were coded as S1 (referring to Student 1) to S25 (referring to Student 25). Prior to this collection, the lecturer had taught the students on the stages of writing process in five meetings. Afterwards, they were each to write an essay based on these subsequent tasks: (1) choosing a topic, (2) composing the first draft, (3) conducting peer correction activity and (4) writing up the final version of their essays. These tasks were done in the next three successive class meetings. The draft of essays we collected and made copies were those from task 3, in which the peer correction activity was performed. Each student was given an essay (a task given in the previous meeting) of their peer to provide both responding and correcting feedbacks during the class time of 90 minutes. They were to remain anonymous to the writers and only known by YND as the teacher noted down this information on paper before passing out the essays for peer correction. Just as the class ended, the corrected essays were submitted back to YND. These essays were returned to the writers to be revised in the next class meeting. Upon data collection, we further categorized and coded the feedbacks found in the essays into responding and correcting feedbacks. The types of responding feedbacks we looked were extended to those framed by Silviyanti and Yusuf (2014), namely support, sharing knowledge, negotiation, appreciation and consultation. The codes provided for each type of feedbacks in the analysis were SP for support, SK for sharing knowledge, N for negotiation, A for appreciation and CO for consultation. The correcting feedbacks we analysed were in the types of coded and uncoded feedbacks (Ferris, 2003)). The codes provided for each of this type of feedback in the analysis is C for coded and U for uncoded. These types were chosen because YND used a coding scheme for her students to use which were adapted and modified by that proposed by Harmer (2007). Table 2 shows the coding scheme provided by YND. Table 2: Coding Scheme by YND No. Symbol Meaning 1 WW Wrong Word 2 WO Word Order 3 UM Unclear Meaning 4 GE Grammar Error 5 Sp Spelling 76 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 6 UW Unnecessary Word 7 R Repetition 8 US Unfinish Sentence 9 Cp Capitalization 10 P Punctuation After coding our data for types of feedback in the category of responding and correcting, we calculated the number of occurrences for each type to understand the most and the least used schemes by the students in carrying out the peer correction activity. Subsequently, we discuss the implication of this technique for the students. RESULT A. Responding Feedbacks In the category of responding feedbacks, we found a number of 61 feedbacks in the types of support, sharing knowledge, negotiation, and appreciation. Consultation type was not found in the peer correction on the essays. However, the type of criticism feedback (Hyland & Hyland, 2001) was additionally found in the students‟ feedbacks and this was not found in the responses constructed by Silviyanti and Yusuf (2014) (see Method section). In the data, this type of feedback was coded as CR. Table 3 presents the types of responding feedbacks found in the peer correction activity and its number of occurrences from the collected essays. Table 3: Types of Responding Feedbacks No. Types of Responding Feedbacks Frequency Percentage (rounded) 1. Support (SP) 28 45.9% 2. Sharing knowledge (SK) 12 19.7% 3. Negotiation (N) 9 14.8% 4. Appreciation (A) 7 11.5% 6. Criticism (CR) 5 8.2% 5. Consultation (CO) 0 0 Total Feedbacks 61 100% Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 77 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities Table 3 shows that the most common type of feedback in this category was support with 28 occurrences (45.9%), followed by sharing knowledge with 12 occurrences (19.7%), negotiation with 9 occurrences (14.8%), appreciation with 7 occurrences (11.5%) and the least was criticism with 5 occurrences (8.2%). The type of consultation feedback was not found. Thus, we find this plausible due to the fact that the type of peer correction conducted in this study is different from Silviyanti and Yusuf (2014). In their study, the students could provide feedbacks interchangeably through the comment threads for every essay post in the class blog since blog is an asynchronous online platform. This study, on the other hand, had peer correction activity conducted directly on the essay paper of each student with one corrector for each essay, or in other words, it was done synchronously. The following sections explain and discuss the five types of responding feedbacks found in this study which will be described from the most occurrences to the least. 1. Support The most used feedback in the category of responding feedbacks by the students was support. A number of 28 occurrences (45.9%) were found in the data. For this type, the students gave comments to their peers‟ essays with encouragement along with some ideas for improvement. The kind of responses for this type of feedbacks can be seen in the following examples. These examples contain grammatical errors because they are directly taken from the students‟ writing, and we keep them as they are to show authenticity of the feedbacks. SP1 “The essay on the whole is interesting. You made some types of mistake. Maybe it is not a big deal mistake but you must careful in writing.” (S1) SP2 “So far your writing is good. Your writing really can make young people want to visit Seoul. But, maybe you must give your attention on your grammar in your essay and I got confused with the refer in your subject…” (S2) SP3 “This essay is very interesting and informative. I like to read it. It gives me much information about Jogya‟s art and culture, also Jogya‟s people respect to their culture history and culture grow. However, you should increase your writing skill in term 78 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 of grammar error and punctuation. Overall, it is very good, completely coherence and unity.” (S5) SP4 “I like your sentence. But, you should add topic sentence and clear the supporting ideas.” (S8) SP5 “It‟s very amazing story. I really interested. However, there are some punctuation error and difficult to understand. You are bad at punctuation, but at least you have tried. So, try again and be good at it ” (S13) From the examples in SP1to SP5, confidence-boosting words directed to the writers of the essays are found. Words and phrases such as ‘good’, ‘really make us want to’, ‘interesting and informative’, ‘amazing’ and even providing the symbol of a smiley face (i.e. ) are extended by the correctors to uplift the writers before the correctors proceed with their comments for corrections. Despite mistakes were found, the type of support feedbacks also reassure the writers to accept their mistakes without feeling dejected. Words such as ‘not a big deal’, ‘at least you have tried’ and ‘try again’ are among the supportive words to comfort the writers and further reassure them that their mistakes can be mended in the future. For this type of feedbacks, the students mostly support their friends‟ work rather than focusing too much on the errors in detail in the essays. 2. Sharing Knowledge The next type of feedback used by the students is sharing knowledge with 12 occurrences (19.7%). In this feedback, the students provided comments by stating their opinion about the text, whether it is good or not, then followed by their reason and opinion. The following examples are some feedbacks which comprise sharing knowledge. SK1 “The things that I like from this essay is the place is interesting and attract many people to go there, but there are just a little things that you offer to the reader about Seoul. It‟s only for shopping and extraordinary experience. You must add some place, weather, climate, popular famous singer bands and actors, etc.” (S2) SK2 “I got your point, but in my opinion, I think you should pay attention to your grammar, punctuation, and choose Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 79 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities appropriate words because sometimes it is hard to understand. I have to re-read for more than five times.” (S3) SK3 “This essay has the interesting topic to persuade the reader. However, there are some grammatical error on each point of the paragraphs. Also, there are unnecessary word in that essay. You have to add the words that can add the interesting for the reader.” (S3) SK4 “This essay is nice but need more development. You can add some places in San Francisco that can attract more people to go there like Golden Bridge and many more not just have a tea time and sunbathing that can we find in another place even in our country.” (S4) SK5 “…I think it will be good to add detail about Super Classico. If you want to share about why Bueno Aries as Best City for Football Maniac, I suggest you to add why it becomes best city for football maniac, such as (maybe) the stadion, fans united….” (S7) From the examples in SK1 to SK5, sharing knowledge is done by the students by communicating their concern on the content and organization of the texts which were deemed unsatisfactory and further impart their understanding on the topic for further improvement. For instance, S7 in SK5 shared his knowledge on football in which he suggested to the writer to add more reasons on why Buenos Aries is a great city for football enthusiasts. Overall, the students recommended several ideas proceeded with specific reasons for the writers to revise their texts and make them more interesting and easier to read. 3. Negotiation After support and sharing knowledge, negotiation had 9 occurrences (14.8%). In this type of responding feedback, the students reviewed their peers‟ essays by exchanging ideas to be included in the writing. Options to be negotiated were provided in order to suggest ideas or propose the correct form of the errors found in the essays. The examples for the type of negotiation feedback are as bellow. N1 “Is it „Boca junior or Boca Junior‟?” (S7) 80 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 N2 “I think you should change your title and target reader because your title is “Buenos Aries as Best City for Football Maniac”, but you often/always mention Boca Junior, Boca Junior and Boca Junior. Maybe, you can change the title and target reader to be more specific for Argentina‟s fans or Boca Junior‟s fans…What do you think?” (S7) N3 “…In my opinion it is better to put the word of “for” than “in”. I also recommend you to put an adjective word before “place” because it can persuade readers to go there and readers also know what that place looks like. For example, “must be smart to choose a best place to…” or “must be smart to choose a great place to…” The last is I think you have to pay attention to the spelling. You have a miss type in the third paragraph. It should be “expensive”, not “expansive”. I suggest you to revise your title become more interesting.” (S9) N4 “…In this text, you just write the point. It is better for you to write the reasons why the place is good, right?” (S20) N5 “1st paragraph, 1st line: “who have a passion on sea” (wrong word on the „a‟ and „on‟). Better to change it with “who have passion for the sea” to make your writing better. (S24) In this type of negotiation feedback, the students mostly negotiated on ideas and the appropriate word choices to be used in the texts. For examples, in NI, S7 confirmed the correct spelling by providing his option in the form of a question (i.e. ‘Is it ‘Boca junior or Boca Junior’’). In N2, he further dealt with the topic of the writer in which he thought should be changed. He provided several causes for his idea for the writer to consider. Then in N3, S9 negotiated with the writer on the use of some words, such as changing the word ‘best’ and ‘great’ to make the sentence more convincing. Therefore, in this type, most of the comments were established in questions, suggestions and persuasions to negotiate. 4. Appreciation The type of appreciation feedbacks had the least occurrences in the data, which were 5 (11.5%). They were in the form of comments which appreciated or praise (Hyland & Hyland, 2001) the writers on their essays. This finding is in line with Lee (2009), who learned that EFL students used praise as the least employed feedback in peer correction activity. It was Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 81 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities assumed that this was perhaps due to their insufficient practice and knowledge in conducting this activity. The examples from data are as follows: A1 “The essay is explained systematically. Started from the name of university in Melbourne and ended by situation in Melbourne. It is really good organization idea… you are very fantastic!” (S9) A2 “I like about your amazing story. I really want to visit it…” (S10) A3 “Interesting article. The way you write introductory paragraph is very good. It is systematically. You start from general until specific…” (S11) A4 “Wonderful and beautiful text. Keep Going!!” (S13) A5 “The text is wonderful, makes the readers interested.” (S24) In the appreciative feedbacks, students provide positive responses to their friends‟ writing in the form of admiration. These are done by S9 and S10 who used the word ‘fantastic’ and ‘amazing’ in A1 and A2 to compliment the writer, and S13 who praised with ‘wonderful and beautiful’ in A4 to congratulate the writer. They commonly praise the writers on their well thought ideas, organization and informative contents of the essays. 5. Criticism This type of feedback had the least occurrences in the data, which were 5 (8.2%). The responses in this feedback were given directly to the writers to point out the incorrect expression in the text (Hyland & Hyland, 2001) and without any preceding words of support even in the next following sentences. It is different to the type of support feedback described earlier, in which after the students mention the errors, they are followed with words of encouragement, such as in SP5 by S13: ‘You are bad at punctuation, but at least you have tried. So, try again and be good at it ’. Criticisms were given quite straight forward. The examples for this type of feedbacks can be seen below. CR1 “The topic sentence is not clear and not related to the supporting ideas, so many repetitions.” (S1) 82 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 CR2 “There are more than one main idea in one paragraph.” (S1) CR3 “Paragraph 4 (in my opinion) is not related to the title.” (S7) CR4 “…your title is too general, because in your paragraph you explain about handicraft in Yogyakarta.” (S11) CR5 “Your writing is as descriptive rather than opinion paragraph.” (S13) From the examples in data, we can see that the students directly criticize the errors made by their peers and most of these criticisms were related to the organization and unity of the essay. To voice their criticism, words such as ‘not clear’, ‘not related’ and those in the form of comparison (i.e. ‘your writing is as descriptive rather than opinion paragraph’ in CR5 by S13) were used to disapprove the writers. No other words of support or encouragement followed the criticism for the writers. B. Correcting Feedbacks In the category of correcting feedbacks, a number of 142 feedbacks were found. They were classified into the types of coded and uncoded. Thus, additional types of a combination of coded and uncoded and direct answer were further discovered in the data. The type of direct answer is the feedbacks of correct answers to errors written directly in the text without putting any marks or symbols. Table 4 present the types of correcting feedbacks found in the peer correction activity and its number of occurrences from the data. Table 4: Types of Correcting Feedbacks No. Types of Correcting Feedbacks Frequency Percentage (rounded) 1. A combination of coded and uncoded (CU) 100 70.4% 2. Uncoded (U) 26 18.3% 3. Coded (C) 9 6.3% 4. Direct answer (DA) 7 4.9% Total Feedbacks 142 From Table 4, the most common type of feedback in this category was a combination of coded and uncoded with 100 occurrences (70.4%), followed by Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 83 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities uncoded with 26 occurrences (18.3%), coded with 9 occurrences (6.3%), and the least was direct answer with 7 occurrences (4.9%). The discussion on each of this type of correcting feedbacks is explained below. 1. A Combination of Coded and Uncoded This type of feedback is the most common type of correcting feedbacks used by the students at 100 occurrences (70.4%). It employs both coded and uncoded feedbacks to check the errors. Some examples from the type of a combination of coded and uncoded feedbacks are as follows. As previously mentioned, these examples contain grammatical errors because they are directly taken from the students‟ writing and they are kept as they are to illustrate authenticity of the feedbacks. GE CU1 “…a traditional ship that make honeymooners feeling incomplete…” (S1) WW CU2 “Breathing fresh air and spoiling your eyes with romantic few.” (S1) Sp CU3 “... a beautiful setting of builing architecture.” (S1) WW CU4 “…different attractions that is very interesting…” (S2) WW GE CU5 “… is located in the Aceh, it has many island with natural scenery UM P and surving,.” (S3) From the examples, it shows that the students marked the errors by either circling or underlining the error (i.e. uncoded) and further provide a symbol above it to indicate its error (i.e. coded). In the data, the errors the students checked for were on tenses, words choice, punctuation, unnecessary words, unclear meaning, spelling, capitalization, and repetition. 2. Uncoded The next type of correcting feedback used was uncoded, with 26 occurrences (18.3%). In this type, the students marked the errors by circling, underlining or lining the incorrect forms. Some of the examples from data are as below U1 “…who want to have enjoy…” (S3) 84 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 U2 “… provides beautiful scenery you will find a view…” (S3) U3 “…is good for surfers, simeulue island is paradise.” (S3) U4 “…which contain so many thing related to…” (S8) U5 “…not only korean, but…” (S10) From the examples in U1 to U5, we observed that for this type of feedback, the students focused on the errors in grammar, subject verb agreement, punctuation and word choice. 3. Coded Coded feedback did not occur much in the data. Only 9 occurrences (6.3%) appeared out of 147 correcting feedbacks. In this type, the students were asked to correct their friends‟ work by marking the errors with several symbols provided by YND (see Table 2). Some examples of the students‟ work can be seen in the following examples: GE C1 “…, there are a lot of Korean cosmetics brand like Etude House...” (S2) GE C2 “…because the price is more cheaper than…” (S2) UM C3 “…usually offer buy one get one and given a free bonus.” (S2) P P C4 “the clean sea, and the Busung beach there are some…” (S3) GE C5 “There are many interesting place inside that building.” (S14) Similar to the type of uncoded feedback, most feedbacks for this type were to indicate errors in the areas of grammar, subject verb agreement, punctuation and word choice. 4. Direct Answer We further found another type of feedback in the category of responding feedbacks that was not initially in the framework of this study, direct answer. In this type, the students provided the correct form of the errors directly in the essays. The examples from data were only from two students, and are as below. Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 85 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities is DA1 “Istanbul the exquisite charm...” (S21) are DA2 “ There some places…” (S21) in DA3 “If you are this region..” (S21) was DA4 “…Hagia Sophia a church community…” (S21) is DA5 “Popular food in Istanbul so delicious,..” (S22) Direct answer had the least occurrences among the other types of correcting feedback (only 7 with 4.9%) and was only done by two students. We discovered from YND that they had the highest writing scores in class, and for that reason we assume that they had the ability and confidence to directly provide the correct answer for the errors in the essay. DISCUSSION Tsui and Ng (2000) say that the results of comparative studies between peer and teacher correction is found to be neither superior. Teacher comments are more favoured by students since peer correction is doubted for accuracy and quality, thus both do not especially aid students in improving their revisions (Chaudron, 1984). This study has further shown that for the responding feedback, the students made comments under the type of support as the most used ones and the criticism as the least used ones. In view of that, what can be inferred from this finding? We come to an assumption that by knowing this fact, therefore teachers, too, should be supportive in giving feedback to their students in indicating their writing errors. Perhaps the use of supportive comments from these EFL students illustrate that this was the type of feedback that can accommodate their needs in learning writing. In the students‟ response, they considered their peers‟ feeling while stating their comment and support them to reduce their errors (see example SP2). It is essential to provide a sufficient reassuring teaching environment because to learn a foreign language, especially in the skill of writing, is not as easy as flipping a coin. They require support to convince them that learning to write competently in English is possible. Support and appreciation or praise can 86 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 strengthen their language performance and promote their confidence (Hyland & Hyland, 2001), thus, without overexerting it to avoid students from being indolent in improving their writing skills in the future. Criticism as the least used feedback has us further speculative that this type of response was disfavoured by the students. The criticism meant here were responses written out directly to point out the writer‟s mistakes (see example CR1) without any commentary of improvement (see example SP4). Out of 147 correcting feedbacks found, only 5 were classified as criticism and this number is almost insignificant in the data. This finding contradicts with the results discovered by Lee (2009), in which comments of criticism was provided three times more than praise by the students in Japan (where English is also treated as a foreign language such as in Indonesia). We further presume that this is also related to the culture and belief of these Acehnese students. In Aceh, to sharply criticize someone directly is considered an ill- mannered attitude. Even those who go into conflict due to criticizing each other sharply are resolved by the society through a traditional ceremony called peusijuek (refer to the work by Yusuf & Yusuf, 2014). Therefore, criticizing in Acehnese is done indirectly to avoid social anxiety, such as approaching someone initially with positive comments before criticizing without hurting his or her feelings. Even the criticism in the support feedback was done positively with the use of delicate words (see example SP5). This culture is reflected in the way the students provided responses in the responding feedbacks, with support as its most used type of feedback. In the category of corrective feedback, the type of a combination of coded and uncoded was mostly used by the students. This implies that they prefer this type of feedback to avoid confusion from the writer. Therefore, after marking the errors, the students would further code them to make it clear to the writer of their correction. The least used type of correction is direct answer and this was also specifically done by two students, who were claimed by YND to have the highest writing scores in the class. This signifies that direct answer was only done by those who have high confidence in their writing skill since they are certain of the correction, and therefore they are assertive to provide the correct answer directly in the essay. Considering the result of the implementation of peer correction which provided some crucial information, the writer also discovered similarities with Tsai and Lin (2012) in the drawback of peer correction activity. They mentioned that learners with low achievement or low proficiency cannot correct their friend‟s work appropriately. Nevertheless, this study also Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 87 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities ascertained a similar problem where students missed correcting some errors in their peers‟ essays. The examples can be found in CU1-CU2 where there were still errors that the students did not correct due to their low proficiency of English. From 61 responding feedbacks, 27 (44.3%) were incorrectly given. Furthermore, from 147 correcting feedbacks, 14 (9.5%) of them were mistakes or included the wrong feedback. It can be reckoned that to provide responding feedbacks are more difficult than correcting feedbacks because responding requires short compositions to comment on the errors, whilst correcting simply entails merely codes and symbols. Apparently, the students who have low proficiency in writing were those who tended to give more incorrect feedbacks. For instance: WW “It has a lot of place to experience something new…..” (S8) In that sentence the student marked the word ‘has’ as the wrong word choice, yet, it could be seen that it is correct and the grammatical error is actually found in the word ‘place’ in which it should be ‘places’. Furthermore, students who have lower achievement gave comments which contained general knowledge about writing. Such as: “I love your essay honestly, because this is first times I know about that place. It is so interesting information. But, your essay is very short, so you have to add information more about that place to make reader want to visit there.” (S16) Respondent S16 only commented on the length of the essay and no comments were specifically made about the content, organization and grammar of the essay. However, for students who had better proficiency in writing, they responded the essay with detailed information and suggested the correct form of the error. For example: “1st paragraph, 1st line: “who have a passion on sea” (wrong word on the „a‟ and „on‟). Better to change it with “who have passion for the sea.” (S24) Therefore, it was common that these students who conducted peer correction activity also made errors in their own comments. This is another setback of peer correction activity found in this study. The fact that each student could only review one paper; it reduced their chances to consult their ideas and corrections with other students. 88 Celt, Volume 16, Number 1, July 2016, pp. 67-90 CONCLUSION This study reveals that the type of feedback in the category of responding that the EFL students used most in peer correction was support. This indicates that support is an important pursuit in these students‟ learning to drive each other into improving their writing skills. Whilst the least used was criticismindicatingf that it was not considerably favoured to be given in the peer correction feedback since they restrain conflict and can cause social anxiety. These findings suggest to teachers that students need and prefer to be given much support in providing feedbacks towards their writing errors to reinforce their writing proficiency and confidence. Furthermore, the type most used in correcting feedbacks was a combination of coded and uncoded. This illustrates that to provide both mark and symbol on an error can avoid confusion between the student conducting peer correction and the writer of the essay. The least used was direct answer, which signified that it was only done by students who had high English proficiency and confidence to provide the correct answer directly on the errors in the essay. This study also has several limitations. First, the essays and the feedback were both written in black ink. In a few essays, it was difficult for us to distinguish the writing of the student writer and the student corrector. Therefore, for future research we recommend that teachers should beforehand instruct student correctors to use coloured pens to write their responses and corrections. Second, the implementation of peer correction itself also allowed only one student to correct one essay and this generated a lack of communication between the writer and corrector and also between the corrector and other correctors. This caused students with low English proficiency to provide wrong corrections. Therefore, it is suggested that a research on peer correction activity conducted in groups be done in the future so that more sharing knowledge among the students in writing can be accomplished. Finally, to additionally broaden our understanding in the implication of EFL students‟ feedbacks in peer correction activities, it is suggested that future research employ the instrument of interview with the students to extract in-depth information on their perspectives, preferences and needs on this activity to further verify the findings of this study. Yusuf, Y.Q., Silviyanti, T.M., & Tauhidah, R.,Looking into EFL Students‟ 89 Type of Feedbacks on Peer Correction Activities REFERENCES Ädel, A. (2006). Metadiscourse in L1 and L2 English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Andreani, W. (2009). A Comparison between Peer and Teacher Feedback on Learners‟ Language Accuracy: A Case Study. 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Kemanusiaan: The Asian Journal of Humanities, 21 (2), 21–53. 4 -- SEP2016 Yusuf.Silviyanti & Tauhidah 0 -- cover Jul 2016 0 -- p. i Jul 2016 hal editor 0 -- p. ii Jul 2016 daftar isi p. i 1 -- pp 1-21 Sukarno Celt 2016 2 -- pp 22-48 Pasaribu-Kadarisman Celt jul 2016- pp 17-44 3 -- pp 49-66 Prastikawati-Wiyaka-Sodiq Celt jul 2016 4 -- pp 67-90 Yusuf-Silviyanti-Tauhidah Celt jul 2016 5 -- pp 91-117 Jubhari-Bazergan-Mokoginta-Sitoto-Syarif-Iswari Celt Jul 2016 pp.88-115 6 -- pp 118-132 Maru Celt Jul 2016 7 -- pp 133-144 Murniati-Riyandari Celt 2016 8 -- pp 145 - 148 Celt thanks to reviewers Cover-belakang Untitled