31 

 EEJ 4 (1) (2014) 
  

English Education Journal 
  

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej 

 

 

PEER AND TEACHER’S EDITING TO ENHANCE THE COMPETENCE OF ACTIVE AND 

PASSIVE LEARNERS IN WRITING DISCUSSION TEXTS  

 

Upik Hastuti   

 

Prodi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia 

 

Info Artikel 
________________ 
Sejarah Artikel: 

Diterima Oktober 2014 

Disetujui Oktober 2014 

Dipublikasikan 

Juni 2014 

________________ 
Keywords: 

peer editing, teacher’s 

editing, writing skill, 

discussion text, active 

learners 

____________________ 

Abstract
 

___________________________________________________________________ 
Writing is one of the important parts in teaching a language. The objectives of this study are to 

find out the significant difference between peer and teacher’s editing in teaching writing 

discussion texts to active learners, to passive learners, the more effective strategy between peer 

and teacher’s editing in teaching writing discussion texts among active and passive learners, the 

significant interaction among students’ condition, teaching strategies and writing skill.This study 

is a quasi experimental research and the design is factorial. In collecting the data, the paired 

sample t-test and Factorial Analysis of Variance were used to test the hypothesis. The qualitative 

data were taken from the questionnaires and observation deal with the active and passive 

learners.The findings showed that there is significant difference between peer and teacher’s 

editing in teaching writing discussion texts to active learners and so for passive learners,  and 

there is no significant interaction among teaching strategies, students’ condition and writing 

achievement of discussioon tetxs. In conclusion, peer editing strategy is more effective than 

teacher’s editing strategy. So, peer and teacher’s editing among active and passive learners is 

significantly effective to enhance students’ writing skill of discussion texts. 

 

© 2014 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Alamat korespondensi:  

   Kampus Unnes Bendan Ngisor, Semarang, 50233 

   E-mail: pps@unnes.ac.id 

ISSN 2087-0108  

 



 

Upik Hastuti / English Education Journal 4 (1) (2014) 

 

32 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

Recently English has a great role as a means 

of communication in the world. The ASEAN 

economics globalization will affect the senior high 

school leavers since their future competitor is not 

only from domestic but also from the ASEAN 

countries. Considering the importance of English, 

people from various non-English speech countries, 

including Indonesia, learn English either as a 

second or foreign language. Writing skill is one of 

the language skills that must be mastered by the 

senior high school students. Related to the 

implementation of KTSP curriculum, the English 

teacher tries to facilitate the students’ writing skill.  

Mangelsdorf  (1992) states that “peer 

reviews achieve the following: provide students 

with an authentic audience; increase  students’ 

motivation for writing; enable students to receive 

different views on their writing; help students 

learn to read critically their own writing; and 

assist students in gaining confidence in their 

writing”. It means that the peer review strategy in 

teaching and learning writing encourage the 

learners to interact orally and written more to 

their peer and to communicate their works so that 

they can find out their self esteem and self 

confidence.  

Al – Nafiseh (2013) examines the 

collaborative writing and peer editing techniques 

enhanced in-class interaction and improved 

students’ writings by raising their awareness on a 

text writer's choices. This research is an extension 

of Mangelsdorf’s study where no collaborative 

writing was involved. Peer-editing was applied to 

students’ writings, which were repeated several 

times. The study found these techniques enhanced 

in-class interaction and improved students’ 

writings by raising their awareness on a text 

writer's choices.  Based on his study the writer  

believes that peer editing strategy in teaching 

writing can be a worthy strategy in enhancing 

students’ writing skill, in this term is discussion 

texts. It can be said that peer editing not only 

enhance the quality of writing, but also it 

encourage the student to be more motivated to 

empower themselves.  

The beneficial impact and effectiveness of 

peer editing have been substantiated by a number 

of empirical studies; for example, Min (2006), Tsui 

& Maria (2000). Peer feedback can be seen as 

complementary to teacher feedback in that it is 

more specific, and that by reading others writing 

as critical readers, students could become more 

critical readers and editors of their own writing. 

Speaking and writing are the productive skills 

since these skills require the depth thinking of the 

learners and exploring the ideas in constructing 

the talks or the written text. 

Brown (2001) describes writing as: A 

simplistic view of writing would assume that 

written language is simply the graphic 

representation of spoken language, and that 

written performance is much like oral 

performance, the only difference lying in graphic 

instead of auditory signals. The writing process is 

the thinking process that goes on during writing” 

(Crowhurst, 1988).  According to him, the writing 

process can be summarized as follows: Prewriting, 

drafting revising, editing, and presenting. 

Sometimes the students are let produce the final 

copy of writing without going through the process 

of writing. Of course, that straightforward activity 

of writing is not recommended. The students have 

to be trained to produce the final copy through the 

above stages.  

Brown (2001) states that teaching writing 

has to emphasis both on process and product. The 

product of writing is after all, the ultimate goal, but 

the process is the way to reach the goal. However, 

it needs a long process; one of them is vocabulary 

mastery. Hence, the vocabulary mastery is one of 

the bridges for the students to make writing in a 

good and correct way. The process of writing 

includes prewriting, drafting, revising and editing. 

Teaching writing itself is also a complex problem. 



 

Upik Hastuti / English Education Journal 4 (1) (2014) 

 

33 

 

It requires teachers with a great interest as well as 

professionalism in writing activities. For the worst, 

as far as I am concerned, not many teachers are 

interested in teaching writing for there must be 

lots of burden on them  correcting  the students’ 

writing from time to time.. Besides, most EFL 

students hate writing, at least at first. 

A discussion is a factual text that explores 

different sides of an issue in order to reach an 

informed judgment or opinion or 

recommendation. The social function of discussion 

text as said by Gerrot and Wignel (1994) is to 

present two points of view about an issue. 

Andersons (2003) states that the purpose of a 

discussion text is to present to the audience 

different opinions on topic, and at the end, your 

opinion. The discussion text types give arguments 

for and against, the positive and negatives, or the 

good points and the bad points. From the previous 

opinion, it can be concluded that discussion text is 

a factual text that intends to present two points of 

view about an issue or matter discussed. It means 

that in a discussion text, an issue is presented in 

different points of view.  

Peer editing is one of the way to improve 

students’ writing skill. In other words, applying 

peer editing will encourage the students to be 

creative in their way of thinking, the way to give 

some comments and recommendation. Then, it will 

train the students to be a good writer and reader, 

instead. In addition, through applying the peer 

editing teaching and learning process, the teacher 

makes an opportunity for students to talk to her 

openly which made the class more interactive and 

effective as well. 

The objectives of this study are to find out 

(a) the significant difference between peer and 

teacher’s editing in teaching writing discussion 

texts to active learners, (b) the significant 

difference between peer and teacher’s editing in 

teaching writing discussion texts to passive 

learners, (c) the more effective strategy between 

peer and teacher’s editing in teaching writing 

discussion texts among active and passive learners  

(d) the significant interaction among teaching 

strategies, students’ condition and writing 

achievement to active and passive learners in 

teaching writing discussion texts. 

 

RESEARCH METHODS 

 

The methods of investigation of this 

research consist of the research design, procedures 

in doing the research, setting and the subjects of 

the research, research variables, technique of 

collecting the data and technique of data analysis.  

This is a quantitative study dealing with the 

counting terms. It is a 2x2 factorial  design. This 

research deal with the effectiveness of peer editing 

and teacher’s editing in enhancing writing skill of 

discussion texts to active and passive learners.  

Tuckman (1978) mentions that factorial 

designs are modification of the true experimental 

designs with the further complication that 

additional independent variables (usually 

moderator variables) are included in addition to 

the treatment variables. Cohen, Manion, and 

Morrison (2007) and Tuckman (1978) further 

explain that factorial design is very useful because 

it allows researcher to not only examines the 

effects of each independent variable on the 

dependent variable, but also simultaneously 

identify whether there is interaction between the 

independent variables on the dependent variable. 

The procedures of experiment were: first, 

choosing two classes of the research. Then, Taking 

two groups consisting of 53 students, and make 20 

for result sample in each group that consist of 

active and passive learners. Third, choosing twenty 

active learners and twenty passive learners  in 

each group. Fourth, conducting Pre test. Fifth, 

conducting the real experiment, conducting 

posttest, analyzing the result of the study aand 

drawing conclussion. 

The subjects for the study were two classes. 

Since this is quasi experimental research the 



 

Upik Hastuti / English Education Journal 4 (1) (2014) 

 

34 

 

subjects of the study are two classes. The writer 

chose XII IPA-1 and XII IPA-2 as my sample of 

research since these classes are not taught by the 

researcher. The class consists of 26 students each 

The subjects for the study were 20 students each 

class were surveyed and randomly assigned. 

Twenty students comprised the experimental 

group and the rest is control group. These students 

represented the active and passive learners based 

on questionnaire.  

The study was conducted from the second 

week of March 2014 and it ended in the first week 

of April 2014. It was done in the even semester of 

2013/2014 academic year. 

Tudge (1990) states that if an adult or peer 

carefully provides a suitable level of support and 

guidance, learners are generally will be able to 

perform at a higher level than they can perform on 

their own. In line with the theory, this study 

examined the effectiveness of peer editing strategy 

and teacher’s editing as the independent variables, 

the students’ writing discussion achievement as 

dependent variable, and the students’ catagorizes 

as passive or active learners as moderator 

variable.  

The main source of data obtained for 

analysis in this study is through students’ scores in 

pre test, post test, questionnaire and observation. 

To gather the data, firstly, the researcher asked the 

English teacher of the classes to determine the 

subjects of the experimental and control groups. 

Then, the researcher asked the students to fill the 

questionnaire to determine the active learners and 

the passive one. Pre test was done after active and 

passive learners for experimental and control 

group had been determined. 

Data obtained from the pretest and post-test 

of writing on discussion texts were used to 

determine students’ achievement in writing skill. 

The statistical method used for analyzing the data 

analysis of variance using SPSS 17.  

The result of students’ writing was analyzed 

through scoring system. It is using rubric score for 

writing by Brown (2004). The scoring was done 

after conducting the treatment between 

experimental group and control group. The 

computation and the use of SPPSS 17 also counted 

to support the enrichment of technique of 

analyzing the data of this study. 

Post-test means were compared, adjusting 

for initial differences on the pretest means. Before 

adjusting the post-test scores of the experimental 

and control group on the basis of the pretest 

scores on writing skill (discussion texts), it was 

determined that the data met the homogeneity of 

requirements for analysis of variance. That is, 

relationship between pretest scores was found to 

similar for both groups.  

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

 

Results  

The difference between peer and teacher’s editing 

for active learners. 

Based on the result of ANOVA table  the df 

(degree freedom) = n-1  – 2 = 10- 1 = 9 with α = 

0.05 : 2 = 0.025 (paired samples t-test) ,  the t-

table is -2.262,  and the t-value is -7.521 for the 

control group and -11.521 for the experimental 

one. Since the t-value of both control and 

experimental groups < the t-table,  -7.521< -2.021 

and -11.521< -2.021 and the Sig. value (2-tailed) = 

0.000 < α = 0.05, it means that there is a 

significant difference between the score of pre-test 

and the score of post-test. Considering at the result 

of paired t-test the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected.  

 

The difference between peer and teacher’s editing 

for passive learners. 

The result of the t-value is – 6.988 for 

control group -9.221 for the experimental group. 

The df (degree freedom) = n-1  – 2 = 10- 1 = 9 with 

α = 0.05 : 2 = 0.025 (paired samples t-test) ,  so 

the t-table is -2.262, the paired sample t test can be 

seen in the following tables: The t-table is -2.262,  

and the t-value is -6.998 for the control group and -



 

Upik Hastuti / English Education Journal 4 (1) (2014) 

 

35 

 

9.221 for the experimental one. Since the t-value of 

both control and experimental groups < the t-

table,  -6.988 < -2.021 and -9.221< -2.021 and the 

Sig. value (2-tailed) = 0.000 < α = 0.05, it means 

that there is a significant difference between the 

score of pre-test and the score of post-test. 

Considering at the result of paired t-test the null 

hypothesis (Ho) is rejected.  

 

The Difference in Effectiveness between peer and 

teacher’s  editing 

From the result, it can be described that the 

mean result of pretest of passive learners less than 

the active one. That is for the active one is 79.30 

and for the passive learners is 74.35.  

In addition, the mean result of postest of 

passive learners less than the active one. That is 

for the active one is 86.10 and for the passive 

learners is 82.50. Further, the mean result of pre 

test of experimental group is lesser than the 

control group. That is for the peer editing teaching 

strategy is 75.95 and for the Teacher’s Editing 

Strategy is 77.70.  

It can be concluded that the experimental 

group has better score than the control group. The 

mean score of the experimental group is 84.65, 

while the mean score of the control group is 83.95. 

in addition, the active learners and the passive 

learners’ average score both in the experimental  is 

higher  than control group that the peer editing 

strategy is effective in enhancing students’ writing 

skill in discussion writing.  

 

The Interaction between Teaching Strategies and 

Students’ Condition  

According to table test of  Between-Subject 

Effects, it can be seen that there is a significant 

difference of the test result between the 

experimental group and the control group. The 

significant value between the experimental group 

and the control group is (0.000) < α = 0.025 that 

is 4.098. the result reveals that the F calculated is 

5.480, so it can be concluded there is a significant 

differences between the experimental group and 

the control group. The chart of interaction can be 

seen in the following figure.

 

Figure: Interaction chart

 

 

 

 



 

Upik Hastuti / English Education Journal 4 (1) (2014) 

 

36 

 

Discussion 

The first finding was in line with the previous 

study that done by Mangelsdorf  (1992) , Siew (2011), 

that examine on assessing the effectiveness and 

meaningfulness of cooperative learning in the process of 

“Peer Editing in Improving Students’ Quality of Writing”, 

the study found that there were a handful of them who 

were of high ability but there were also a few who were 

considered to be of lower ability in the language. It 

means that the active learners in doing the process of 

editing  provided opportunities to pick up good 

vocabulary, language use and style of writing from their 

peers. Students learn through an exchange of ideas 

during the discussions. 

Second, there is significant difference between 

peer and teacher’s editing in teaching writing discussion 

texts to passive learners. This is in line with the Tudge, 

(1990), he  states that if an adult or peer carefully 

provides a suitable level of support and guidance, 

learners are generally will be able to perform at a higher 

level than they can perform on their own. 

Third, the score of post-test score among active 

and passive learners in the experimental is higher than 

the posttest score of control one. So, peer editing 

strategy is effective to enhance the writing skill of 

discussion texts among active and passive learners. Min 

(2006), Tsui & Maria (2000), it has been claimed that 

peer readers can provide useful feedback, as they revise 

effectively on the basis of feedback they receive from 

peer editors. The previous statements in line with this 

finding of the study that the peer editing play an 

important role in enhancing writing skill.  

Soenoewati (2010) in her research of teacher’s 

corrective feedback  found thatt the teacher’s use 

clarification request of all corrective feedback types.  In 

line with  the previous study, the researcher also 

steressed the editing or corrective in the term of error, 

content, grammar and the punctuation of the writing. In 

addition, the researcher also based on the theory of 

Chaudron (1988) has pointed out the fact the term 

corrective feedback incorporates different layers of 

meaning. Corrective feedback can be either explicit or 

implicit. Explicit feedback types are overt and they offer 

clear information for students about their errors.  

Teacher provides the students with knowledge on the 

correct forms. 

Fourth, there is no significant interaction among 

teaching strategies students’ condition and writing 

achievement of discussion tetxs. It implies that the effect 

of implementing peer and teacher’s editing methodology 

is the same at all four categorize, they are active and 

passive learners. It can be shown in the two lines are 

parallel. When there is no interaction, the lines will 

always be parallel.  

  

CONCLUSIONS  

 

Based on the results of research and data 

analysis that has been done, it can be concluded that 

there is significant difference between peer and 

teacher’s editing in teaching writing discussion texts to 

active learners. Second, there is significant difference 

between peer and teacher’s editing in teaching writing 

discussion texts to passive learners. Third, peer editing 

strategy is effective to enhance the writing skill of 

discussion texts among active and passive learners than 

the teacher’s editing strategy. Fourth, there is no 

significant interaction among teaching strategies, 

students’ condition and writing achievement of 

discussion tetxs since among the teaching strategies, 

students’ condition can improve the achievement of the 

writing discussion texts.  

 

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