The Influence of Online Peer Correction by Using A Computer Program Toward English Department Students’ Writing Skill in State Polytechnic of Padang

SUMIRA English Department, Politeknik Negeri Padang, Sumatera Barat, Indonesia

E-mail : sumiraaslim@gmail.com

DIFIANI APRIYANTI English Department, Politeknik Negeri Padang, Sumatera Barat, Indonesia

NOVI FITRIA

English Department, Politeknik Negeri Padang, Sumatera Barat, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This research shows the influence of peer correction toward students’ writing quality. It was conducted in Technical Writing 2 class of English Department of Politeknik Negeri Padang. In this research, the students were applying correction symbols to their friends’ writing papers. This research was carried out in 16 meetings of one semester. The total of the participants were 43 students from 2A and 2B. This research is quantitative qualitative descriptive research. The data is gotten from their daily tasks and from the analysis of the students’ final writing task. The data was described through bar chart and pie chart. The result of this research is most of the students’ writing skill improve as the effect of implementing online peer correction (41,5% students are categorized as excellent, 41,5% students are categorized as very good). Keywords: Writing Skill; Online Peer Correction

INTRODUCTION State Polytechnic of Padang has established English Department since 2009. The aims of this department are producing students who are skillful in English, and students who are professionally in English translation area and English broadcasting area. To support the goal, the students learn speaking, reading, listening, and writing skills in their classes. In translation, the students must have structural, grammatical, and understandable writing skills since they are going to translate formal and legal documents from Bahasa Indonesia to English or English to Bahasa Indonesia.

While in broadcasting area, the students’ writing must be comprehensible and the contents can be understood. It is because the students will write script of interview report or field observation report in English and misunderstand must be avoided when the readers are reading it. Since sharpening students’ writing skill is really important, English Department provides several subjects for writing activities. They are Writing I, Writing II, Technical Writing I, and Technical Writing II. Students must pass the first subject before they can continue to the next subject.

From the pre-survey in Writing I, Writing II, Technical Writing I classes, the writers identified that the learning process in the class is a passive class. After giving some explanation and instruction by the teacher, the students were busy with their writing activity and the teacher was busy with her writing checking activity. The classes did not support the

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curriculum of CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) and SLC (Students Center Learning). Furthermore, the writing classes were a big class consists of 25 students. The teacher was busy checking the students’ writing one by one and also giving explanation to the students about their mistake. The other students who have finished their writing would just sit and wait to be called by their teacher. Since it is a big class, there is a tendency that the teacher cannot finish correcting all the students’ works and will continue to the next meeting. Therefore, the students will not directly know the quality of their today writing.

The students’ writing skill will be sharpened in Technical Writing I class and Technical Writing II class. In event semester periodic 2015/2016, the students consist of 2a and 2b were learning Technical Writing II in multimedia room. In this class, since each student got computer with internet access, the lecturer was applying online peer correction technique. The students did the correction online by giving symbols in “new comment” feature found in “review” application of Microsoft word. This technique was used in order to see whether online peer correction can improve students’ writing skills specified in spelling, word order, grammar, tense, concord, word, meaning, punctuation, and formal or informal content.

LITERATURE REVIEW

CORRECTION IN WRITING

Harmer (2005) stated that correction is a level of mentioning something is wrong. In correcting a written performance of a student, the teacher will do correction on syntax or word order, grammatical, collocation, and word choice. In a writing class, a teacher may ask the students to check their friends and also to give suggestions for their friends’ writing improvement which is known as peer review.

In doing correction, a good correction method is when the students understand their mistakes and know how to fix them. In correcting a written performance, students can implement selective correction, marking scales, and correction symbols. Actually, peer review is linier with SCL (Students Center Learning). There will be many feedback appeared from the students.

Peer Review has supported the teaching theories such as Humanist, CLT (Communicative Language Teaching), and LCT (Learner-Centered Teaching). Rollinson (2005) stated several principles of implementing peer review which are (1) it is not as threatening as the teacher’s feedback. Students feel more comfortable when their own friends did the review of their tasks, (2)The teacher will not be as powerful as usual since the corrections are not from him and the students will not be passive receiver toward the information, (3) the class atmosphere is more conducive.

PEER CORRECTION

In learning a language, errors are not seen as “no learning” but as “outcome of natural development.” In this process of teaching learning, a teacher does not always correcting the students’ errors but she is more acted as a facilitator (Sultana, 2009). A student can know his errors by the help of his peers in the class and later the teacher will have discussion with the whole class. In brief, peer correction is a technique or method of correcting errors of other students. Gower et al (1995) states “One more significant issue of classroom teaching comes up with peer correction. It is acknowledged by most of the practitioners that students’ involvement in classroom should be enhanced to better learning, and involvement indeed increases when students give feedback to each other performance.

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Peer correction can be applied in all skills of English-Speaking, Writing, Listening, and Reading, but it is not required to be implemented in basic classes such as classes of Speaking 1,2, Writing 1,2, Listening 1,2, and Reading 1,2 since those are the times students are learning the knowledge and practicing the skill of their own. In this case, they can use self correction. Rief (1999) says, “It can …..foster the development of skills needed to regulate their own learning and it places more responsibility for learning on the students.

In English Department, State Polytechnic of Padang, especially in classes of writing, peer correction is more appropriate to be implemented in Technical Writing 2 class. In this class, the students are writing commercial and secretarial letters. A student can give correction to his peer paper work by inserting correction symbol. Harmer (2005) defines the correction symbols as followed:

TABLE 1. CORRECTION SYMBOLS

Symbol Meaning S A spelling error WO A mistake in word order G A grammar mistake T Wrong verb tense C Concord mistake (e.g. subject and verb agreement) Something has been left out WW Wrong word { } Something is not necessary ?M The meaning is unclear P A punctuation mistake F/I Too formal or informal

PURPOSE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH

The purpose of this research is to see the influence of online peer correction by using a computer program toward writing skill of English department students in State Polytechnic of Padang. This research which was applied in Technical Writing 2 class supports the curriculum of Students Centre Learning (SCL) and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). In the teaching learning process, the teacher will not be the center of classroom activity and the students will be more active in the class.

The significance of this research is the class will run manageably, since the portion of the students’ tasks and teachers’ task are organized. The teacher must not check all the students’ tasks in a limited time, and the students will not wasting their time for waiting for the teacher correcting her/his paper.

METHOD This research is a descriptive quantitative qualitative research. Gay and Airasian (2000) say “Descriptive research which is also called survey research determines and describes the way things are”. In this research, the researcher did survey and described the data without any manipulation. The writers are applying quantitative method since the researcher did calculation (statistic) description and is implementing qualitative method since the researcher described the data. The data was collected for 6 months (one semester) before going to the process of calculation and describe.

This research was carried out in Multimedia Laboratory which facilitated students with computer and internet access. It was Technical Writing II class, semester four, periodic 2014/2015. The research was applied in two classes which were 2Aand 2B. The numbers of students in 2A was 21 and in 2 B were 22 students, so the total of the students were 43 people.

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DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS This research is describing the improvement of the students’ writing skill after they implement online peer correction for 6 months (one semester). For 6 months, the students did 20 tasks which related to commercial letters and secretarial letters in Technical Writing 2 class. The activities of the class were writing letter, gave correction symbol, and did revision.

The students gave correction symbols to their friends’ paper work. Correction symbols were given in column “New comment” which is found in “Review” of Microsoft Word program. Papers that each student’s correct were collected in a form of bar chart and then being described. After getting the result from the bar chart, the researcher continued the describing in order to find out the students’ writing improvement. The results are described in tables, bar chart, and pie chart.

RESULT The research on Technical Writing 2 class was carried out for six months or one semester. In this semester, the students improve their writing skills by writing commercial letters (such as inquiry letter, aggressive respond letter, negative respond letter, order letter, and complaint letter), secretarial letters (such as invitation letter, recommendation letter, and apology letter), and also application letter, recommendation letter, and curriculum vitae. It was hoped that these letters will help the students in applying for a job.

This research was applied in two classes which are called as class2A consists of 20 students and class 2B consists of 21 students. These two classes were taught by the writer. In doing this research, the writer implemented peer correction by following two procedures. They are:

Step 1 The writer gives example of the letter

Step 2 The students write the letter by their own in Microsoft words

Step 3 After finished, the students send it to the classroom email address which is for class 2A is class2AbingPNP@gmail.com and for class 2B the email address is class2BbingPNP@gmail.com.

Step 4 Then every student does correction to one of their friend letter. The students do the correction by giving correction symbols. After finishing the correction, the letter is send back to the class email.

Step 5 Every student must get back their letter which has been given correctionsymbols. After getting it, they must do revision. In this step, students have to be aware of their mistake and try to understand it in order not to make the same mistake again in the next letter writing.

Step 6 After revision, the letter is send back to the class email.

Step 7 The students are given one week to choose as many as possible their friends’ letters and give correction symbols.

Every step is given a file name. The second procedure is the same with step 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the first procedure, and then in

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Step 5 All the students get the same letter to be corrected.

Step 6 After given correction symbols, the teacher shows the letter though projector. Every student has opportunity to give correction symbols.

Step 7 After they think no more correction symbols are given, the owner of the letter goes to the front class and revises it while other students sit and pay attention.In the last step, discussion is held in order to see whether the symbols are needed and whether the revision is correct. This second procedure also gives the students one week to choose as many as possible their friends’ letters and give correction symbols.

After one semester or six months, the writer counted the numbers of the students do correction to their friends’ letter. The writer got the numbers by opening the class email. In this email, the writer has created a file of each name, and the tasks have been moved based on their names. The two tables below show the number of each student in class 2A and in class 2B who did correction to their friends’ letters.

Figure 1. Students’ Class A Paper Correction

From table 2A, it can be seen that student H did the most correction letter which is 175 letters, and student F did the less correction which is 26 letters. In average, there are 12 students who did correction task above 100 times and there are 9 students who did it under 100 times. The highest student did 6 times more than the lowest student.

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Figure 2. Students’ Class B paper Correction From table 2B, the student who did the most correction task is student G. She did 94 times correction letter. The most less is student R which is only 5 times doing correction letter In this class, 10 students did more than 50 times correction letter, and 12 students did less than 50 times. The highest students did 18 times more than the lowest student.

TABLE 2. STUDENTS’ CLASS A FINAL SCORE

Student Class A

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U

Final Score 60 70 70 75 70 40 75 90 80 75 65 70 85 75 80 65 75 80 70 65 80

TABLE 3. STUDENTS’ CLASS B FINAL SCORE

Student Class A

A’ B’ C’ D’ E’ F’ G’ H’ I’ J’ K’ L’ M’ N’ O’ P’ Q’ R’ S’ T’ U’ V’

Final Score 73 87 87 87 76 78 78 82 80 81 83 87 75 78 87 87 78 45 81 65 77 73

The tables below show the students’ final score. This score was taken from the last writing tests in Final semester test. From these tables, it can be seen that the highest score is 90 for class A and 87 for class B. While for the lowest score is 40 for class A and 45 for class B.

TABLE 4. STUDENTS’ FINAL ACHIEVEMENT

Students Amount of Doing Correction Final Score Categories

A 58 60 Good B 154 70 Very Good C 128 70 Very Good D 132 75 Very Good E 120 70 Very Good F 26 40 Bad G 38 75 Very Good H 175 90 Excellent I 150 80 Excellent J 145 75 Very Good K 71 65 Good

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L 118 70 Very Good M 110 85 Excellent N 113 75 Very Good O 27 80 Excellent P 52 65 Good Q 140 75 Very Good R 50 80 Excellent S 44 70 Very Good T 68 65 Good U 166 80 Excellent A’ 34 73 Very Good B’ 68 87 Excellent C’ 85 87 Excellent D’ 74 87 Excellent E’ 16 76 Very Good F’ 55 78 Very Good G’ 94 78 Very Good H’ 63 82 Excellent I’ 12 80 Excellent J’ 57 81 Excellent K’ 48 83 Excellent L’ 87 87 Excellent M’ 52 75 Very Good N’ 13 78 Very Good O’ 75 87 Excellent P’ 39 87 Excellent Q’ 45 78 Very Good R’ 5 45 Bad S’ 30 81 Excellent T’ 16 65 Good U’ 19 77 Very Good V’ 36 73 Very Good

Figure 3. Students’ Final Achievement

41,5%

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Table 4 and Figure 3 show the relation between the numbers of students doing peer correction papers and students’ writing quality. It indicates that students who did many peer corrections will achieve high score for their final writing task. This research shows that 41,5% students are categorized as excellent, 41,5% students are categorized as very good, 12% students are categorized as good and 5% are categorized as bad. By having 83% (41, 5% excellent and 41,5% very good), it can be concluded that by applying peer correction, the quality of students’ writing can reach maximum standard.

CONCLUSION

After conducting this research for six months, the writer can conclude that: First is the writer found out there are students who did peer correction so many times and there are students who did less. Second, students who did many peer corrections in tasks also did many peer corrections in the following tasks. Thirdly, most of the students’ writing tasks quality is improving 41,5% students are categorized as excellent, 41,5% students are categorized as very good. Finally, by implementing peer correction in writing class give positive effect to the students’ skills.

The writers suggest that peer correction is carried out for writing classes in the following semester. It is also suggested for other subjects to use teaching technic which support Students Learning Centre and Communicative Language Teaching. For the lecturers who want to implement peer correction, they must encourage the students to be more active by giving reward to the students who do the most corrections.

REFERENCE Gower, D. Phillips, S. Walters. 1995. Teaching Practice Handbook. Macmillan Heinemann English Language

Teaching, London. Gay, L.R. & Airisian, Peter. 2000. Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application. Merril

Publishing Company, New Jersey. Harmer, J. 2005. How to Teach Writing. Pearson Education Ltd, Malaysia. Rollinson, P. 2005. Using Peer Feedback in the ESL Writing Class. ELT Journal, 59/1. pp 23-30. Sultana, A. 2009. Peer Correction in ESL Classroom. BRAC University Journal, vol. VI no 1 pp 11-19.

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