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can help students compare their own performance with the ideal one and to

diagnose their own strength and weaknesses.

Feedback, which is given directly or indirectly, can improve student’s writing,

especially indirect feedback. The indirect feedback will give good impact of the

improvement toward the students’ writing itself not only in the short time but also

in a long time of their life. The researcher thinks that indirect feedback is more

helpful for improving students’ writing, it is because oral/direct feedback can be

durable, but it will keep only in mind of receiver and the feedback can lost in

certain time. In contrast, the thought and comment in indirect feedback will be

saved in long time because it will be readable in long time.

Furthermore, Ellis (1984) notes that direct method is just low level

correction and not real feedback. According to Hendrickson (1984), the purpose

of indirect feedback is to indicate either the presence or the specific location of

errors. Direct feedback means not only to indicate the location of errors, but also

to suggest correct forms. If the students is only provided with direct feedback on

their final drafts, they do not have an opportunity to reflect and correct their

writing become the correct one by themselves. They only follow the errors

corrections by the teacher.

After doing preliminary class observation in class VIII H of SMP Negeri 2

Kendari, the researcher got a fact about the performance of teaching writing in

SMP Negeri 2 Kendari. In this class, the students had problem in writing a text

because they learnt writing without using a good approach and treatment. They

were just asked to write a composition based on the picture or topic that had been
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prepared by the teacher without checking their ability in mastering aspects of

writing. The students did not understand about certain instruction of text like the

generic structure of the text, purposes and the language feature of the text. The

students also did not really know how to correct their own writing because they

had gotten the correct answer from their mistakes, but most of the corrections only

for the correction in punctuation and spelling without giving correction in

organization, language use, content of writing, and vocabulary.

They also could not evaluate their own writing because they have not

trained to do so, because the teacher had not had a good approach or strategy to

make their writing better. Using teacher’s indirect feedback might be a starting

point to start the improvement for students’ ability in writing since the evaluation

on writing process in classroom should be started by the teacher first, then it can

affect the students’ ability to evaluate their writing by themselves.

The total number of students in class VIII H is 34 students. The researcher

got that most of them had problem to compose writing in a good organization and

language use. They seldom practiced writing. The English instruction was focused

more on reading and exercises. While in writing, they just asked to summarize the

text according to the answer from the task before or asked them to write according

to the given of sequence of pictures. In addition, most of the students said that

they did not like writing even in Indonesian because it was very difficult. Finally,

in writing activity, the students never expressed their idea using systematic stages

such as pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing, Applebee in Mappe (2000:35).

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The students usually just asked to write a text directly based on the topic

given, without knowing the stages how to write well. The teacher did not explain

to them about the best stages that should be done to compose a good writing. They

also did not know the basic information about the text that they will write, such as

generic structure, language feature, and the purpose of the text. The student

couldn’t divide orientation/general description, description and

reorientation/conclusion of the text. The teacher also did not give brainstorming to

the students how to make ideas and arrange it in a good paragraph, so the students

couldn’t develop words, sentences and ideas to write as much as possible about

the topic.

Furthermore, the researcher will try to apply teachers’ indirect feedback

strategy to solve those problems. The students also can improve their writing

ability through the teacher’s indirect feedback before being able to correct the

mistakes by themselves.

Based on reasons above, the researcher is interested to conduct a research

under the title “Improving Students Writing Ability through Teachers’ Indirect

Feedback at the second year students of SMP N 2 Kendari”.

1.2 Research Question

Research question of this study is: “Can teacher’s indirect feedback

improves students’ writing ability on the second year students of SMP N 2

Kendari?”
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1.3 Objectives of the Study

The objective of the study is to improve students’ writing ability at the

second year students of SMP N 2 Kendari under teacher’s indirect feedback.

1.4 Significant of the Study

- This study can be a source of information for teacher in improving

teacher’s quality in giving feedback, especially indirect feedback.

- For students, the students are hoped to be able to correct their own writing

independently.

- As a source of information for school in improving their teacher strategies

especially in teaching writing.

- As an information source for another researcher who wants to conduct the

same research.

1.6 Hypothesis

The researcher formulates the hypothesis in this study is “If the teacher

indirect feedback is applied, it can improve students’ writing ability”.