Improving Students’ Writing Skill through Marking System Feedback

Abstract

Writing is one of the four language skills that the learners should master. The 2013 curriculum also says that one of the English language competencies specified in high school level is that students must be able to compose short written texts using coherent text structures and linguistic elements fluently and accurately. In line with that this study aims to find out whether the marking system feedback can improve students' writing skill. This is a two-cycle classroom action research at SMA Negeri 1 Sewon. The subjects were 26 tenth grade students of class X MIPA 1. The data were collected from observation, written documents, writing scores, and questionnaire. The study results showed that by applying the marking system feedback, students' writing skills improved. The mean scores of the students' writing ability in the pre-cycle was 63.65 at the poor category, the first cycle was 73.65 at the fair category, and the second cycle was 81.35 at the good category. In addition, students tend to give positive responses to the implementation of the marking system feedback. As many as 88.46% think that the feedback is useful in writing activities and can help them in correcting their mistakes, 73.08% think that the technique makes them understand the grammar better, and 80.77% say this technique leads them to be more careful in their writing and also motivates them to improve their composition.