ROLES OF FEEDBACK TO OVERCOME GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS udOF ACADEMIC WRITING IN EFL CLASS

摘要

Abstract: Grammar still becomes one, among other factors, that contributes a serious problem for students to udwrite in EFL classes but which component is said to be the cause needs a careful study. This article is written toudidentify the components that trouble them the most and to find out ways of solution. In this article, eightudgrammatical components were identified, including (1) consistency of subject and verb tenses, (2) consistency of udsingular and plural nouns, (3) parallel construction, (4) tautologies and redundancies, (5) misplaced modifiers,ud(6) faulty references, (7) passive construction, (8) choice of verb forms. Data were collected from students’ free udwriting. For this purpose, they were asked to write essays before and after feedbacks were given. The feedbacks udconsisted of various class activities, such as formative tests, peer reviews, teacher notes, and class discussion. udUsing dependent paired t-test, scores from both writing tasks were compared to see the difference. In addition to udsuch quantitative computation, a qualitative analysis was also made to find out reasons how and why students udencountered grammatical problems in writing. The research reveals the findings, such as (1) all respondents udencounter problems about the eight identified grammatical components; two of which are severe, (2) frequencies udof such arising problems vary from one student to another, (3) interference of native language, Indonesian udgrammar, is suspected to be the contributing factors to affect students’ quality writing, (4) individual feedback udand classroom discussions turn out to be an effective way to improve students’ writing, (5) there is significantly uddifferent achievement of students in writing before and after feedback. udKeywords: feedback, grammar, trouble, academic writing