Promoting students' writing autonomy by using self-directed feedback

Abstract

This paper reports on a study about self-directed feedback in enhancing students’ writing autonomy in a writing course conducted at STKIP Bina Bangsa Getsempena Banda Aceh. The study aims to investigate the effect of self-directed feedback on students' writing skill. To do so, there were 20 students from the English Department of STKIP BBG Banda Aceh taken as the participants in this study. This study was conducted across one semester, in the year 2016. It employs a case study which is using a document analysis as the data collection techniques. The findings show that having acquainted self-directed feedback in the third drafts, the students attempt to have an improvement in terms of content/ idea, organization, grammar, word choice and mechanics in the process of writing a narrative text. The performance of students’ progress also signifies a characteristic of an autonomous learner. Most of the students assume self-directed feedback as a worthy technique that gives them a chance to build their critical reflection, decision-making and most importantly it provides a greater influence on students’ writing development. To conclude, self-directed feedback is proven applicable in teaching writing for it functions as a step in making students an autonomous writer. For further research, it is suggested that self-directed feedback offer students clear and specific guidance of how to improve their performance rather than one exclusive technique.