AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PEER CORRECTION TECHNIQUE ON STUDENTS ’ EXPOSITION TEXT

This research aimed to: 1) analyze quality of students‟ exposition text; 2) analyze their responses towards learning writing exposition text using peer correction technique; and 3) find out challenges that they faced during the learning. Qualitative research method, especially document analysis design, was chosen. In this research, students‟ texts were analyzed to answer first research question and open-ended questionnaire was given to students to answer second and third research questions. To triangulate the findings from those instruments, peer debriefing and member checks methods were done. To analyze the data, qualitative data analysis by Miles et al. (2014) was employed. The data analysis revealed that: 1) quality of students‟ exposition texts improved, especially in generic structure aspect; 2) students mostly grouped themselves with more competent peers, learned lesson material beforehand as preparation for correcting, used both English and Indonesian when correcting, concerned more about language feature of peers‟ texts, employed their critical thinking in processing feedbacks, became a better writer in the end of semester, and still preferred teacher correction over peer correction technique; and 3) students biggest challenge was poor writing skill. From those findings, it can be concluded that: 1) peer correction technique seems to contribute to the quality of students‟ writing; 2) the students also respond positively towards the implementation of the technique; and 3) students‟ effort in improving their personal writing skill outside the classroom is required.


Introduction
Writing skill is important to master by any language users.It plays an essential role in promoting language acquisition as learners experiment with words, sentences, and large chunks of writing to communicate their ideas effectively and to reinforce the grammar and vocabulary they learn in class (Bello, 1997).Therefore, it is also important for English as Foreign Language students to have good writing skill.
On the other hand, EFL students seem to face difficulties in writing.The problem might be because they have to translate ideas into readable text (Richards and Renandya, 2002).The text considered as readable when it is written in a high degree of accuracy, complex grammar devices, careful choice of vocabulary, and sentence structures in order to create style, tone and information appropriate for the readers of one"s written text (Hedge, 2005).Most of all, they also have to write in new language which is more difficult (Blanchard and Root, 2003).Thus, there are many things that students" have to cope.
One of the causes of said condition may be due to technique used in teaching writing.It was heavily centered on lecturer whom served as sole knowledge source and did not motivate the students to be more active and responsible to their own learning.
Therefore, collaborative learning approach was currently applied in writing class through peer correction technique to teach about exposition text.

Exposition Text
There are many different text types.Each test type has a typical structure that can be recognized by users of language system (Anderson and Anderson, 1998).According to Anderson and Anderson, there are two majors of text types: literary and factual text.These two major are differentiated according to its aim.Literary text is written in purpose of entertaining while factual text is written to serve a fact of things.On the other hand, Derewianka and Jones generalize texts according to genre.Genres are the ways in which we achieve our social purposes through language (Derewianka and Jones, 2012).There are six genres which are: genre for arguing, genre for entertaining, genre for explaining, genre for instructing, genre for recounting, and genre for responding.Thus, from its similarity, all literary text is included into genre of entertaining while the rest of texts from remaining genres are factual text.
Based on above explanation, expositions are factual text type and included in arguing genre.Because it is a factual text, fact and evidence are needed to build a solid one.The fact and evidence will be used to persuade the reader or listener for acting or to believe on one side of argument.So, this text is clearly aiming to persuade the reader or listener by presenting one side of an argument, that is, the case "for" or the case "against" which is strengthen by fact and evidence.
There are two forms of exposition text seeing from its purpose.They are hortatory (persuading to) and analytical (persuading that) texts (Derewianka and Jones, 2012).
The social purpose of hortatory exposition is to persuade people to act in a particular way.While analytical exposition persuades people to a particular point of view.It adopts a position with respect to an issue or idea and provides evidence in support of that position.

Peer Correction Technique
Peer correction, also commonly referred to as peer feedback, peer review, or peer evaluation, is a collaborative learning activity during which language learners exchange their writing drafts and give feedback to each other for the purpose of revision (Mangelsdorf, 1992).Dixon (1986:4) states that peer correction is a technique that enables for the students to get feedback, when the students correct their drafts in pair.In conclusion, peer correction is one of the techniques in collaborative learning activity in which students sits in small group to exchange their writing and their peer"s writing for the betterment of its quality.
Research has shown that peer correction has benefits for the students.For instance, peer correction encourages student to participate in the classroom activity and make them less passively teacher-dependent (Hyland, 2000).It is also led to greater concern for achieving accuracy in written expression in individual students and creates better atmosphere for teaching the correctional aspects of composition (Witbeck, 1976).
Therefore, this research attempts to investigate the following questions: 1. How is the quality of students" exposition texts? 2. How is the students" response toward learning writing exposition text using peer correction technique?3. What are the challenges that students faced during learning writing exposition text by using peer correction technique?

Methods
This research is about analyzing the quality of students" exposition text, students" responses about the technique used in teaching it, and also challenges they faced during the process.Thus, qualitative, especially document analysis design was employed to answer the research questions.Content or document analysis is a research method applied to written or visual materials for the purpose of identifying specified characteristics of the material (Ary, Jacobs, & Sorensen, 2010).
This research conducted at University of Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa.It is located on Jl.
Raya Jakarta KM 4 Pakupatan, Serang, Banten.The participants were the 5th semester students of Class 2015 of Department of English Education.
The participants for this research were chosen purposively.To purposefully select participants or sites (or documents or visual material) means that qualitative researchers select individuals who will best help them understand the research problem and the research questions (Creswell, 2014) According to Creswell (2012: 220) the open-ended responses permit researcher to explore reasons to close-ended responses and identify any comment people might have that are beyond the responses to the close-ended questions.Therefore, there will be way for probing in particular areas of interest.

Results and Discussion
The Quality of Students' Exposition Text Data analysis revealed that there was improvement in quality of students" exposition texts from first to final draft.Moreover, the improvement included all of aspects being investigated which were generic structure, language feature, and mechanic aspect.The findings are presented below in form of figures.

Quality of Students' Exposition Text in General
From the figure above, it was discovered that quality of students" exposition texts improved.Its score increased from 54.58, which categorized as "C" in first draft to 73.33, which categorized as "B" in final draft.The score had the highest increase from first to second draft and the lowest increase from third to final draft.Accordingly, it could be claimed that the quality of students" exposition text improved quite significantly.

Mechanics
The figure suggested that the quality of students" texts seen from each aspect also improved.Mechanics aspect had the highest score while generic structure aspect had the lowest score.However, the last said aspect had the highest increasing score compared from its first to last draft.Therefore, it can be concluded that generic structure aspect had the highest increase, followed by language features, and mechanic aspect.

The Students' Response towards the Implementation of Peer Correction Technique
Data analysis on students" response towards the implementation of peer correction technique revealed several findings.First, they tended to group themselves with peers with higher competency than their own.Second, most of them had prepared themselves before correcting their peers" texts.Third, nearly half of them preferred to use English in correcting their peer.Fourth, many of them focused more on language feature aspect of their peers" text.Fifth, almost all of them would recheck feedback they got before revised their text.Sixth, the technique said to make them write more carefully.Last, even so as stated in previous point, most of them preferred teacher correction over peer or self correction.Clearly, the implementation of this technique obtained various response from them.

Grouping Preference
Peer"s Competency 41% Peer Relation 32% Peer"s Cooperative 21% No Criteria 6% From figure above, it indicated that students had four different criteria in grouping themselves.They appeared to group themselves with those who had competency (41%), had close relationship with (32%), behaved cooperatively (21%), and anyone available (6%).It was clear then that, according to most of them, competency was a must.
Set competency as a must criterion was not in accordance with research by Csernica et al., (2002).It was said that self-selected groups often gravitate toward friends and roommates.However, peer"s relation still sat in high position, indicating that close relationship was still the students" top criterion.Aside from that, there were quite many students who set cooperative as their criterion.
Whichever criterion sat in highest position was not a guarantee to more meaningful and effective learning process because all of them had their flaw.Ability in grouping, for example, had been found to have few benefits and many risks.One of the examples was when homogenous and heterogeneous ability groups of students were taught identical curricula, there appeared to be few advantages to homogeneous grouping in terms of academic achievement (Glass, 2015).On the other hand, grouping themselves based on the closeness might also be disadvantageous because students could segregate and spend more time socializing than working on the group project (Cooper, 1990).It was afraid that instead of correcting the draft, they would converse with each other, abandoning the texts.Grouping according to cooperative criterion, which seemed as finest solution of all, was also potentially problematic.It was because even though students would learn best when they were actively involved in the process (Davis, 1993) there would have been students who refused to be cooperative and they could have been sat in homogenous ability groups.
From elaboration above, it can be concluded that grouping must done carefully and with thoughtful consideration.Therefore, it was problematic to let students group themselves due to the explanation.It would have been better if teacher herself did the grouping because only her who knew ability, closeness, and other characteristics of each student.
By doing so, she could design homogenous ability groups in which less able students would be at reduced risk of being stigmatized, teacher"s expectation for all students could be maintained at higher levels, and opportunities for more able students to assist less able peers in learning were exist.

Students' Preparation
From figure above, it appeared that students had awareness of the importance of preparation before learning.Most of them had read the material beforehand (42%) and paid attention and made note on the spot (27%), but there were also those who prepared nothing at all (28%).This act might be affected students" performance in correcting their peers" texts.
Study habits were important.It was the methods of study used by students during an academic course within an appropriate environment; in other words, it was the ability of students to manage time for the successful accomplishment of academic tasks (Ozsoy G and Memis A., 2009).Investigation done by Dehbozorgi and Mooseli (2003) to find out causes of academic failure also revealed that 43.4% of the unsuccessful students had no plans for studying.Therefore, students" preparation before learning was needed in order to promote effective study.

Language Usage
From figure above, it could be known that the students used two languages and mix of it.English was used the most (63%), followed by mix language of English and Indonesian (29%), and Indonesian (8%).It seemed that even though they were English students, use of native language could not be fully erased in classroom activity.
In the beginning of lesson, lecturer had set rule for students to write down their correction in English, but it was up to their decision whether to use English or Indonesian in communicating their meanings.This decision seemed reasonable for two considerations.
It was known by the lecturer that her students were not yet proficient in English, so it was easier for them to communicate in Indonesian.Even though it was believed that the more students were exposed to a new language, the easier they learn the target language due to brain development (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969), but their cognitive system would not function at its best if children used a language which was not well developed during writing, speaking, reading, or listening activities (Cummins, 2000).So, it was important for teachers to understand the process by which a second language should be taught, using the first language as support in order to ensure understanding and learning (Dixon et al., 2012).The use of Indonesian put students in ease when correcting their peer"s English 63% Mix 29% Indonesian 8% text verbally because the learning would have been impeded if they were not allowed to communicate in language which they master the best.

Concerned Aspect
Figure 4.6

Concerned Aspect
From figure above, it was indicated that during learning writing with peer correction technique, students had concern on almost every aspects.The highest was on language feature aspect (33%), followed by mechanic aspect (26%), all aspects (21%), generic structure aspect (19%), and none (1%).Therefore, it can be presumed that this technique promoted students" awareness in every aspect.
The process of peer correction technique could raise students" awareness of important organizational and syntactical elements that they otherwise might not notice on their own.This technique could lead to more meaningful revision, as these revisions were superior in vocabulary, organization and content (Hansen and Lui, 2005;Storch, 2005;Swain & Lapkin, 1998.Moreover, according to studies by Gousseva-Goodwin (2000) and Storch, advanced ESL learners" collaborative essay grades were higher than those done independently and tended to have greater grammatical accuracy.One reason for the higher grades might be that the collaborative process could lead to more productive feedback sessions (Murphy & Jacobs, 2000).It could be inferred from above that through this technique, students can learn multiple language skills more effectively than by working alone.

Feedback Follow Up
Figure 4.7

Feedback Follow Up
From figure above, it was discovered that students treated feedback they had gotten differently.Most of them would recheck before revise their text (77%), followed it right away (17%), or asked for second opinion (6%), These indicated that peer correction technique raised students" critical thinking.
Critical thinking was important in writing, so did in peer correction technique.By employing critical thinking, students thought logically and rationally by using data and evidence (Juniardi, 2016).Thus, they would not accept any feedback lightly.Instead, they would recheck it to seek for confirmation or asked for second opinion to get different point of view.These process of discussing, clarifying, and evaluating other"s idea, excessively would have the end result of producing writers who are more independent, "as they have attained the skills necessary to self-edit and revise their own writing" (Rollinson, 2005, p: 29).Presumably, the better critical thinking a student possessed, the better academic writing ability they would obtained.From figure above, it was known that peer correction technique had mostly positive influences towards students.It was said that the technique made they wrote more carefully (48%), understood the material being taught better (19%), became aware of mistakes more (20%), became critical (10%), and had no difference at all (3%).It could be indicated then that the technique made students a better writer.
This finding was in accordance with previous finding about critical thinking.Students" critical thinking had positive correlation with students" academic writing skill (Juniardi, 2014).They had made mistakes in writing before, had been corrected, and critically considered the feedback before applying it.Thus, students already knew what and how to write or to avoid and carefully wrote according to standard that had been set.Surely, it made them better in writing.

Technique's Preference in Correcting
Figure 4.9

Technique's Preference in Correcting
From figure above, it was discovered that students had different preference in correcting technique used.More than a half preferred teacher correction (56%) over peer correction (41%) and mix of it (3%).It could be assumed that teacher correction technique considered more beneficial by them than rest of it.
There were probably two reasons behind this fact.First, according to the students themselves, their writing skill was not good enough to give proper feedback to other or even to themselves.Because of the uncertainty of the feedback"s quality, students prefer teacher correction more.Last, the students also saw teacher as figure of authority that guaranteed quality (Jalalifarahani and Azizi, 2012).Sometimes, the feedback given during peer correction technique was not qualified and there was also high percentage of human error due to low writing skill.High proficiency student would gain only a little from the process while low proficiency student might have difficulties in sorting it out for not all the feedback were right.Therefore, teacher correction was chosen over others.

The Challenges that Students Faced in Learning Writing Exposition Text through Peer Correction Technique
Data analysis on students" challenges in learning writing exposition text through peer correction technique revealed that poor writing skill had become the most problematic challenges.Aside from that, there were other challenges that should be given more attention to make the implementation of said technique more efficient in future.Below, the findings are presented in form of pie chart.

Challenges in Peer Correction Technique Implementation
From the figure above, it could be assumed that there were four major challenges that students faced.First was their poor writing skill.Second was limited time allocation.
Third was peers" poor writing skill.Last was number of texts to be corrected.For said twice, it seemed that poor writing skill was the main challenge.
As stated above, it was speculated that writing skill had great impact in implementation of peer correction technique.In this technique"s implementation, lecturer served as facilitator and was not as sole knowledge source.Therefore, students depended mainly on their individual skill or, if possible, their peers" skill.However, it was discovered that many students had poor writing skill and so did with their peers.Poor writing skill then, in context of peer correction technique, could cause domino effect in which the students were not only impeding their own progress, but also their peers" progress for giving improper feedback.Moreover, due to their poor writing skill, they would felt like they had too little time for too many texts while in fact it was not.
. Participants of this research was 5th semester students of Department of English education academic year 2017/2018 of University of Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa who attended academic writing.There were 120 students in total from 3 classes.There were two technique used in collecting data: document analysis and survey.Document analysis was used to answer research question number one about students" argumentative text"s quality.Students" analytical exposition texts were collected as the instrument.According to Ary et al., the term document refers to a wide range of written, physical, and visual materials, including what other authors may term artifacts (2006: 442).Each student produced 4 documents: first, second, third, and final draft.Three students from each class were taken as sample so there were 9 students and 36 documents in total.On the other hand, survey was used to answer research question number two and three, about students responds about peer correction technique and challenges they faced during the learning process.The data were collected using an open-ended questionnaire.

Figure
Figure 4.1

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Figure 4.2 Quality of Students' Exposition Text per Aspect

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Figure 4.3

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Figure 4.10