Title: Exploring the Effect of Peer Feedback and the Students’ Perceptions of the Feedback on Students’ Writing Skill
Abstract: This study was aimed to investigate the effect of peer feedback on students’ writing skill and the students’ perceptions on the practice of peer feedback. The study adopted mixed methods research design. It involved 70 eleventh grade students in two intact classes at one public senior high school in West Sumatra, Indonesia. The students were given different types of treatment: the students from experimental class were given feedback from peers, and those from control class were given feedback from teacher. The study lasted 8 weeks. The data were collected through post-test and semi-structured interview. The post-test was used to obtain students’ writing scores and semi-structure interview to know their perception on the peer feedback. Findings of the study indicated that the students that were given peer feedback had better writing skill than those were given teacher feedback. This study also shows that the students had positive perceptions towards writing. They liked using this strategy because it made writing process become less stressful. However, there were also some students who valued teacher’s feedback more highly than the peer feedback. Those students believed that grammatical accuracy was more possible to be achieved through teacher feedback than through peer feedback because they thought that their peers had inadequate grammar knowledge.