TEACHER'S WRITTEN FEEDBACK IN ACADEMIC WRITING CLASS: STUDENTS' PERCEPTION

Teacher's written feedback is one crucial thing that influences students' success in writing class. This feedback can benefit students' essays and writing performances in writing class. This study focuses on Academic Writing students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class. The purpose of this study is to investigate Academic Writing students' perceptions toward teacher's written feedback for their writing performances in Academic Writing class. This study was conducted in the English Language Education Program (ELEP), the Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. The participants for this study were 31 students who were taking an Academic Writing course in Semester Gasal, 2022/2023 academic year. This study used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to gather the data. The result showed that Academic Writing students had varied perceptions of teacher's written feedback from their lecturers. There were three types of students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback which were positive, mixed, and negative. This study hopefully can contribute valuable suggestions for the Academic Writing teacher in giving good written feedback and reveals the fact that teacher's written feedback can enhance students' writing performance .


INTRODUCTION
Feedback is one important element that involves in students' success in writing class. According to Shute (2008) feedback is an important factor to enhance cognitions and abilities acquisition in writing (as cited in Fithriani, 2019). Moreover, a teacher also has a contribution for helping students to achieve the students' success in writing class, especially when giving written feedback. Students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback are varied. There are several pros and cons to teacher's written feedback. Amara (2015) found that several students assumed that teacher's written feedback in form of comments as an instrument to show students' weaknesses and supply ways to enhance students' writing. Meanwhile, Küçükali (2017) found that teacher's written feedback is not beneficial for several students because sometimes it is pointless and insufficient face-to-face communication with the teacher.
Students' perceptions about teacher's written feedback can affect their success in their Academic Writing class. Hyland and Hyland (2006) stated that learners' responses to written feedback is affected by their perceptions towards the feedback carried with them into the second language classroom (as cited in Amara, 2015). The statement means that if students think that teacher's written feedback does not affect their success in their writing class, they Academic Writing students' perceptions on teacher feedback, most students thought that teacher feedback was primary for them to assist them in altering their writing. It showed that students could correct their grammatical errors from teacher comments. Moreover, they could also correct grammatical structures, select vocabulary, and set up their references. Regarding getting good scores, most students agreed that teacher feedback could enhance their writing scores in Academic Writing class. Telçeker and Akcan (2010) gave the same opinion that teacher's written feedback could enhance students' writing performance in writing class. They investigated the effect of oral and written teacher feedback on students' revisions. The study found that students' grammatical accuracy had improved across their rewrites. Students only made a little bit of grammatical, lexical, and mechanical errors and they could revise those errors. However, teacher's written feedback had a limited effect on content revisions.

Students' Motivation in Writing
Increasing students' motivation in writing class is not easy and teachers should find the right way for it. One example of how to increase students' motivation in writing is by giving them good teacher's written feedback. A study by Hamidun, Hashim, and Othman (2012) proved that after receiving teacher's written feedback in the form of enhancing the coherence and the presentation of ideas, students were more motivated and actively discussed the task given by the teacher. Moreover, students felt more encouraged to write and develop their ideas for their writing. They also found that students had big ardor to achieve their goals in writing after accepting teacher's written feedback in the forms of their writing content and praising.
In 2014, Zahida, Farrah, and Zaru also agreed that teacher's written feedback could increase students' motivation in writing class. They investigated the impact of written feedback in form of meaning-focused, form-focused, and positive feedback on students' motivation and writing skills. The result showed that meaning-focused feedback had more significant differences from other feedback because it got positive engagement from students and they felt pleased with this feedback. Besides that, this study also found that students prefer to feedback which focused on essay writing rather than feedback focused on paragraph writing because the feedback would be contained specific, critical, effective explanations and increase their motivation and creativity.

Context of the Study
This study was conducted in ELEP, the Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. It is located in Salatiga, Central Java. This study was taken specifically in English Language Education Program. The reason for choosing this major was because this major has Academic Writing courses that were suitable for the topic of this study. In the Academic Writing course, students were asked to make an essay where they could consult their essays and got written feedback from their lecturers. This study was conducted in Semester Gasal, 2022/2023 academic year. The time for conducting this study was from October 5, 2022 -January 10, 2023.

Participants
The participants for this study were 31 students from the Academic Writing classes in ELEP, the Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. They were students who were taking the Academic Writing course in Semester Gasal, 2022/2023 academic year. A purposive sample was used in this study for selecting the participants. The reason for choosing those participants was to get various answers about their perceptions of teacher's written feedback for their writing performances. Their perceptions could be varied toward teacher's written feedback for their writing performances.

Method of the Study
This study used a qualitative descriptive method to investigate Academic Writing students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing classes. Lambert & Lambert (2012) stated that a qualitative descriptive method tends to use a natural approach with a commitment to learning something in natural circumstances. In conclusion, a qualitative descriptive method is used by the researcher to investigate a phenomenon, situation, or population using natural ways to get detailed explanations.

Data Collection Instruments
There were two instruments for collecting the data in this study, an online questionnaire and interview protocols. To find out how students perceive teacher's written feedback, an online questionnaire was used in this study and distributed using Google Form. This questionnaire used two types of questions: open-ended and close-ended. The questionnaire was modified from Agbayahoun (2016) which consisted of 14 questions in the close-ended section and one question in the open-ended section. The questions related to how students perceive teacher's written feedback. This study used interview protocols to collect the data to get more substantial evidence. The participants were three of the total participants who were willing to be interviewed by the researcher. Three participants could provide three different perceptions about teacher's written feedback. The entire duration of the interview was seven minutes per participant.

Data Collection Procedures
The researcher began to distribute the link of the questionnaire to the participants. She spread the link in each Academic Writing class that started on October 5, 2022. Then, the participants were asked to complete the Google Form questionnaire. All of the participants filled out the questionnaire on November 22, 2022. The interview was conducted via Zoom Meeting on December 8, 2022, until January 10, 2023. Before the interview, the researcher had made an appointment with the interviewees and asked permission to record the interview. Finally, the researcher analysed, transcribed, and coded all data from the questionnaire and the interview.
Thematic analysis was used for analysing the data of this study. This analysis aimed to gain further information about Academic Writing students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback from the gathered data. First, the researcher analysed the data from the questionnaire. Then, she coded the data from the questionnaire by highlighting the keywords of the participants' answers. The keywords were to improve students' writing performances and did not improve students' writing performances. After done with the questionnaire, the researcher analysed the data from the recordings by transcribing the participants' responses. Then, she coded the data by highlighting the keywords of the participants' answers in the interview. The keywords were to improve students' writing performances and did not improve students' writing performances. All the questionnaire and recordings data were grouped into several categories depending on participants' responses, and analysed. Finally, themes emerged, and the researcher concluded.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This section shows the findings of the study derived from 31 students of the English Language Education Program, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. In this section, students gave their perceptions of teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class. The results showed that there were three perceptions from students which are positive, mixed, and negative perceptions. Moreover, there was another finding that could be effective for the lecturers when giving teacher's written feedback in the future.

Positive Perceptions of Teacher's Written Feedback
Students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback varied. The first perception indicated that some students had positive perceptions of teacher's written feedback for their essays. Fifteen students (48,4%) had positive perceptions of teacher's written feedback and agreed that they could clearly understand teacher's written feedback from their lecturers in Academic Writing class ( Figure 1). They assumed that teacher's written feedback was easy to understand because it was clear, specific, and detailed. Moreover, the lecturer also pointed out the students' errors and gave the corrections directly. It made students could understand written feedback very well. Another proof was taken from the interview section which showed that all the students agreed that they could understand teacher's written feedback very clearly. Student A said that her lecturer used easy-to-understand language for the written feedback. Meanwhile, Students B and C said that the written feedback given by their lecturer was clear and detailed. "I could understand very clearly because the feedback was written clearly and detailed so that I could catch the meaning of the feedback." -Student B, Interview, January 10, 2023 Excerpt 3: "Yes, of course. My lecturer gave the feedback very clearly and detailed so I could understand it even though it was written feedback." -Student C, Interview, December 8, 2022 Student A's statement proved that teacher's written feedback could be understood very clearly by the students as it used easy-to-understand language and the feedback was written to the point. Student A also stated that she could find the mistakes in her essay directly because of this straightforward written feedback.
Meanwhile, Student B and Student C stated that they could understand teacher's written feedback very clearly as it was written in detail. Even though it was written, they could understand it because their lecturers wrote it clearly. Students' understanding of teacher's written feedback can be one of the factors in achieving students' success in their writing class. According to Adi (2013), students needed to read and understand teacher's written feedback clearly to assist them in knowing their strengths and weaknesses in writing. Hence, it is important for the lecturers to give clear written feedback to students.
Students' writing performances could be enhanced after receiving teacher's written feedback. This statement was supported by Student F who stated that she became understood how to write a good and coherent essay which could enhance her writing performance. Moreover, she knew the errors in her essay and revised it after receiving teacher's written feedback. Another statement that proved teacher's written feedback could enhance students' writing performances came from Student G. He said that his lecturer has an excellent way when giving written feedback which used the critical thinking method. This method made his writing performance improve and helped him be a good academic writer. These findings were in line with a study from Listyani (2021), who revealed that teacher's written feedback enhanced students' understanding of writing and improved students' writing performances. Excerpt 9: "Written feedback provided by the lecturer was very important for developing my performance in writing essays. By receiving feedback from my lecturer, I knew how to write correct and coherent essays. That could train my skills in writing. Also, I could find out my mistakes and could correct them after that. I also gained knowledge about how to write correct and appropriate essays." -Student F, Questionnaire, October 5, 2022 Excerpt 10: "I thought my teacher has a good way of giving feedback to his students. I often found the teacher's critical thinking skills were high. That affected his feedback that were considered very helpful in making me a good academic writer." -Student G, Questionnaire, October 5, 2022 Meanwhile, Student B stated that she paid attention more in terms of punctuation in her essay. At first, she did not really pay attention to the use of punctuation, capitalization, and conjunction in her essay. However, she became more aware of that after receiving teacher's written feedback. Moreover, she gained a lot of knowledge about how to write a good essay.

Excerpt 11:
"For me, of course, it would make me better. Previously, I didn't pay much attention to punctuation but after getting written feedback from my lecturer I understood this more clearly. It also increased my knowledge about writing." -Student B, Interview, January 10, 2023 From all the findings it can be concluded that there were fifteen students who had positive perceptions ( Figure 2). The students stated that they could understand teacher's written feedback clearly since it was clear, specific, and detailed. Students' writing performances could increase after receiving teacher's written feedback. Student F said that she gained knowledge about how to write a good essay. Meanwhile, Student G stated that his lecturer used a critical thinking method when giving written feedback which made him become a good academic writer.

Benefits of Teacher's Written Feedback for Students
Teacher's written feedback gave many benefits to students in writing. Some students stated that teacher's written feedback offered positive effects on their essays. By receiving teacher's written feedback, students found it helpful to find out errors in their essays and they became more motivated to revise it. It was very helpful for students as they could pass the Academic Writing course successfully. Furthermore, their knowledge about writing was enhanced after getting teacher's written feedback.

The Ease for Students in Finding Errors
Students often made errors when writing their essays. Teacher's written feedback helped students to find out errors in their essays. This statement was supported by Student D who said that teacher's written feedback helped her to find her errors in terms of vocabulary, conjunctions, and coherency of the sentences in her essay. She also said that by getting teacher's written feedback, she became more aware of her errors when writing her essay.

Excerpt 4:
"Written feedback from the lecturer really helped me to write the essay. In my opinion, written feedback was very useful in improving vocabulary, the use of conjunctions, and coherent sentences so feedback from lecturers was very helpful in all three of these things. Through written feedback, I could pay more attention to my mistakes if I did not understand the essay that I would write." -Student D, Questionnaire, October 5, 2022 Teacher's written feedback also corrects students' errors when writing their essays. Student E stated that teacher's written feedback helped her to fix the errors in her essay. She also said that after receiving written feedback, she became comprehended in terms of the wrong and right sentences. The result of the study also showed that there were 20 students (64.5%) who strongly agreed that teacher's written feedback from their lecturer helped them to find out the errors in their essays which were presented in blue colour ( Figure 2). All the findings were suitable with a study from Zhan (2016), who revealed that teacher's written feedback helped students to find out their errors and know what should be increased.

Students' Motivation in Revising Their Essay
Students' motivation for revising their essays is one of the important things when writing their essays. Teacher's written feedback could motivate students to revise their essays when making errors. This statement was supported by Student A and Student B, who said that they became more motivated to revise their essay after receiving written feedback from their lecturers so that they did not repeat the same errors in the future. Meanwhile, Student C said that she had the intention to revise her essay, but she felt that there was no action to revise her essay. "I intended to revise my essay but for practice not yet. There is motivation but when doing revisions, I was a bit lazy. " -Student C, Interview, December 8, 2022 motivated to revise their essays after getting teacher's written feedback from their lecturer. All the findings from the questionnaire and the interview were in line with a study from Zahida, Farrah, and Zaru in 2014, who proved that students' motivation in writing class enhanced after getting teacher's written feedback.

Mixed Perception of Teacher's Written Feedback
The study also found that some students indicated that they had mixed perceptions about teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class. In the open-ended question, two students, Student H and Student I, gave their opinions about teacher's written feedback which indicated that they had mixed perceptions about it. Student H had an opinion that the existence of teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class had already been good enough for students. However, she said that written feedback was insufficient to enhance all students writing performances as students had different characters. Some students preferred oral feedback to written feedback. Student I said that teacher's written feedback was easy to understand. However, sometimes she found it difficult to understand teacher's written feedback because her lecturer used difficult language that confused her. Meanwhile, Student J said that she always received the same written feedback from her lecturer. Even though she always received the same written feedback, she stated that written feedback still provided benefits for her in terms of revising her essay. Excerpt 12: "In my opinion, the existence of written feedback given by lecturers to students was good enough. However, not all students could develop their writing performances because every student was different. For some students, maybe they would be able to improve their performances, but for others, they might feel that they were still lacking because they felt that oral feedback was much better. " -Student H, Questionnaire, November 21, 2022 Excerpt 13: "Written feedback was easy to understand, but sometimes I had difficulty understanding that feedback when the lecturer used languages that were hard to understand. " -Student I, Questionnaire, November 21, 2022  From the findings, it can be concluded that three students (9,7%) have mixed perceptions regarding teacher's written feedback in the Academic Writing class ( Figure 5). Teacher's written feedback was already good enough and understandable for students if they used easyto-understand language. Meanwhile, students found it difficult to understand teacher's written feedback if it used complicated language. Teacher's written feedback was still not enough to enhance students' writing performances as not all students could understand it easily and they preferred oral feedback to written feedback.

Negative Perceptions of Teacher's Written Feedback
Negative perceptions of teacher's written feedback were also found in this study. In the questionnaire there were thirteen students (41,9%) who had negative perceptions. Seven students stated that they found it difficult to understand teacher's written feedback from their lecturers in Academic Writing class. Student K and Student L said that their lecturers only gave concise teacher's written feedback and did not give enough explanations. Furthermore, Student M said that her lecturer used difficult language and sentences which made her confused about the written feedback given. These findings aligned with Wattimury (2014), who investigated students' perceptions of oral and teacher's written feedback. He revealed that students faced some difficulties in understanding teacher's written feedback because the teacher's handwriting was confusing, not readable, and used difficult language, confusing students. Another proof showed the inability of students to understand teacher's written feedback which is shown in the pie chart below (Figure 6). Seven out of thirty-one students (22,6%) did not understand the teacher's written feedback well. From the pie chart below, it is clear that seven students found it difficult to understand teacher's written feedback from their lecturers. The reasons were that their lecturers gave concise written feedback and used difficult language. Please refer to Figure 6 below.

Figure 6. Students' inability to Understand Teacher's Written Feedback
Teacher's written feedback was not enough to enhance students' writing performances. Two students who gave the same opinions in the open-ended section supported this statement. Student N said that some students considered that teacher's written feedback was more unclear than oral feedback. Therefore, it was not enough to enhance students' writing performances. This statement was in accordance with a study from Küçükali (2017), who found that teacher's oral feedback was more effective for enhancing students' writing performances because it was problem-solving and gave the opportunity for the teacher to handle their needs and personal problems in writing. Student O stated that sometimes teacher's written feedback was difficult to understand. In her opinion, it was better for the lecturers to point out students' errors and give suggestions directly, which could enhance students' writing performances. The pie chart below discusses the improvement of students' writing performances after getting teacher's written feedback (Figure 7). It was clear that six students or 19,4% stated that teacher's written feedback could not enhance students' writing performances. The reason was that teacher's written feedback was confusing and unclear. Furthermore, one student said that her writing performances did not improve significantly as she was still in the beginning of the lesson.

Figure 7. Students' Writing Performances
From the findings it can be concluded that thirteen students (41,9%) had negative perceptions (Figure 8). Seven students found it difficult to understand teacher's written feedback from their lecturers. Moreover, six students did not feel the improvement in their writing performances after receiving teacher's written feedback. Student N and Student O's opinions indicated that students' writing performances did not enhance significantly after getting teacher's written feedback. Students N would rather choose oral feedback than written feedback from their lecturers. The reason was that teacher's oral feedback was clearer than teacher's written feedback. Meanwhile, Student O's writing performances did not improve significantly as her lecturer did not point out her errors directly. To sum up all the findings that the researcher found in terms of students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class, there were fifteen students or 48,4% who had positive perceptions towards teacher's written feedback. They stated that teacher's written feedback was easy to understand as it used understandable language and enhanced their writing performances in Academic Writing class. Moreover, teacher's written feedback helped students to find out the errors in their essays and increased their motivation for revising the essays. Another finding was that three students (9,7%) had mixed perceptions of teacher's written feedback. They said that teacher's written feedback had already been good however, it still was not enough to improve students' writing performances in Academic Writing class as sometimes it was unclear. This study also found that thirteen students (41,9%) had negative perceptions towards teacher's written feedback as they found it difficult to understand the written feedback and they preferred to choose oral feedback than written feedback. Moreover, the students also stated that teacher's written feedback did not enhance their writing performances in Academic Writing class.

Another Finding
This section discusses another finding that the researcher found when exploring Academic Writing students' perceptions. The other finding was suggestions for teacher's written feedback in the future. The data was derived from the interview section which was followed by three students. Student A did not give her suggestions because her lecturer already gave well-written feedback. Meanwhile, Student B and Student C explained their suggestions for how should Academic Writing lectures when giving teacher's written feedback so that students could understand it easily.

Suggestions for Teacher's Written Feedback in the Future
To reach the aim of this study about contributing valuable suggestions for Academic Writing lecturers when giving teacher's written feedback, the researcher investigated students' suggestions for Academic Writing lecturers when giving written feedback. The findings showed that Student B suggested that Academic Writing lecturers should be more detailed when giving written feedback. Furthermore, teacher's written feedback should cover both linguistic features (grammar and punctuation) and the content of students' essays. Meanwhile, Student C suggested that teacher's written feedback should be more specific and use simple and understandable language. Moreover, Academic Writing lecturers could provide direct suggestions. "I suggested that Academic Writing lecturers should give more specific written feedback and use a simple and easy language. Then, they could offer a direct suggestion for the errors. " -Student C, Interview, December 8, 2022 From the findings, it can be concluded that students' suggestions for teacher's written feedback were Academic Writing lecturers should give more detailed and specific written feedback to their students. The written feedback should cover both linguistic features and the content of students' essays. Moreover, the lecturers could also provide direct suggestions for students' errors. These findings were similar to a study from Adi (2013), who revealed that the most preferred feedback for students is feedback on content and grammar structure. Adi also stated that students liked to get written feedback from their lecturer in the form of direct suggestions.

CONCLUSION
Feedback is one of the important things in writing class, especially for students. It is important for students because it can influence student's success in their writing class. There are several types of feedback, a kind of this is teacher's written feedback. Teacher's written feedback is written feedback that students get from their teacher to improve their writing performances. Another important thing that can influence students' success in their writing class is students' perceptions of feedback. Hyland and Hyland (2006) stated that written feedback is affected by learners' perceptions carried with them into the second language classroom (as cited in Amara, 2015).
This study focused on Academic Writing students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback in the Academic Writing class. For guiding this research, the question that was used in this study was "What are Academic Writing students' perceptions about teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class?" The researcher found that Academic Writing students have varied perceptions of teacher's written feedback. There were three types of perceptions which were positive, mixed, and negative. Fifteen students who had positive perceptions stated that they have already clearly understood teacher's written feedback from their lecturers. They also mentioned that their writing performances enhanced after getting teacher's written feedback for their lectures. Furthermore, the students stated that teacher's written feedback gave benefits to their essay. For the essay, they mentioned that the teacher's written feedback made it easy to find out their errors and increased their motivation to revise their essay.
This study also found that students had mixed and negative perceptions toward teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing class. Three students with mixed perceptions stated that teacher's written feedback was already good enough and understandable if the lecturers used easy-to-understand language. Moreover, they also stated that teacher's written feedback was not enough to enhance students' writing performances as the lecturers sometimes gave unclear feedback and they preferred to choose oral feedback over written feedback. Meanwhile, thirteen students who had negative perceptions said that teacher's written feedback could not enhance students' writing performances. The reasons were their lecturers did not give clear written feedback and they did not point out students' errors directly which made them confused about it.
Another finding that the researcher found was teacher's written feedback from Academic Writing lecturers covered both linguistic features and the content. This study also investigated students' suggestions for teacher's written feedback in Academic Writing classes in the future. The aim of doing this is to give valuable suggestions to the Academic Writing teacher in giving well-written feedback. Students suggested that teacher's written feedback should be more specific and detailed. They also said that teacher's written feedback should cover both linguistic features and the content. Moreover, the lecturers could directly point out students' errors to clarify written feedback.
The implications for the Academic Writing lecturers were that they could give better teacher's written feedback for students' essays. After knowing students' perceptions of teacher's written feedback, the Academic Writing lecturers were expected to provide clear and understandable written feedback. Moreover, teacher's written feedback could be more specific and detailed. Hopefully, this study could be a valuable suggestion for Academic Writing lecturers when giving teacher's written feedback.
When conducting this research, the researcher experienced several limitations. She faced difficulties in obtaining detailed answers from the participants in the questionnaire. Moreover, the lack of participants in the interview session made the discussion in the interview session limited. For future research, the researcher suggested that future researchers can make more open-ended questions in the questionnaire to get more detailed answers from the participants in the questionnaire. She also said that future researchers can find more participants for the interview session to get more varied responses from the participants. This study also has a limitation where Academic Writing lecturers' perceptions had been not included yet in this study. Including their perceptions in this study would be better since it was also essential to enhance students' writing performances. A suggestion for future research was to investigate the Academic Writing lecturers' perceptions of teacher's written feedback as well.