Improving EFL Students’ Academic Writing through Scaffolding,
Self-Correction, and Peer Review
Iis Nur Rodliyah, Juliati Juliati and Ida Puji Lestari
Study Program of English, Universitas Brawijaya, Jalan Veteran, Malang, Indonesia
{iis.rodliyah, juliati.fib, idapujilestari}@ub.ac.id
Keywords: TEFL, Academic Writing, Scaffolding, Self-Correction, Peer Review.
Abstract: This paper aims at reporting the undergraduate EFL students’ academic writing at Universitas Brawijaya,
Indonesia. The objectives of this research are to find out the contributions of: (1) grammar scaffolding to the
improvement of students’ academic English writing at Study Program of English, Universitas Brawijaya, (2)
self-correction to the improvement of students’ academic English writing at Study Program of English,
Universitas Brawijaya, and (3) the contribution of peer review to the improvement of students’ academic
English writing at Study Program of English, Universitas Brawijaya. The data in this study were the first
chapters of the research proposals written by eighteen students of Research Proposal Writing class at Study
Program of English, Universitas Brawijaya after being introduced to three strategies namely scaffolding, self-
correction, and peer review. The results showed that despite the students’ ability to identify a number of
mistakes during self-correction and peer review activities, some corrections and suggestions are found
inaccurate. Thus, the scaffolding given by the lecturer plays a prominent role in dealing with the situation.
1 INTRODUCTION
The motivation behind this research is the fact that
writing an academic English has never been an easy
task for undergraduate students. This situation has
been noticeable during the process of writing an
undergraduate thesis by students of Study Program of
English, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Universitas
Brawijaya. Most supervisors reported for having
student writers who struggled with English grammar
aspects during the supervision process. Even during
the proposal seminar and result seminar, the
supervisor and/or the examiner always put some
comments on grammatical mistakes/errors that are
frequently found in the students’ thesis manuscript.
Despite the fact that undergraduate students of
Study Program of English do some courses in English
structure, incorporating the theories into the practice
of writing good academic English might be difficult
due to the sophisticated requirements and style of
academic English writing. Unfortunately, sufficient
research showing this condition which can be used as
a source of recommendation for improving the
students’ writing has not yet been available at the
Study Program of English, Universitas Brawijaya.
This notion is in accordance with Faraj’s
statement (2015) that most of EFL learners struggle
in producing a good piece of English writing which is
caused by their limited preliminary knowledge for
writing including grammar. Moreover, Faraj (2015, p.
141) claims that with scaffolding “…students, who
previously struggled to write, now have a growing
awareness of how to gather information and use it in
their writing confidently” and application of
scaffolding techniques is considered to be more
effective compared to more traditional method of
merely giving materials to learn and instruction to
accomplish.
This research aims to find out a potential
technique for improving students’ academic English
writing by minimizing or even eliminating
grammatical errors at both word and sentence levels
in their English writing. In details, this research is
intended to find out (1) the corrections that are made
by the students using self-correction technique, (2)
the corrections that are made by the students using
peer review technique, and (3) how scaffolding helps
students in correcting and thus improving their
English academic writing.
Therefore, the researchers are interested in
conducting a study on improving the students’
academic English writing in terms of appropriateness
of style and acceptability according to the proper
rules of English grammar. The scope of this research
is limited to the investigation of the students’ ability
Rodliyah, I., Juliati, J. and Lestari, I.
Improving EFL Students’ Academic Writing through Scaffolding, Self-Correction, and Peer Review.
DOI: 10.5220/0007164201810186
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 181-186
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
181
to recognize and correct the grammatical errors in
their English academic writings.
The participants of the study are one group of
eighteen undergraduate students of Study Program of
English who undertake Research Proposal Writing.
The main objective in this course is the students have
ability in writing a proper research proposal in
English that can be used as their undergraduate thesis
proposal in the following semester.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Scaffolding in Teaching and Learning
of EFL Writing
Scaffolding, a technique in which students who are
learning certain knowledge or skills are provided with
assistance and/or guidance from the
teachers/instructors who progressively lead the
students to be independent and have the intended
abilities and/or competences (Bodrova and Leong,
1998), might be chosen as a solution in improving
EFL learners’ academic writing.
According to Faraj (2015) most of EFL learners
struggle in producing a good piece of English writing
which is caused by their limited preliminary
knowledge for writing including grammar. However,
with scaffolding, Faraj (2015, p. 141) claims that
“Students, who previously struggled to write, now
have a growing awareness of how to gather
information and use it in their writing confidently”
and application of scaffolding techniques is
considered to be more effective compared to more
traditional method of merely giving materials to learn
and instruction to accomplish.
2.2 Self-Correction and Peer Review in
EFL Students’ Writing Activity
Based on Ganji’s article (2009), several studies
previously conducted have proven that self-
correction and revision upon receiving feedback from
either the teacher or peers can significantly improve
an EFL student’s writing performance. Moreover,
self-correction and revision play a more prominent
role in improving EFL students’ writing than
receiving teachers’ feedback with no further self-
checking follow up (Ganji, 2009).
In addition to self-correction, peer review has
become a strategy adopted by teachers in their writing
classes. Liu & Hansen (2002) as cited in Kunwongse
(2013, p. 278) define peer review as:
The use of learners as sources of information, and
interactants for each other in such a way that
learners assume roles and responsibilities normally
taken on by a formally trained teacher, tutor or
editor in commenting on and critiquing each other's
drafts in both written and oral formats in the process
of writing.
In composing a piece of writing the ventures of
overlooking any unintended mistakes and/or errors
are potentials, and peer review might offer a solution
for fixing the overlooked problems that include
grammar improvement (Regoniel, 2013). In addition,
a significant finding of a research conducted by
Lundstrom and Baker (2009) shows that peer review
in writing composition benefits not only the students
who were given peer-reviews but also, substantially,
to those who gave reviews or conducted the peer-
review.
Considering the literatures and the results of
previous studies conducted in investigating the
impact of scaffolded self-correction and peer review,
this research is conducted in order to reveal the
potential impacts of self-correction and peer review
in the quality of undergraduate students’ academic
writing at the Study Program of English, Faculty of
Cultural Studies, Universitas Brawijaya.
3 METHODS
The research conducted was designed as a case study.
The research is quantitative one regarding that the
findings are presented in figures i.e. the number of
errors being identified and corrected by the students
through self-correction and peer review activities.
The research procedures involve the followings: (1)
preliminary studies, (2) literature review, planning,
designing materials and instruments, (3) data
collection, (4) data analysis, and (5) discussion.
The data of this research are the results of
grammatical errors identification and correction done
by 18 student participants. The data collection was
conducted in 6 weeks with the following details:
1. Week 1: Presenting the teaching material to the
students in their class. The handout of teaching
material on grammar and style for English
academic writing had been prepared in advance.
2. Week 2: Assigning the students to write
Chapter I of their research proposal and asking
them to consider the grammar and style aspects
presented in the teaching materials.
3. Week 3: After having Chapter I ready, the
students were asked to do self-correction by
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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putting notes on their first draft under the
researcher’s supervision.
4. Week 4: Asking the students to make the first
revision based on their self-correction.
5. Week 5: Asking the students to work in pair
doing peer review activity by putting notes on
each other’s second draft under the researcher’s
supervision.
6. Week 6: Asking the students to make the second
revision based on the notes given during peer
review activity.
7. Week 6: Distributing questionnaire to the
students regarding the scaffolded self-correction
and peer review activities.
After collecting the data, the researchers analysed
them using the following steps:
1. Identifying the corrections made by the students
through the self-correction activity and finding
the trend.
2. Identifying the corrections made by the students
through the peer review activity and finding the
trend.
3. Recapitulating the students’ responses upon the
distributed questionnaire.
4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Findings
The findings show that the students made some
efforts in improving the quality of their academic
writing in English by identifying and correcting some
grammatical errors found in it. The research
participants made 97 correction using self-correction
technique and 84 corrections upon doing peer review
activity. However, among the 97 self-corrections, 82
corrections are appropriate while the 15 remaining
corrections are found to be inaccurate. Similar
condition occurs in the corrections done by peer
review technique i.e. 60 out of 84 corrections are
accurate, while the other 24 corrections are
inaccurate.
4.1.1 The Corrections Made by the Students
Using Self-Correction Technique
After finishing self-correction activity, the students
identified 18 kinds of problems that deal with
grammatical aspects in their writing and made 82
corrections. The number of corrected mistakes is
presented in Table 1.
Table 1: The distribution of problems identified and
corrected in self-correction activity.
No.
Problems
Number of
Cases
1
Word form
17
2
Spelling
11
3
Reducing wordiness
8
4
Article
8
5
Word choice
6
6
SV Agreement
5
7
Preposition
4
8
Relative clause
4
9
Passive form
3
10
Punctuation mark
3
11
Reference
3
12
Tenses
3
13
Participial phrase
2
14
Coordinator
1
15
Double verb
1
16
Word addition
1
17
Parallel structure
1
18
Subordinator
1
4.1.2 The Corrections Made by the Students
Using Peer Review Technique
After being checked using self-correction activity, the
students’ writing were reviewed further by peer
students. The peer review activity contributed to 60
more corrections that fall under 18 problems dealing
with grammatical aspects of writing.
Similar to the finding in self-correction activity,
the highest number of corrected problems was the
word form and the second one was spelling with 12
and 7 corrections respectively. Table 2 shows the
detailed number of the correction made under peer
review activity.
Table 2: The distribution of problems identified and
corrected in peer review activity.
No.
Problems
Number of
Cases
1
Word form
12
2
Spelling
7
3
Preposition
5
4
Article
5
5
Punctuation mark
4
6
Sentence variation
4
7
Double verbs
3
8
Passive form
3
9
Reducing wordiness
3
10
Coordinator
2
11
Missing word
2
12
SV agreement
2
13
Tenses
2
Improving EFL Students’ Academic Writing through Scaffolding, Self-Correction, and Peer Review
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14
Word choice
2
15
Different focus
1
16
Reference
1
17
Run on sentence
1
18
Word order
1
4.1.3 Inaccuracies in the Students’
Correction
The finding suggests there are 15 inaccuracies in
either identifying errors or making corrections in self-
correction activity and 24 inaccuracies in peer-review
activity. This became the situation when scaffolding
given by the teacher was necessary to help the
students in recognizing the errors and the better/best
way to correct them.
Table 3: Inaccuracies in doing corrections.
No.
Number of
Cases
1
7
2
3
3
1
4
1
5
1
6
1
7
1
15
1
8
2
4
3
3
4
2
5
2
No.
Number
of Cases
6
1
7
1
8
1
9
1
10
1
24
4.1.4 How Scaffolding Helps Students in
Correcting and Improving their
English Academic Writing
The scaffoldings given by the teacher both directly
through face-to-face and class discussion and
indirectly through the handout prepared for the
students are found to be helpful for the students in
improving their English academic writing. This is due
to the fact that in addition to accurate corrections
made by the students in self-correction and peer
review activity, some inaccuracies in making
corrections also took place.
The scaffolding was done after the teacher
checked the students’ corrections and when there
were questions asked by the students. The teacher
would firstly asked the students to find the
explanation and examples on similar problem in the
handout. If the students could not figure out the
inaccuracies by themselves after consulting their
module, the teacher would explain the problems to the
students.
The following Table 4 and Table 5 show the
examples of some common mistakes made by the
students in their writings:
Table 3: Examples of mistakes found and corrected by the
Students.
Aspects
Students’ Work
Original Version
Corrected
Version
Article
an information
information
word form
communicate
communication
parallel
structure
not only
not only … but
also…
Preposition
According
according to
academic word
choice
Chooses
Selects
active vs.
passive form
…mostly done
…are mostly
done
modal + verb1
we can found
we can find
punctuation
mark
etc,
etc.
Reference
the language
the languages
quantifier +
noun
every people
everyone
Aspects
Students’ Work
Original Version
Corrected
Version
Determiner
to achieve goals
to achieve their
goals
Wordiness
the researcher
can conclude
the researcher
conclude
Spelling
Wit
With
dependent
clause
Foreign language
is used at…
Foreign
language used
at…
coordinator vs.
subordinator
But,
However,
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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Table 4: Examples of inaccurate correction.
Aspects
Students’ Work
Original Version
Corrected Version
count vs.
non-count
noun
research
Researches
possessive –s
to convey one is
intention
to convey one
intention
Article
to get
information
to get an
information
Tense
politeness occur
politeness
occurred
modal + v1
It could assisst
It could assists
verb form
The researcher
used
The researcher
use
relative
clause
…to avoid
misunderstand-
ing happens in
interaction
…to avoid
misunderstand-
ing that happen in
interaction
singular vs.
plural
expression
every question
every questions
word form
And ambiguity
meaning
An ambiguity
meaning
Gerund
by uttering
by utter
The overall results of this study show that the
strategies of self-correction and peer review are
beneficial in improving the EFL students’ writing.
The learning effect is also expected to retain better
and longer because the students find and correct the
mistakes by themselves.
Moreover, some inaccuracies occurring during the
self-correction and peer review activities should not
be considered as significant drawbacks. Instead, the
lecturer can use this situation as the basis for
strengthening the students’ understanding of several
concepts incorrectly perceived by the students.
4.2 Discussion
Based on the data and the analysis applied to them,
the improvement on students’ academic writing in
English is noticeable. The self-correction activity
gives the higher contribution in finding the errors and
how to fix them. Although some inaccuracies take
place, the number is lower than the inaccuracies
occurs in peer-review activity. The role of peer
review in improving the students’ writing should not
be neglected considering that after being self-
corrected, more errors are successfully identified
during peer review activity. Therefore, these two
activities might be considered as mutual
complements.
However, when the students are let to work by
themselves, the chances for inaccuracies in
identifying errors and/or suggesting corrections may
emerge. Some potential problems that lead to this
situation are the students’ lack of experience in doing
self-correction and/or peer review and their limitation
in understanding several rules in composing
academic writing in English. This way, the role of
scaffolding given by the teacher is very prominent
both in helping the students improve their skills and
knowledge in English as well as in helping them
improve the quality of their writings.
The findings of this research confirm the results of
the previous studies by Regoniel (2013) and
Lundstrom and Baker (2009) that peer-review is
useful in refining the students’ writing by finding
more errors which were unidentified during the self-
correction process. Also, it was not only the students’
being reviewed who got the benefits of the activities,
but also those who did the peer-review.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Writing an academic piece in English might be a
difficult task for the students learning English as a
foreign language. Therefore, we need to put more
effort in dealing with this matter. Self-correction and
peer review activity have long been believed to be
among the strategies implemented in order to improve
the students’ skills in producing a good piece of
writing. However, leaving this all to the students
should not be considered wise enough considering
that some obstacles might come up on the way of their
learning. Therefore designing scaffolded self-
correction and peer review must yield better results
compared to having the students work by themselves.
Through the scaffolding, the teachers can give
adequate support to the students in their learning
process.
In most Department of English at Indonesian
universities, the sixth semester students have
normally passed all English Structure/Grammar and
Writing courses. However, when they are required to
produce a piece of academic writing in English, some
of them cannot apply their previous knowledge due to
lack of understanding or confusion. Thus,
reintroducing the student to the rules in English
structure and academic writing should be considered
helpful. Assigning the students to do self-correction
and peer-review is definitely stimulate them to be
more autonomous. Although some inaccuracies may
occur during these procedures, the sufficient
Improving EFL Students’ Academic Writing through Scaffolding, Self-Correction, and Peer Review
185
scaffolding given by the lecturer would significantly
help the EFL students’ improve their writings.
REFERENCES
Faraj, Avan KA. 2015. Scaffolding EFL students’ writing
through the writing process approach. Journal of
Education and Practice. Vol.6, No.13, pp. 131-141
Ganji, M. 2009. Teacher-correction, peer-correction and
selfcorrection: their impacts on iranian students’ ielts
essay writing performance. The Journal of Asia TEFL
Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring), pp. 117-139.
Kunwongse, S. 2013. Peer feedback, benefits and
drawbacks. Thammasat Review, Special Issue, pp. 277-
288.
Lundstrom, K., Baker, W. 2009. To give is better than to
receive: the benefits of peer review to the reviewer’s
own writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 18,
pp. 30–43.
Regoniel, Patrick A. 2013. 10 Benefits of peer review in
research writing. http//simplyeducate.me /2013/
06/24/10-benefits-of-peer-review-in-researchwriting/.
Accessed February 2017.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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