“ I ENJOY WRITING IN ENGLISH”: EFFECT OF USING POLITENESS IN WRITTEN DIRECT FEEDBACK Echo : The Journal of English Language Teaching in Foreign Language Context

Giving feedback is not only doing correcting but also motivating the students to increase their skills especially in writing. Writing is perceived as the most difficult skill because it requires good written communication skill. Similar to the students, the teacher is forced to have good written communication skill in commenting L2 learners’ writing. In commenting the error, politeness strategies are perceived as the best way to attract and motivate the students in giving written feedback. However, the study of giving feedback on students’ writing is still becoming hot issue. Therefore, this research studied about the effect of using politeness strategy in written direct feedback on students’ writing to fill the gap. There were experimental group (n = 5) and control group (n = 5) who must write their opinion in academic writing style. This study implemented quantitative and qualitative method with quasi-experimental study. Quantitative was used to find the effectiveness of the treatment by using ANOVA analysis while qualitative was applied to find the students’ opinion about the treatment. The result was experimental group outperformed the control group.


INTRODUCTION
As lingua franca, English is perceived to ease people of different nation doing interaction. Jenkins (2006) also stated that English is as lingua franca and English is also as a language in the world (Brutt-Grifler, 2002). Furthermore, English is also claimed as an international language (Jenkins, 2000;Modiano, 1999). The status of English is international is not only based on a number of English users (McKay, 2002) but also its unique and has special role which is recognized in various parts of the world (Crystal, 1997); English is language between people of different background and nations (McKay, 2002); becomes the most important language (Shaw, 1981). Crystal (1997) also argues that English play important role as international language because it is as a tool to maintain the relationship in global society, as intervarietal way of communication.
Communication is the way how to receive and share the information successfully in both spoken and written. Unlike speaking, many people believed that writing is hard and takes many efforts to be accomplished because of linguistic and cognitive problems involved. Leki (1990) sees writing as an academic skill which needs strategies in producing texts. Myles (2002, p.4) argues that L2 writing required an effort consciously and constant practice in composing, developing, and analysing the idea. To achieve the goal of L2 writing competency, teachers concern on how to correct the error and give the feedback for learners. Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning (Hattie & Timperly, 2007:81). It gives not only error information but also facilitate student to improve learners' skill (Hyland and Hyland, 2001). In addition, Muncie (2000) also stated that feedback on learner's writing is the most important aspect to increase students' writing skill. There are two techniques in writing feedback namely direct and indirect written feedback to achieve the goal of teaching second language writing.
In writing assessment, there is one distinction made to know the best type of written feedback namely indirect feedback and direct feedback. Direct feedback refers to the explicit error treatment by giving correct linguistics form while indirect feedback provides only underlined word or sentence with various their explicitness in student's text error. Once the error is corrected, students' error and encourage in hypothesis testing, problem solving, and self-editing can be noticed. It, therefore, is claimed as the best error treatment than direct feedback for L2 writing (Noroozizadeh, 2009;Erel and Bulut, 2007;Ferris, 2002;Ashwell, 2000;Lalandale, 1982). In 1982, Lalande studied 60 German FL learners in the USA university for 10 weeks. He found that the students had tremendous improvement when they were given indirect feedback. In direct written feedback, students with limited knowledge of L2 rule have less effort in revising their writing.  also explained that indirect correction is more effective than direct feedback. It is caused by the need of analytical which fosters the internalization of the correct structure when students are doing editing (Ferris 1995;Doughty & Williams, 1998). Ghandi and Maghsoudi (2014) found that indirect feedback outperformed direct feedback after his investigatation on Iranian EFL students' written spelling accuracy.
On the contrary, SLA researcher argued that direct feedback is more advantageous than indirect feedback because it can foster the development of language acquisition (Bitchener, 2008;Bitchener et al., 2005;Sheen, 2007;Carroll and Swain, 1993). Bitchener (2005) in his study found that pupils had stunning increase on writing skill after accepting direct feedback treatment. In short, different feedback types on the application of different context and methodologies provokes different result and finding. So, direct feadback is efficient way to reduce the confusion which bring discouragement in L2 writing. Interestingly, another research found that both direct feedback and indirect feedback have equal benefit in improving L2 learners' accuracy (Bitchener and Knoch, 2010b;Frantzen, 1995;Robb, et al. 1986). Thus, the different results of the efficacy of L2 written feedback usage lead to do research about the implementation of direct feedback on L2 writing by using politeness strategy.
In this respect, this study will do the research about the effect of direct feedback by using politeness strategy on both L2 learner's writing competence and motivation. The research subject will be the students with low score of English competencies because proficiency may become one of its obstacles in implementing indirect feedback (Bitchener, 2012;Sheen 2007). Usually, the teacher focuses on language, content, and organization of writing in giving written feedback for L2 learners (Jacobs et al., 1981;East, 2009). Harmer (2007 argued that there are four stages of writing process to compose writing in foreign language namely preediting, editing, re-drafting, and final revision. In addition, Muncie (2000) also stated that feedback on learner's writing is the most important aspect to increase students' writing skill. Some researcher argued that the benefits of feedback on language acquisition (Shintani, Ellis, & Suzuki, 2014;Hanaoka & Izumi, 2012;Bitchener and Knoch, 2008). Truscott (1996) stated that written corrective feedback is not suitable for language acquisition while Ferris (2010) and Bitchener (2012) argued that it supports the students to acquire second language.

Feedback
Feedback is an essential tool for motivating students in L2 writing skill. Montgomery & Baker (2007) argued that it gives the opportunity to improve students' writing. Faris and Williams (2002) argued that L2 students' written production has errorness on their work. Because of different capabilities in L2 rule, they need long time to competent in L2 writing target production namely vocabulary, morphology, phonology, and syntax. Lalande (1982) found that corrective feedback contributes the development of L2 writing skill on German students.
Meanwhile, Robb et al. (1986) and Truscott's (1996) found controversial result in grammar correction. They furthemore claims that it gives harmful effects in second language writing. Interestingly, 3 years later after Truscott's finding,  claimed that Trustcott's view was premature due to his findings showed positive impacts It also was followed by some studies which also believe on the development L2 writing students (Ferris, 2004(Ferris, , 2006.

Direct Written Feedback
Direct feedback is the explicit error treatment by giving the form of correct linguistics. Direct corrective feedback is consist of error indication and correct linguistics form whereas indirect CF identifies an errors production which use different forms in various their explicitness (Ferris, 2010;Lalande, 1982).
Example: a a the A dog stole χ bone from χ butcher. He escaped with having χ bone. When the dog was Over a a saw a going through χ bridge over the river he found dog in the river.
Source: Ellis (2008:99) Direct feedback technique allows teacher to comment and give recommendation towards the error on students' writing (Harmer, 2007). He also believed that students are often very happy to have personal attention from the teacher.
From the examples above, it can be showed that direct feedback gives the positive effects for the learner with the explicit guidance especially for low English proficiency level. Sheen (2007) states that direct CF is effective for certain grammatical features acquisition. In addition, Bitchener and Ferris (2010) claimed that direct written feedback is able to master specific target on the structural writing in short term process. He provided the direct feedback sample in giving recommendation on students' work Everyone have(has) been a liar ˆ (at least) once in their life(lives). People who lie intentionally to harm others are bad people (') and their lies are harmful too. However, there are lies that are done(told) with good intentions. So, there are times that lies appropriate. Only one person can (The only person who can) really tell whether a lie is intended to harm or do good is the one who told the lie. Therefore, direct written feedback looks as the helps the student who are not able to correct their error by themselves because it provides the explicit guidance.

Politeness and Written Discourse
Politeness is seen as pragmatics phenomenon since pragmatics is an equipment of social communication. In maintaining social relation, someone is forced to be polite to others. Therefore, politeness provides how the people can keep their etiquette or polite behavior to other. Leech (1983:82) states that politeness is a crucial thing in social interaction to maintain the social equilibrium and social interaction by using polite illocutions. It means that politeness is the study of verbal interaction which focuses on polite utterance or language as an etiquette in shifting the social interaction.
The society more concerns on how the people can maximize their polite behavior to regard or respect other. That is why Leech (1983:80) states that the people prefer to implement politeness than Cooperative Principle (CP) in certain situation. The Cooperative Principle refers to the principle which in making conversation, the participant must first of all be willing to cooperate or it would be impossible for them to carry on the talk. The Cooperative Principle of Grice (in Leech, 1983:8) goes as follows: Quantity Maxim: Give the right amount of information 1. Make your contribution as informative as required.
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Quality Maxim: Try to make your contribution one that is true 1. The Grice's theory of Cooperative Principle above is criticized by Leech (1983) because it cannot explain "why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean" and "what is the relation between sense and force when non-declarative types of sentences are being considered (Leech, 1983:80). Sense is literal meaning and force is presented as a set of implicit meaning. In this case, Leech views that Cooperative Principle is in weak position in social communication. Therefore, he introduces Politeness Principle (PP) which is formulated as follow: Minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs Maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite belief (Leech, 1983:81) It means that the people must maximize the favourable behaviour to others in being polite. Vice versa, the people must minimize the unfavourable to others in being polite. Example: A: When is Aunt Rose's birthday? B: It's sometime in April (Leech, 1983:30) The sense of speaker B is Aunt Rose's birthday occurs in April because B doesn't know the exact date of the birthday. Based on Grice's Cooperative Principle, B has violate the Quantity Maxim of Cooperative Principle because it force people to contribute as informative as is required in communication. In other side, B has tried to uphold the Maxim of Quality. Grice's quality maxim is "try to make your contribution one that is true". In this case, B does not know when Aunt Rose's birthday exactly is, except it is on April. Example: (1) A: We'll all miss Bill and Agatha, won't we? B: Well, we'll all miss Bill.
(2) P: Someone's eaten the icing off the cake C: It wasn't me. (Leech, 1983:80) In example (1), B violates Grice's Quantity Maxim because when A asks B toconfirm A's opinion, B only confirms about miss Bill. It means that B implicates if they will not all miss Agatha. In example (2), C violates the Maxim of Relevant in which C response P's statement is uncohherent. C's reaction seems that he is not a guilty. In this case, P thought that C is a suspect who has eaten the icing off the cake so that P tries to soften his language when P needs C's clarification.
From two examples above, Leech notes that B and C's remark are indirect assertation which is motivated by politeness, rather than to what actually is said. Therefore, Leech believes that people have to reject Cooperative Principle when they want to show polite behaviour to others. In this case, Leech asks that "why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean". Hence, Cooperative Principle (CP) only enables one as being cooperative to assume illocutionary goal to others because CP forces someone to say a truth to others. In contrast, PP forces someone to say implicitly in order to maintain the social equilibrium. Polite and impolite beliefs as stated in Leech's Politeness Principle (PP) are beliefs which are favorable and unfavorable to the hearer and it can be measured from some of maxims, which are elaborated in the following sub chapters.

Maxims of Politeness
There are six maxims dealing with politeness. Those politeness maxims concern on the relationship between self and other. According to Leech (1983:132), self is identified with s, other will typically be labelled with h, but people also show politeness to third parties who may or may not be attend in the situation. In this respect, the label other is not only to the hearer, but also to third person. In this way, the use of politeness maxim is to show the speaker's politeness to the hearer. Furthermore, Leech (1983:132) distinguishes the politeness maxim into six maxims, it will tend to go in pairs as follow:

Tact Maxim
In this maxim, Leech forces to always minimize cost to other and maximize benefit to other. This maxim is used for impositives utterance, an utterance to ask doing something, and commissives utterance, an utterance of the speaker's attempts to commit the speaker himself to some future course of action, e.g. promising, vowing, and offering. In measuring this maxim, it uses cost-benefit scale, the optionality scale, and the indirectness scale. Cost-benefit scale, for the shake of showing politeness, the speaker tends to minimize cost to the hearer and maximize benefit to the hearer. Meanwhile, the two scales imply that indirect illocution exhibits more degree of politeness because it diminishes the force of illocutions and it would increase the degree of optionality. Example: a. Would you mind cleaning the windows? (impositives utterance) b. Would you like me to clean the windows? (commissives) utterance) (Leech, 1983:124) From those examples above, Leech says that example (a) is a politeness strategy of impositives utterance because the speaker (s) proposes a requesting to do something very regard as a beneficial to the hearer (h), so does (b).

Generosity Maxim
In this maxim, Leech forces the speaker to minimize benefit to self and maximize cost to self for impositives utterance, an utterance to ask to do something, and commissives utterance, an utterance of the speaker's attempts to commit the speaker himself to some future course of action, e.g. promising, vowing, and offering. In measuring this maxim, it also uses cost-benefit scale.

Approbation Maxims
This maxim states "minimize dispraise of other and maximize praise of other" in an expressives utterance, the speaker's attempts express his feeling or attitude toward an existing state, e.g. thanking, congratulating, pardoning, blaming, praising, and condoling, and assertives utterance, commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. stating, suggesting, boasting, reporting, complaining, and claiming. In measuring this maxim, it uses praise-dispraise scale. Example: (a) Her performance was outstanding! (b) What an awful meal you cooked! (Leech, 1983:135) Example (a) is polite because it has high value of politeness based on Approbation Maxim which forces to minimize dispraise and maximize praise to the hearer. Meanwhile, example (b) is not polite according to Leech's approbation maxim.

Modesty Maxim
Modesty Maxim states "Minimize praise of self and Maximize dispraise of self". It means that someone has to minimize praise and maximize dispraise himself to other in an expressives utterance, the speaker's attempts to express his feeling or attitude toward an existing state, e.g. thanking, congratulating, pardoning, blaming, praising, and condoling, and assertives utterance, commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. stating, suggesting, boasting, reporting, complaining, and claiming. This maxim is measured by praise-dispraise scale. Example: (a) How stupid of me! (b) How clever of me! (c) Please accept this small gift as a token of our esteem (d) Please accept this large gift as a token of our esteem. (Leech, 1983:136) Example (a) and (c) are seen as a polite utterance because (a) and (c) maximize dispraise to themselves than (b) and (d) which show maximize praise to themselves. Therefore, Modesty Maxim assesses that example (a) and (c) are more polite than (b) and (d).

Agreement Maxim
This maxim forces to minimize disagreement between self and other, and maximize agreement between self and other in assertives utterance. Assertives is utterances which commit the speaker to the truth of the expression proposition such as stating, suggesting, boasting, reporting, complaining, and claiming. It is measured by agreement scale. Example: (1) A: It was an interesting exhibition, wasn't it? B: No, it was very uninteresting! (2) A: A referendum will satisfy everybody. B: Yes, definitely. (Leech, 1983:138) Example (1) is impolite than example (2) in an agreement situation. Unlike in example (1), speaker B in example (2) tries to avoid disagreement with speaker A although speaker B has different opinion with speaker A.

Sympathy Maxim
Sympathy Maxim forces "Minimize antipathy between self and other and Maximize sympathy between self and other". It is used for assertives utterance, commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. stating, suggesting, boasting, reporting, complaining, and claiming. It is measured by sympathy scale. Example: (a) I'm terrible sorry to hear about your cat (b) I'm delighted to hear about your cat (Leech, 1983:139) From the example above, example (a) is more polite than (b) because the speaker looks really sympathy to the hearer about the death of the hearer's cat although the speaker (a) doesn't really like the hearer's cat. Overall, Leech views that polite behavior is the most important element in social interaction.

METHOD
This study implemented quasi-experimental study in which there were pre-test and posttest. Pre-test was conducted to know students' writing score before the treatment. Then, their results were compared to post-test writing result in order to know the development of participants writing competence. The duration of this study was 1 month via Whatsapp application.
Total participants of this study were 10 students who enrolled English 1 course in Language Center of IAIN Cirebon. They had been learning English since elementary school. The participants were divided into 2 groups, experimental group and control group. Control group, consist of 4 woman and 1 man, was given direct feedback with correct form whereas experimental group (5 woman) was treated by using polite direct feedback. Then, the teacher was given the scoring table which consist of five indicators. They are Task Response, Coherence, Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammar. Each indicator has maximum 2 points so the total score is 100.
To give the score on students' paper, this study employed a professional English teacher in Indonesia. She had band 8 of IELTS test and competence in English writing. She was asked to give the score by using the given indicators in both pre-test and post-test. Furthermore, the teacher must give comment about the students' mistake by implementing politeness strategies. She was freely choosing type of politeness maxims. Once correcting students' paper finish, teacher must interview the participants of experimental group about their experience during the treatment via Whatsapp call.
In this research, the 1st step was all participants assigned to write an academic writing within at least 250 words. They must write in Ms. Word and sent it via email after the teacher distributed the question via Whatsapp application. They only had 60 minutes to do academic writing. After finishing pre-test, teacher started to correct it by giving different treatment on different group and score it. Then, the test result as well as its feedback was distributed to the students in the next day. Then, post-test was done as similar as pre-test but the question was different. After all groups submitted their works, teacher scored and gave the different feedback for each group in those students' paper. Next, participants of experimental group were asked to give their experience during the treatment. This interview was conducted to assess their motivation in writing task. This session was given in the post-test via Whatsapp text.
Furthermore, the data of this research were collected through the result of both pre-test and post-test. The data gained was examined by using one-way ANOVA or Analysis of Variance which is a statistical method for variance analysis. The last step, the data of interview was displayed and analysed to find whether giving direct feedback with politeness strategy effects on students' second language writing skill and students' motivation.

The Effect of Using Politeness Strategies in Direct Feedback for Students' Writing Competence
After collecting data, this study used a one-way ANOVA to analyze the pre-test result of students' L2 writing. There are 5 indicators in scoring system namely task response, coherence, cohesion, lexical resource, and grammar. Each indicator has maximum 20 score so that the total score is 100. The result of a one-way ANOVA as below:  Table 1 above displays the result of students' score before getting the treatment. 10 students were randomly separated into two groups without English level consideration. Based on the data above, students' writing skill in control group is higher than experimental group. Experimental group (N = 5) has mean 57,5 with SD 10,8995. Meanwhile, the mean of control group (N = 5) is 69 and SD is 7,3824. It is indicated that there is no significant difference on students' writing skill, F(8, 9) = 3,7496, p = 0,0888.
To investigate the effect of giving politeness strategy on direct feedback, post-test result was analyzed by using a one-way ANOVA.  Table 2 above presents that the treatment group outperformed on second language writing. Mean of experimental group is 85 while control group is only 75,5. The development of experimental group is higher than control group. It is important to note that control group has developed their second language writing but the effect of direct feedback is not as high as experimental group in the last test.
Compared to the mean of pre-test, it can be said that the treatment develop students' writing competence significantly, F(8, 9) = 10,624, p = 0,0115. The result of this study was similar to Hadden and Frisby study in 2018 about the Face Threatening Mitigation in written feedback gives positive effect on student's self-efficacy. Mikulincer (1988) argued that negative impact appears on students after they were given negative feedback with threatening student's face. In Politeness theory, language choice is important to protect a recipient's face. Halliday (1994) stated that politeness is as face-saving devices. In the other word, Politeness helps to soft the language so that the students' face is not threatened. Clough (2007) further stated that students are not feel intimidate when giving positive words. Positive words create positive attitude toward L2 writing which can foster learning development. Furthermore, Diantari et al. (2014) argued that student's attitude can stimulate student to get better score. It can be said that student's attitude is highly correlated with students' performance. Thus, politeness in written feedback contributes to students' positive attitude.

The effect of student motivation in second language writing
To gain a comprehensive analysis of the motivation impact of giving polite direct feedback, this study interviewed experimental group participants about their opinion during the treatment. Linnenbrink and Pintrich (2002) stated that motivation is not a stable trait of an individual, but more situated, contextual and domain specific. It can be said that students' motivation can be gained from different teaching style especially the way in correcting students' work such as giving feedback in second language writing. As the impact, they will motivate to create their goal in learning second language writing because they know the reason about their mistakes. Knowing the mistakes can foster students' curiosity to get better score.
In this interview, all participants had positively experience during the treatment so that they could improve their writing skill in second language learning. Participant EP01 stated that she loved getting the new method in giving correction. She felt comfort and enjoy to improve her skills especially on grammar competence. Similarly, student EP02 also believed that she understood about her error. Participants EP03 and EP04 argued that the teacher has good communication in giving comments so that she wanted to practice more to get better score. The last participant EP05 said that she felt more engage with the teacher when reading the feedbacks although it was online learning.
The data above showed that the participants were highly motivated on writing after facing some polite comments on their error. Ur (1996: 275) believe that there are some indicators of student high motivation in learning namely positive task orientation, ego involvement, need for achievement, high aspiration, goal orientation, perseverance, and tolerance of ambiguity. Knowless & Kerkman (2007) also argued that students' engagement in learning caused by personal interest and belief. Interest and belief can be obtained from polite comment which safe them from intimidating. In the other words, polite direct feedback can create emotional engagement during teaching learning process. Van Uden, et al. (2014) explained that emotional engagement refers to students' positive affective response to the activity of classroom. Nguyen, Cannata, and Miller (2018) characterized the emotional engagement into two types, passive and active engagement. Example, paying attention, and putting effort into the tasks.

CONCLUSION
After conducting in-depth analysis, this study found that the use of politeness strategies improved second language writing as well as student motivation. In the context of second language learning, high motivated students tend to have high effort in higher level of L2 proficiency improvement. It is indicated by the increase of students score amazingly in written task. Besides, there is correlation among better improvement and motivation. Thus, this research also investigated the experimental group's interest in English writing. There is an evidance that students' interest was also increase in learning English writing. Hence, it can be concluded that teacher's word choice in writing feedback is necessary. Being polite is not limited by social status or age distance. The manner of written feedback can develop from the Grice's Cooperative Principle in which there are 6 maxims of politeness strategies. By implementing politeness strategies in written feedback, it helps L2 writing teacher to develop students' engagement so that the teacher can achieve the goal of English teaching learning. Besides, it can maintain the relationship among teacher and student. Thus, politeness is perceived as the way of communication when the writer wants to engage the readers.
This study helps the English writing teacher in fostering students' performance whether through online or offline learning. It does not limit the use of technology. Besides, it helps to increase students' motivation in learning. Then, students can learn about politeness in communication.
There are some limitations in this research for future studies. So, it will be useful if future researcher separating the participants based on their level of second language competence as well as their score in writing skills. In addition, this research has limitation on the type of written feedback in investigating linguistic development in-depth. Besides, the imbalance of participants is one of the limitations of this research. It was due to the program of Intensive English at campus.