The Effect of Self-Selected Topic and Checklist-based Peer Feedback on Indonesian EFL Students’ Writing Ability

It has been known that the use of self-selected topic enhances students’ writing achievement. It is also known thatpeer feedback helps improve students’ writing achievement. However, research investigating self-selected topic incombination with peer feedback is a rare undertaking. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect ofself-selected topic and checklist-based peer feedback on the writing ability of students of English as a foreignlanguage (EFL). This study involved 68 eleven-grade students of Multimedia Program of a Vocational High Schoolat Malang, a city in the Province of East Java, Indonesia. Two intact classes assigned to be experimental and controlgroups. The experimental group received treatment of self-selected topic and checklist-based peer feedback, whilethe control group did not. Pre-test and post-test were administered in the form of writing tests to both groups and theresults of those tests were analyzed by using independent sample t-Test to know the effect of the treatment. Theresults showed that the students taught to write with self-selected topic and checklist-based peer feedbackoutperformed those taught without using self-selected topic and checklist-based peer feedback. Accordingly, it isrecommended that English teachers consider assigning the students to write a topic of their own and usingchecklist-based peer feedback.