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CHAPTER III METHOD OF INVESTIGATION
I conducted descriptive qualitative research. It was descriptive because it described systematically the facts and the characteristics of a given population or
area of interest, factually and accurately Isaac and Michael 1971: 18. This was a qualitative study because the data were collected in the form
of words rather than numbers. The data collected were rich of descriptions about people, talks, places that would be difficult to explain with statistical procedures
as in quantitative research. The data will cover the transcriptions of the teacher talks during the teaching learning processes. Miles 1984: 5 states that qualitative
data are a source of grounded, rich description and explanations of processes. With qualitative data we can preserve chronological flow, assess local causality,
and descriptive fruitful explanation. In this study, I analyzed the teachers’ talks particularly the teachers‘
scaffolding talks and speech functions performed in their scaffolding talks during the teaching learning processes. Concerning the study of this research, I attempted
to describe the types of the teachers’ scaffolding talks and the speech functions performed in their scaffolding talks.
3.1 Description of the Location of Data Collection.
The data were collected at a kindergarten classes of Sekolah Permata Bangsa. This school is one of the National Plus Schools in Semarang,
established in June 2000 and is located at Jl. Raung 16, Semarang.
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In Sekolah Permata Bangsa, Semarang, the students learn all of the school subjects included Mathematics, Science, English, Social Studies,
Information Technology, Health and Physics Educations through the medium of a foreign language English. In other words, the lessons and the
instructions during the teaching learning processes and any other activities at school are delivered in English.
The teachers in this school were one expatriate teacher from Australia and six local teachers. The former had teaching experience of more
than ten years teaching young learners, while the local teachers had only experienced teaching for about five years and all of them had English studies
of their educational background.
3.2 Subjects of the Study
The subjects of the study were one kindergarten native-English teacher from Australia and two local teachers at Sekolah Permata Bangsa in
Semarang in the academic year 2006 2007. The foreigner teacher had more than ten years’ experiences of teaching children in her country. The local
teachers have English studies as their Educational Backgrounds and approximately they have five years experiences in teaching English for
children.
3.3 Time for Obtaining the Data
I took three teachers as the sources of my data. The data were taken in these periods:
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Teacher A :
November 21
st
2006 and November 28
th
2006 Teacher B
: November 23
rd
2006 and November 28
th
2006 Teacher C
: November 21
st
November 2006 and November 23
rd
2006 Each teacher was recorded twice so that there are six recordings. The
data were classified based on good recording that I was be able to analyze the data. Meanwhile unclear data were disposed. Therefore, I only used data from
two recordings of classroom discourse of Teacher A, one recording of Teacher B and one recording of Teacher C.
3.4 The Process of Obtaining the Data
