Research Procedure RESEARCH METHOD

Information about the teaching learning process after the implementation of action research was collected by observing the researcher ’s teaching simulation and interviewing students and the collabolator. The observation was done to know how the actions of the research were conducted. Meanwhile, the interviews with some students were done to know their impressions or responses on the action research conducted. The items asked were about their opinions of the implementation of the POSSE strategy and their confidences when they were applying the strategy. The interview was a l s o provided for the collabolator to get the information related to her impression about the implementation of the actions and her suggestion for the next implementation. The reading comprehension scores were obtained by administering the pre-test and post-test. The tests were in the form of multiple choice questions. The items were based on the micro-skills and macro-skills of reading comprehension and standard of competence and basic competences of junior high school. The tests were about students’ ability in finding the main idea, finding the topic, identifying the specific information, deducting the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items, making inferences, identifying references, describing communicative functions of the text, and finding generic structure of the text. The results of the scores of pre-test and post-test were used to see the improvement of students’ reading comprehension after they were given the treatment. Before the pre-test was done, a try-out to the questions test to find out the validity of the test item was conducted. After having the result of the try-out, the researcher analysed the result by using ITEMAN 3.00 program. The result of the ITEMAN analysis was judged by the Fernandez theory. The judgment was made on the item difficulty, discrimination index and the distracter of each item. The result showed that some of the items were invalid. They were invalid because the value of proportional correction was more than 0.75 or their discrimination index was less than 0.3. There were also some items which were needed to revise because their proportional endorsment was less than 0.05. Most items were valid and those were taken to the test. Finally there were 40 items for pre- test. For the post-test, the researcher took some items from the pre-test items and made some new items. There were 40 items for the post-test.

G. Data Analysis

The data in this research were quantitative and qualitative data. The qualitative data consisted of field-notes, transcript, and observation sheets. The quantitative data consisted of reading comprehension scores obtained from the pre- test and post-test. The scores were analyzed by using descriptive statistics in SPSS 17. In analysing the interview, the researcher transcribed the interview. The transcripts were read over and over to draw a conclusion on the important points in each teaching and learning process. Then, the data were classified to formulate the substantive theories.The field notes were also analyzed to come to the conclusion.

H. Validity and Reliability

According to Anderson et al. 1994, there are five validity criteria that should be fullfilled to get the valid data in action research. They are described below. 1. Democratic validity The result of the research was obtained through the collaboration and the inclusion of the multiple voices. The English teacher, the students, and the collabolator were participated in planning and evaluating the research to know whether the strategy was useful or not and whether the strategy could solve the problems or not. 2. Dialogic validity Dialogic validity is the process of peer reviews of the value and goodness of the research. This validity was fulfilled by discussing the research findings with the co llabolator, the teacher, and the researcher’s consultant. The members of disscussion gave their opinions and their criticisms about the research report. 3. Process validity Process validity is where the data were examined from several different perspectives. To gain this validity, the data were collected through observation and discussion. 4. Outcome validity Outcome validity is the success of the actions and the subsequent development of new research questions. The researcher found what could be