Research Method Research Participants

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter elaborates the rationale of the methods of the research and analysis. It covers six sections. The sections are method used in this study, participants of the study, instruments to gather the data, technique of gathering the data, technique of analyzing the data, and procedure of the research.

A. Research Method

This study is a descriptive qualitative research. Sprinthall, Schmutte, and Sirois 1991 mention that when the primary objective of the research is description and not looking for differences between groups or relationship among variables, then the research is typically called descriptive. This study seeks to find out the mastery of the fifth semester students of the English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University in translating relative clauses from Indonesian into English. The writer also intends to uncover the problems that they came upon when doing the translation. This study was aimed at answering two research questions. The first research question tried to find out the fifth semester students’ mastery in translating relative clauses from Indonesian into English. The second research question seek find out types of errors found in the fifth semester students’ translation result of relative clauses from Indonesian into English. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 28 This research would not only describe the findings but also dig deeper from the data gathered. After gathering the data, the writer examined the findings to find out the core problems causing the students’ making errors in doing translation of relative clauses in English. Consequently, this research is a qualitative study. In accommodating the study, the writer used survey method using one qualitative instrument to gather the data. The instrument was a test. The test was intended to answer the two research problems.

B. Research Participants

The participants of this study were the fifth semester students of the English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University, of the academic year of 20092010. It would not be feasible to study the entire population which consists of all members of the fifth semester students. Therefore, the writer decided to select a sample as the representative of the entire population. The sample was a portion of the entire population of the fifth semester students which was chosen based on the participants attending the test, taken from two classes. The participants were chosen because they are regarded as senior students who were considered to have learned and internalized some Basic English structure, including relative clauses. As senior students, the fifth semester students’ are expected to be able to construct complex sentences using relative clauses. It is also found in the curriculum and the syllabus of the fifth semester PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 29 students that they learned to translate relative clauses from Indonesian into English in that semester. Other reason was in the following semester, the students are going to have their practice teaching in Micro Teaching course and Program Pengalaman Lapangan. These programs require them to master grammar topics, at least those included in the junior and high school curriculum. One of the topics is relative clauses. In order to be able to deliver and explain the topics to Indonesian learners, these teacher candidates need to be able to master translating relative clauses from Indonesian into English.

C. Research Instrument