Pilot Study Research Setting and Participants

Asep Dadang, 2014 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu and Shohamy, 1989 cited in Wilson, 2006.

3.3 Pilot Study

A pilot study was conducted prior to the implementation of formal research to ascertain the validity and reliability of the research questionnaire. It was conducted during 24 th February to 25 th February 2014 using the same procedures designed for the formal investigation. The participants N = 4 were six grade students studying at a private school in Kab. Bandung Barat. This instrument was written in Indonesian to facilitate the students‘ understanding of the questionnaire items. Before the survey, the researcher gave a clear explanation of the questionnaire to the participants in Indonesian. To ensure the validity and reliability of this study, those who participated in the pilot study were not chosen as the participants in the formal study. After the pilot study was finished, the data were collected by the researcher immediately and analyzed by SPSS statistical package for the social science 16.0. The consistency estimates of reliability for the three subscales of the final questionnaires; the coefficient alpha of .77, .80, and .73 suggested that the final version of the 33-item questionnaires was reasonably reliable for the formal final study. The overall results of the pilot study indicated that the instruments and procedures selected for the experiment were suitable to carry out in the main study Table 3.1. Table 3.1 Cronbach‘s alpha values for the questionnaire reliability Category Cronbach’s alpha values Communication anxiety .77 Test anxiety .80 Fear of negative evaluation .73 Overall language anxiety .77

3.4 Research Setting and Participants

This study was undertaken in an EFL classroom at a private elementary school in Kab. Bandung Barat. The course was designed for young learners at the fifth and sixth grade. The Asep Dadang, 2014 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu choice of the place of the participant was determined as considering the accessibility of the researcher to carry out the research. Alwasilah 2009 mentioned that convenience factor should be taken into consideration to support the researcher to carry out the research. There were three classes class A, class B, and class C. Class A was consisted of sixth graders. Class B and C were consisted of five graders. Class B consisted of high achiever students and class C consisted of low achiever students. The researcher distributed 54 questionnaires to the three classes. Some missing data were occurred in collecting the questionnaire back. Some students refused to return the questionnaire because of their mates mocks or their feeling of unconfident. The occurrence happened in every group of participants but the highest unreturned questionnaires were on Class A with 3 missing data out of 20 distributed questionnaires. Class B returned 20 questionnaires and one missed. Class C returned 12 out of 13 questionnaires, but one questionnaire was not completed. Table 3.2 Table 3.2 Questionnaire Distribution by Group of Class Group N Missing Data Completed Data Percentage Class A 20 3 17 31.5 Class B 21 1 20 37.0 Class C 13 1 12 22.2 Total 54 5 49 90.7 Of the 49 returned questionnaires with the returned rate of 90.7, only one was discarded as invalid; therefore, a total of 48 valid questionnaires equal to 88.9 of distributed ones was used in the formal investigation. Of all the student population, females accounted for 51 and 46.9 were males. Table 3.3 Table 3.3 The Distribution of Gender among Participants Gender N Invalid Data Completed Data Percentage Male 24 1 23 46.9 Asep Dadang, 2014 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu Female 25 25 51.0 Total 49 1 48 97.9 Therefore, there were forty-eight students participate in this research. A purposive sampling technique was occupied to choose four students who showed the different level of anxiety based on their answers on the questionnaire. One student was categorized as high- anxious student, two were moderate-anxious students, and one was a low-anxious student. The four students were interviewed to dig more information about their anxiety.

3.5 Data Collection