CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study is intended to investigate the communication strategies of English Department students of UNNES in making conversation in speaking
class. In this study the writer did a qualitative research. The writer presented the data of the research in the form of qualitative description. Although the
writer used simple numerical statistics, but the writer gave most attention to the way students interact verbally and how they use communication strategies
in making conversation in speaking class.
3.1 Assumption
In making conversations in English, English learners try to convey meaning to each other. But it is, actually, not easy to be done. When English
learners involve themselves in conversations, they often face some difficulties because of their lack of language competence. Those difficulties often make
English learners get stuck in the middle of their utterances. But they still need to make the listeners get the points so the conversation can run well. At this
point, they use communication strategies to compensate for their lack of language competence. The form of the strategies may vary; the learners use
the formal or functional strategies as well as verbal or non verbal strategies. The formal strategy can be in the form of transfer from the speakers’ native
language, overgeneralization, over elaboration, etc. The learners also may use
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functional strategy, which can be in the form of abandonment, avoidance, changing code, language switch, etc Mujianto, 1990:20.
Since this final project is a case study, the writer has the following assumption: when English learners get themselves involved into English
conversation, they often face some difficulties because of their lack of competence. To overcome these difficulties, they use communication
strategies.
3.2 Object of the Study
The object of the study is the conversation that is done by students of English Department of UNNES in speaking class. The writer decided to
conduct the research on the students of English Department in the fourth semester who are having speaking 3 subject.
In this final project, the writer only took the conversation in one class of speaking 3 as the samples of the research to be analyzed, because the size
of the population is too big to get the maximum analysis. In conducting the research, the writer took 7 conversations to be
analyzed. Each of those conversations happened among 4 students in one class of speaking 3 subject. Those conversations were taken on Wednesday, 10
th
of June 2009. There were only 28 out of 35 students altogether in the class who
attended the meeting at that time. So, in conducting the research the writer only had 28 students of English Department of UNNES as the participants.
The writer divided those 28 students in 7 groups of 4 people. They got
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involved themselves in small group discussions, discussed several topics that the writer had prepared. The conversations that they had were recorded and
then analyzed qualitatively.
3.3 Role of Researcher
