Students’ Perception on the Implementation of Reading Text as Pre-

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter deals with methodology used in the research. The discussion of this chapter consists of six sub sections. The first sub-section is about the research method, in which the researcher explains the method used in the research. The second section of this chapter deals with research participants, which tells about the subject observed under the study. In the third sub section, the researcher explains about instruments used in gathering the data. The fourth section discusses the data gathering technique. This sub-section acquaints how the instruments are used in the study. The fifth section, that is data analysis, explains how the data gathered were analyzed. The last section is research procedure. This last section gives clear explanation about steps in conducting the research.

A. Research Method

The research is a qualitative research. Ary, Jacob, Razavieh 2002: 22 say that “qualitative focuses on understanding social phenomena from the perspective of the human participants in the study.” Moreover, according to Holliday 2002: 5, qualitative research is interpretive. He further explains that the researcher needs to investigate the participants deeply as it is believed that people are mysterious and need to be superficially touched. Thereby, qualitative research investigates human experiences in depth. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 30 Qualitative research in fact makes the researcher gain insight into the context of the participants. By doing so, the researcher would better understand the behavior of the participants Ary, Jacob, Razavieh, 2002: 24. In other words, the use of qualitative research makes the researcher come into the unforeseen areas of the participants Holliday, 2002: 5. It looks deeply into the quality of social life. Since qualitative research uses human experiences to be observed, the data gained in the research is usually descriptive. It means that the data are in the form of words rather than numbers. The research is focused on face to face interaction to obtain the data. Considering the theories above, the researcher applied qualitative. Qualitative was best applied in the research since it was aimed to find out the influences of reading texts which construct participants’ prior knowledge in acquiring listening skill and also how the students perceived the implementation of the reading materials to prepare them in listening section.

B. Research Participants

The target population of this study was the third grade students of science class of SMA Stella Duce Bantul of academic year 20062007 consisting of 14 students. The third science grade students of SMA Stella Duce Bantul were chosen as the population of the study since they had learned English for years. Therefore, the students of this level were considered to have already mastered English language better than the lower level students. Furthermore, the researcher chose the population because it was accessible. However, since it would not be possible to survey the entire population of the students, a small group of students was designed to be