researchers attempt to discover something about a large group of individuals by studying a much smaller group” Galls, 2007: 166.
Based on the definitions above, the researcher used the quantitative analysis in conducting the present study. Some conditions taken into consideration
were, firstly the present study was supposed to give a description on the students’ pragmatic competence in Implicature which can be seen through the exact
numerical data. Secondly the present study which described the students’ pragmatic competence in the notion of implicature was done on a sample of small
group of students without giving any treatment before. The numerical data was taken through a multiple choice Discourse Completion Tasks. The multiple choice
DCTs being used will be discussed in the research instrument section.
B. Research Setting
As it is already stated above that “Quantitative researchers attempt to discover something about a large group of individuals by studying a much smaller
group” Gall, 2007: 166, the researcher conducted the study in Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, with the students of the English Language Education
Study Program as the participants. So, the population was the students who were preparing themselves in finishing their undergraduate in English Language
Education. Based on Gall’s statement about the population validity as follows: “To
achieve good population validity, quantitative researchers must select the sample randomly from the defined population to which they wish to generalize their
result” Gall, 2007: 169, the researcher took the sample randomly without considering the students’ grades report, gender, and age. All the students of the
English Language Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma University, were considered as members of the accessible population that have an equal chance of
being selected. This consideration was also based on Creswell 2003 who suggests: “I recommend selecting a random sample in which each individual in
the population has an equal probability of being selected a systematic or probabilistic sample” Creswell, 2003: 156.
Due to the limited time of the present study, the present study was not done through the piloting study. The present study directly took the sampling
from the clusters. Since the present study was a developmental Cross-sectional study, the samples were taken from the second semester, the fourth semester, and
the sixth semester on one occasion. From each semester there were only 30 participants’ results taken randomly. The researcher would like to investigate if
there was a significant development in interpreting implicature commonly used in English language between those three levels of semesters, and therefore this made
the study a cross sectional study. Concerning the ethical issues in conducting research, based on the Ethical
Standards of the American Educational Research Association AERA which states:
It is a paramount importance that educational researchers respect the rights, privacy, dignity, and sensitivities of their research populations and also the
integrity of the institutions within which the research occurs. Educational researchers should be especially careful in working with children and other
vulnerable populations. American Educational Research Association, 2002: 3,
before collecting the data, the researcher consulted and asked the permission from the head of English Language Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma
University, personally and through the letter of consent dated 14 May 2014. The letter of consent is attached in the appendixes. For the participants’ rights, the
researcher ensured the participants had a complete understanding of the purpose and the methods to be used in the study by explaining to the participants before
and after they did the implicature Multiple-choice DCTs. The researcher also gave a short explanation on implicature to the participant. In this present study, the
researcher used numbers instead of the participants’ names due to the participants’ privacy.
C. Research Instrument
Concerning the research question which aims to see the students’ pragmatic competence, the research instrument being used was a multiple choice
test. The researcher chose a multiple choice test because the researcher was not intend to investigate the students’ competence in producing or uttering
implicature, but their competence in interpreting and understanding implicature in spoken English language.
In conducting the research, the researcher did not create the multiple choice test by himself in order to be able to present the more authentic context.
The assessment of pragmatics contains a tension between the construction of authentic assessment tasks and practicality; tests must
