Qualitative data analysis Research Question 2

79 situations to bring about improvements in the practices Burns, 2010; Mbato, 2013. Therefore, this action research began with a discussion session in the form of mini workshop involving all research participants including the students, the teacher collaborators, and I as the researcher. The goal of this workshop session was to formulate the suitable action to solve the existing problems in the mixed- competence speaking class through communal consensus among all participants. In addition, this workshop session aimed at finding out whether the participants incorporated differentiated instruction strategies in their formulated action. A researcher’s observation field note was the technique employed to collect data from this research stage. The qualitative data obtained from this field note were analyzed and interpreted in the following discussions. All students’ names mentioned in this report are pseudonyms. A preliminary session in the form of mini workshop before the English speaking course commencement was conducted with the main purpose of collaboratively deliberating and negotiating the solutions in the effort to solve the problems that potentially occurred in their mixed-competence classroom. The session began with introduction of oneself. Everyone was expecting that on that day they were to speak English, so all of them introduced themselves in English. This was a good opportunity for the teachers to recognize their English ability although only on the surface. The fact that all students were willing to speak in English indicated a positive sign that they were there, ready to practice speaking English. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 80 As the session continued, the students were informed that they were not going to become only a student, but also a research participant whose contributions were highly expected in this action research. The students were also given brief knowledge on the definition and the aims of action research, so that they could understand the conduct of their English course sessions as well as their role as research participants. The students were also enunciated the goal of their English speaking course in the hope that they would come up with ideas on how they were going to achieve the learning goal. Once the students had understood the English course and action research concept, a discussion on the uniqueness and diversity of the students in the classroom was started. When they were asked whether each of them was unique, most of them said yes. However, at first they could not think of any reason why they were unique as a human being, until they were asked where they came from. They had reflected that their origin was one thing that made them unique, and that fact brought some consequences such as different local languages, dialects, as well as cultural background. Next, the students were challenged to state other factors that made them unique. This time, some students started to demonstrate their willingness to state their ideas. This was evidenced by the following field notes taken from the observation on the preliminary session R FN 1.4 and 1.5. I expanded the question to see if students could think of other factors that made them unique. Yosep said “age” and everybody was laughing while looking at Dony, probably because he was the oldest person in the classroom. From this, the students started to realize that their age differences make their class unique because this age factor made them have different education background, and particularly different experiences of learning English. R FN 1.4 I continued asking students their preferences to learn English. Titus said that he prefers learning English by watching movies. When I asked Satria, he 81 said the same answer as Titus. Then, I asked again whether anyone else had a different preference. Ben raised his hand and voluntarily answered that he liked learning English through listening to the music and singing. Arka also voluntarily answered that he usually learned English by memorizing vocabulary from a vocabulary book that he owned. Different from others, Yosep stated that he preferred to learn English words from playing computer games. R FN 1.5 In the situation described by the field note, it was agreed that the differences of everyone made their classroom unique and distinct from other regular classroom. The differences that the students stated were summarized to bring consequences in different English competences between one student and another. As students’ awareness was raised due to the factual condition of their class, they were invited to brainstorm the problems that potentially occurred during the learning processes. The students were encouraged to have a reflection and discussion on the potential problems that could exist in their classroom in groups of three. Subsequently, they were to think of some ideas on suitable solutions to solve the problem. The dynamic of deliberation process was portrayed in this following field note R FN 1.8 After a few minutes of group discussion, a classroom discussion began. Group 1, represented by Arka, stated the first possible problem, which was pronunciation problem due to different dialects brought from their local languages. Another problem was ‘daya serap berbeda’ or different pace of learning and different ability in memorizing materials. Group 1 proposed that the solution could be a story-telling, book report, and weekly writing tasks. Group 2, represented by Ben, coined other problems namely the lack of vocabulary and tenses knowledge for some students, memory issue, and attitude issues, i.e. the lack of learning motivation and the feeling of diffident about personal ability compared to more advanced peers. In addition, they thought that some students were going to experience difficulty in keeping up with other students’ achievement. Group 2 proposed that the proper solution to solve those problems were creating fun learning environment because in their opinion, any lessons would seem easy when delivered in a fun way. Other than that, they proposed that there should be more speaking practices to make students more fluent. Meanwhile, group 3 had the same ideas as what the others had stated. They added another solution to overcome the 82 problems, which was doing more tenses and vocabulary exercises. R FN 1.8 The classroom problems that students formulated as a result of their deliberation were all real. The students agreed that the problems exist in their class were: 1 pronunciation problem; 2 different speed of learning that could make some students difficult to keep up with the others in understanding and memorizing materials; 3 the feeling of diffident which brings a consequence on motivation issues that led some students to low participation. Most of those form ulated problems were in accordance with a number of reports from experts’ studies on heterogeneous ability classes e.g. Ur, 2005, as cited in Faleiros, 2009; Joyce McMillan, 2010; Elizondo, 2013. The solutions that students proposed were practical classroom activities namely book report, storytelling, weekly writing tasks, and frequent speaking practice. In addition, their aspiration indicated that they wanted to learn in a fun, relaxed environment. In fact, some solutions that the students proposed might not correspond to the course goal in some senses. This could happen due to a number of factors, which one of them probably because within such limited time, students could not come up with further aspirations regarding studying in a mixed- competence environment. Therefore, to help students come up with the most appropriate action, the issue of different learning ability was brought into focus on a further discussion, so that an appropriate action could be initiated. When coming to the discussion of how to deal with more and less capable student’s issue, Desta came up with the term ‘togetherness’ translated, R FN 1.9, which was further interpreted by Vino as “learning together among peers in the