10 generally, and especially for English and students teachers in SMPN 2 Ampel. The result of
this study is expected to give useful information about students’ attitude to the English subject materials. By knowing the students’ attitude toward the use of authentic materials in
SMPN 2 Ampel, it is hoped that teachers will prepare suitable materials for students in order to accommodate and fulfill students’ needs. It also hoped that this study will contribute the
improvement of English practice in SMPN 2 Ampel. Further, the result of this study is also expected to help the teacher in creating positive attitude in learning and teaching through
authentic materials.
The Study
In this part the writer explains how and when the data was collected, analyzed. Within, there are some reasons why the writer chose SMPN 2 Ampel as the subject of this
study.
A. Context of the Study
This study was conducted in SMPN 2 Ampel, a very small district of Boyolali where the writer collected the data. The first reason why the writer chose the students of SMPN 2
was the time and energy efficiency. The writer had a good relationship with English teachers in the school, which enabled the writer to get to know about the general picture of English
learning and teaching process better than other schools in the school. The use of authentic materials have been developing in SMPN 2 Ampel, English teachers were trying to make use
of authentic materials like magazine and newspaper, songs and even traffic signs for teaching English. The students were in the academic year of 20122013 and the data was collected
from 8th to 30th March 2012. As a foreign language, English was used very rarely both inside and outside the class. Teachers and students tend to use Indonesian inside the class
during teaching and learning activities, while Javanese was used outside the class very
11 common in order to communicate each other, instead of using English. The good thing was,
SMPN 2 Ampel has a language laboratory with good facilities like, projector, 20 units of CPU, headphone, etc to support the data collection process. The process of data collection
was conducted by the English teachers of SMPN 2 Ampel and the writer.
B. Participants
The participants of this study were one third of total population on the same grade which consisted of two different classes 8C and 8D out of 6 classes, which were one-third
of the total population at the same level, Those two classes consisted of 63 students, 29 students belonged to 8C class and 34 students belonged to 8D class of SMPN 2 Ampel, so it
was a representative and sufficient number to conduct a research. Being the eight-grader students would be the perfect stage on learning English subject
in SMP level because of the less pressure condition, if compared with the seventh grader who are tend to adapt with the new school environment or even the ninth grader who are focused
on the national examination ahead. This consideration would be second reason of choosing the eight-grader students as the subject. Another reason was this method of sampling
relatively simple, where the writer only took two classes as the subject of this study.
C. Instrument of Data Collection
