Interview Instruments and Data Gathering Technique

29 A Likert scale assesses attitudes toward a topic by presenting a set of statements about the topic and asking respondents to indicate for each whether they strongly agree, agree, are undecided disagree, or strongly disagree. They various agree – disagree responses are assigned a numeric value, and the total scale score is found by summing the numeric responses given to each item. This total score assesses the individual‟s attitude toward the topic p. 209. The classic use of the Likert scale was to pose questions or items to participants and have their respond using an agreement scale by selecting a number that best represented their response Lodico, Spaulding, Voegtle, 2006. Additionally, Likert scale indicates the positive and negative attitude by using score 1 – 5, 1 means strongly disagree, 2 means disagree, 3 means undecided, 4 means agree, and 5 means strongly agree Fraenkel, Wallen, and Hyun, 2015. However, in this observation, the score started from 1, 2, 3 and 4. The researcher reduced the “undecided” option to avoid the students‟ ambiguity. The researcher developed the questionnaire to find the students‟ perception on three major topics of the research: the writing ability, the use of pictures and t he students‟ engagement. Therefore, the researcher developed the questionnaire based on several theories of writing, the theories of pictures and the theories of student s‟ engagement see Appendix J. The questionnaire consists of fifteen 15 items of questions. Question one 1 until question seven 7 are related to the writing ability. Next, question eight 8 until question ten 10 are related to the use of pictures. At last, question eleven 11 until question fifteen 15 are related to the students‟ engagement. 30

3.4.5. Tests

The tests are commonly used in the quantitative research to measure the attitudes, the personality, the self – perceptions, the aptitude, and the performance of the research participants Johnson Christensen, 2012. The researcher employed the test to measure the students‟ writing ability. Moreover, the test in this research is the achievement test. The achievement, or the ability tests measure an individual‟s knowledge or skill in a given area or subject Fraenkel, Wallen, Hyun, 2015. Ary, Jacobs, and Sorensen 2010 state that the achievement tests measure the mastery and the proficiency in different areas of knowledge. The achievement tests present the subject with a standard series of questions involving the cognitive completion tasks. Therefore, in this research, the test aimed to measure the students‟ writing achievement on each cycle. The writing task was about the recount text which was r elated to the students‟ holiday and the students‟ past event experiences. In this test, the researcher modified a writing scoring rubric from the analytical scale for rating composition tasks from Brown and Bailey, 1984 related to the students ‟ achievement level and also related to the material presented in the lesson plan.

3.5. Data Analysis Technique

The study of this thesis is fundamentally qualitative and quantitative in its methods of data collection and analysis. The data from all instruments aim to capture the implementation of the use of pictures to increase the students‟ engagement in writing recount text for the students of class 8A in SMP Pangudi Luhur 1 Yogyakarta. Based on the data instruments, the researcher obtained two