Research Method Research Participants

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter enlightens a rationale for the research methodology. It consists of six subdivisions, namely research method, research participants, research instruments, data gathering technique, data analysis techniques, and research procedure.

A. Research Method

In order to answer the questions in the problem formulation, the writer conducted a descriptive research. The aim of descriptive research is to obtain information concerning the current status of a certain phenomenon Ary, Jacob, and Razavich, 1990. This type of research can utilize the elements of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, often within the same study Borg and Gall, 2007. In this study, the writer tried to analyze the phenomenon related to the eighth grade students’ problems in comprehending pronouns in narrative texts. This study implemented the quantitative approach to answer the first and the second research problems. The quantitative approach was applied in this study by administering comprehension tasks to the participants then computing the result of the comprehension tasks into percentage. Thus, the result of the computation is numerical. Whereas qualitative approach was applied in this study by gathering descriptive data throughout the interviews and observations. The descriptive data PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 32 was aimed at addressing the third research problem which is revealing the possible causes of the problems experienced by the eighth grade students in comprehending pronouns in narrative texts.

B. Research Participants

This study involved the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Bantul. The reason to select them is that they already have sufficient knowledge related to the use of pronouns in reading passages, especially in narrative passages and they have to demonstrate their knowledge or ability to comprehend pronouns in narrative passages. They were, then, selected by using the cluster sampling technique which, according to Ary et al. 2002 belongs to probability sampling technique that randomly selects intact groups such as classrooms and then includes every element in each of the selected cluster in the sample. This type of sampling technique allows a researcher to take two or more classes randomly instead of all classes Fraenkel and Wallen, 1993. The reason to use this type of sampling was that it was easier to implement in schools and it was frequently less time-consuming. Furthermore, based on the time-scheduled, the writer could only conduct the research in two classes. The classes involved in this study were class D and class F. Class D consisted of twenty-eight students while class F consisted of thirty-five students. Hence, the participants of this study were sixty-three eighth grade students in SMP Negeri 1 Bantul . PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 33

C. Research Instruments 1. Comprehension Task