Research Method RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the third chapter, the researcher discusses the methodology of the research. It consists of the research method, the research setting, the research participants, the instrument and data gathering techniques, the data analysis technique, and the research procedure.

A. Research Method

This study has an objective to know to what extent the use of weekly diary followed by the teacher‟s feedback improves the students‟ writing abilities in the recount text. The most appropriate method for this research is classroom action research CAR. According to Hermida 2001, “classroom action research is a method of finding out what works best in your own classroom so that you can improve student learning” p. 38. It means that classroom action research will help teacher to overcome students‟ problems and improve them through appropriate learning strategies. Latief 2009 also writes that the researcher can help the students through some strategies through classroom action research if he or she has known the problems of the students p. 17. This methodology was conducted to solve the problems found by the researcher. Classroom action research would help students of VIII D of SMPN 1 Wungu to improve their writing abilities in writing a recount text. When the 32 researcher conducted th e research, she adopted Riel‟s action research model. The Riel‟s CAR consists of four stages, such as planning, taking action, collecting evidence, and reflecting. This model was chosen by the researcher because she needed to collect some evidences while the action took place. This stage would help the researcher to reflect how the weekly diary assignment followed by the teacher ‟s written feedback worked towards the students. Riel‟s action research is also known by progressive problem solving action research. This study was also conducted by analyzing the students‟ improvement to solve their problem in writing a recount text progressively Riel, 2011. The researcher needed a lot of time to analyze the improvement. She conducted this research for one month. This action research consisted of three cycles. Each cycle consisted of four stages. The first stage was planning stage. First of all, the researcher conducted a preliminary study to analyze what the real problems faced by students were. Then, she used the weekly diary assignment to improve students‟ writing abilities. The weekly diary writing followed by the teacher‟s feedback had its own ways to make the students conduct habitual writing activity in order to improve their writing abilities. Then, the researcher planned the action for the whole activities later. After that, the researcher conducted the second step, named action. In this stage, the researcher began to implement all of the activities planned in the planning stage. The English teacher of the class accompanied the researcher during the implementation and acted as an observer. The researcher gave her some 33 observation checklists and the teacher only needed to check it based on the reality of the class. The third stage was collecting and analyzing the data evidences. In this stage, the researcher began to collect the students‟ diaries which should be submmitted twice a week, on Friday and Tuesday. The researcher also gave some feedback for the students‟ writing in each meeting. The feedback was delivered orally, written, and in the form of some exercises in the meetings on Tuesday. The researcher should collect and analyze all of the data including in the students‟ results from the class exercises to see their improvement. The last stage was reflection. In this stage, the researcher had to reflect all of the things which happened during the implementation. After conducting the last stage, the researcher could see what the things should be improved and what the things should be kept for the next cycle. Then, the researcher could decide whether the implementation of weekly diary had overcome the students‟ problems or not.

B. Research Setting