Research Method Research Participants

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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses the method of the study. This chapter also presents the participants and setting of time and place of the study, instruments associated with the study, data gathering techniques, data analysis procedure, and research procedures.

A. Research Method

This research was a qualitative research that employed an observational- field research as the research method. It was due to the reason that this research allowed the researcher to observe a phenomenon naturally in a particular setting without any predetermined hypothesis. Thus, the observational method was employed in this research in order to make it accordance with the phenomenon to be investigated. It was meant to gain insight on learners’ language learning processes by investigating learners’ background and their language proficiency. This method also enabled the researcher not to be devoid from the phenomenon that the research intended to examine. Accordingly, this research required interaction with the participants intensively through learning experiences held in classroom. Ary et al. 1979: 295 proposed that the investigation of phenomenon through various methods provided an opportunity for the researcher to develop insight into aspect of human behavior. Thus, data obtained from the methods associated in this study were in the form of non-numerical data rather than in numerical one. In addition, there might be several interpretations of the data in this study. To prove reliability of the study, a variety of techniques were employed in data gathering and data analysis. These techniques would be explained further in the later sub-chapters. This research explored the phenomena occurring in English language teaching in elementary school level. Hence, the major usefulness of this research was not testing a hypothesis but rather than generating hypotheses, which then could be tested through more rigorous investigation Ary, et al., 1979: 296. Some instruments employed in this current research were participant-observation, field notes, and semi-structured interview. These instruments were employed in order to obtain the data needed and to capture uniqueness found in the research.

B. Research Participants

The participants in this research were the second grade students of Kanisius Notoyudan Elementary School in Yogyakarta. Cole 1956: 124 divided the grade of elementary school into two grades. Those were the primary grade that was ranged during the first three years of elementary school and the intermediate grade that was ranged during the second three years of elementary school. In short, the participants employed in this study belonged to the primary grade of elementary school since they were in the second year of their schooling. The reason of choosing the second grade students of elementary school as the participants of this research was that these students were considered in critical period. In critical period, it was hypothesized that children acquired language much more easily than adults did because children experienced language acquisition in critical period. Most of these students already had English when they were in the previous grade of Elementary School. It meant that they, at least, already had some basic knowledge of English, for instance mentioning or naming concrete things around them in English that related to their daily life. Having the background knowledge of English obtained from their previous grade, these students were eager to learn English in their next stage of learning. From this reason, the researcher intended to implement a method namely Task-Based Learning in order to promote their learning. The implication was that the researcher was able to investigate the phenomenon occurring during the research including what factors that influenced the implementation of this method in real classroom setting.

C. Research Setting