6. “Developing English Competencies for Senior High School
SMAMA Grade XII” by Achmad Doddy, Ahmad Sugeng, Effendi Book F
C. Research Instruments
According to Bogdan and Biklen 1982, in qualitative research, the key instrument is the researcher himherself. Since the researcher is the key instrument,
it gives an advantage that is the researcher plays the role of planning, collecting data, analyzing the data, and reporting the findings. The researcher of the present
study also creates an instrument in the form of the data sheet which is derived from the combination of the taxonomies proposed by Blum Kulka, House, and Kasper
1989 and Soler, Jorda and Flor 2005 that have been modified for the purpose of the present study for the request strategy analysis and the taxonomy based on Brown
and Levinson 1987 for the analysis of the contextual information. The details of the modification of the taxonomies proposed by Blum
Kulka, House, and Kasper 1989 and Soler, Jorda and Flor 2005 are as follows. 1.
This study uses the three main taxonomies of request strategies of Blum Kulka i.e. Direct Request DR, Conventional Indirect Request CIR, and
Non-Conventional Indirect Request NCIR to code the types of the request strategies employed. It is done because every request must belong to one of
the three types of request strategies mentioned above and to find out the reasons of the use of peripheral modifications in the later results.
2. This study omits and neglects some peripheral modifications of Soler, Jorda
and Flor 2005 with details as follows.
a. This study does not make use of the sub classifications under ‘softeners’
and ‘fillers’ in the internal modifications. This decision is made because the dialogues containing request in the English textbooks may not contain
many members of the sub classifications under ‘softeners’ and ‘fillers’ as many as in naturally-occurring dialogues. Even if the dialogues do contain
some of them, they can still be coded to either ‘softeners’ or ‘fillers’ as the
main classifications. b.
This study eliminates the ‘intensifiers” from the internal modifications and the ‘disarmers’ and ‘expanders’ from the external modification.
1 The justification of eliminating ‘intensifiers’ from the typology of the
internal modifications is following what Sifianou 1999 claims that in English intensifying devices are rarely used with ‘requests’. It also
supported with the fact that ‘intensifiers’ increase the impact of the sentences on the hearer. Therefore, it even tends to highly force what
the speakers want to the hearersrequestees. 2
The justification of elimination of ‘disarmers’ is because of the aim of ‘disarmers’ i.e. avoiding the possibility of a refusal on the part of the
requestees and making the requestees favorably disposed to perform the request, e.g. by saying “I hate bothering you but could you…”
Trosborg, 1995. The construction of such a sentence is possibly not found in scripted dialogues in English textbooks whose purpose is to
introduce and expose language use which is not too demanding to
learners while the construction above sounds like to only occur in naturally-occurring dialogues as in real life interactions or in movies.
3 The justification for neglecting ‘expanders’ is that it is very rare for
repeating the same request by repeating the same clauses or sentences or synonymous expressions by a character caused by the requestee not
hearing the requester talking with himher in scripted dialogues in English te
xtbooks which actually represent a ‘can do’ society as what Carter 1998 argues.
From the explanations above, therefore, not all the classifications of the request strategies are included because of concerning the pedagogical purposes in
textbooks for language learning. The form of the data sheet can be seen in the following page.
45
Table 5: The form of the data sheet N
o. Code
Data Situation
Request Strategies Contextual information
Internal modifications
IM External
Modification s EM
D R
C I
R N
C I
R
R-Low R-High
Power P
Dist ance
D Power
P Dist
ance D
A G
O S F P
G r
P o
r P
l S
H S
= H
S H
N o
n e
C l
o s
e F
a r
S H
S =
H S
H N
o n
e C
l o
s e
F a
r
Notes: A-F
: Book Code F
: Fillers Pl
: Please R-Low : Low rank of imposition
AG : Attention-Getter
P : Preparators
DR : Direct Request
R-High: High rank of imposition O
: Openers Gr
: Grounders PoR CIR
: Conventional Indirect Request S
: Softeners Por
: Promise of a reward NCIR : Non-Conventional Indirect Request
Situation P
: Participants S
: Setting placetime T
: TopicWhat is being talkedmainly discussed
Code A-F
: Book 1-6 L
: Listening sections 1-6
: Chapter number S
: Speaking sections
Special codes for each book Book 1 A
Pr : Presentation part
E : Exercise
T : Task
P : Practice
Pt : Practice part
Book 4 D LM
: Let’s do more special section term
Book 2 B
Pd : Production part
A: Activity
Book 6 F
A : Activity
Book 3 C R: Review
A : Activity
S : Section
P : Practice
Book 5 E R
: Review
D. Data Collecting Techniques
Kategori