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B. Research Participants
The research participants were the fourth graders of SD BOPKRI Gondolayu, Yogyakarta academic year 20072008. There were 44 students in the
class which consisted of 21 male students and 23 female students. The choice of the participant was also based on the theory that action research is contextual,
small-scaled and localized and it is conducted in the natural occurring setting Burns, 1999: 24 and 30. Based on those arguments, choosing the class as the
research participants to conduct the action research was appropriate. However, the writer only investigated six students whose grammar and pronunciation accuracy
needed to be improved. Those six students selected based on their actual use of English and based
on the writer’s observation and documentation during the daily teaching learning activities. They often made mistake in producing sentence especially on subject-
verb agreement. Whenever the teacher introduced new materials and asked them to make or alter a sentence to be another type of sentence, they made mistake in
subject-verb agreement. Sometimes, they could perform the task well. However, the teacher needed to prompt the students before they could perform well.
Certainly, it was unlikely in the normal conversation. This research was conducted to improve those six students’ grammar accuracy especially on the subject-verb
agreement. Similarly, those six students also often made mistake on their pronunciation. The writer identified that their mistakes on pronunciation was on
near-close near front unrounded vowel [ ɪ], voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] and
voiced dental fricative [
ð
]. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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In addition, action research is also participatory Burns, 1999: 30. It provides for collaborative investigation by teams of colleagues, practitioners and
researchers. In this research, two English language teachers were also involved in the investigation. They helped the writer in conducting the research. The English
language teacher recorded the progress of the students who were observed using instruments provided by the writer. On the other hand, the another language
teacher also recorded the students’ progress in a different point of view based on the guideline provided by the writer. In addition, their assistance was also to
ensure that the writer could concentrate fully on teaching.
C. Research Instruments
Kategori