66 view. Overall, the research design elaborated in this part would become my
fundamental base in discussing subsequent parts written in this chapter.
B. Research Setting
Holliday 2002: 38 proposes some essential points to consider carefully in establishing
a particular research setting. They are “sense of boundary, variety of relevant and interconnected data, richness, and accessibility.” Explaining those
criteria will help readers of this research understand clearly about what is going on and sort of context in this research.
The first criterion is related to sense of boundary in this research. It covers place, time, and culture boundaries. Because this research only focused on
coherence in the students’ written work, it only discussed place and time boundaries of this research and intentionally ignored the culture boundary. This
research was conducted at ELESP from October to December 2013. More specifically, I conducted the research in class D of Academic Essay Writing class,
held in semester five, at ELESP in the academic year 20122013. The ground for selecting the class was closely related to these essential
considerations. The first consideration was concerned with the nature of Academic Essay Writing class in which coherence in studen
ts’ essays was given an emphasis. In other words, students in the class were required to apply the
coherent concept in their essay. The second consideration was the students in the selected class were regarded as those who have already understood about the
concept of coherence after successfully passing the writing classes held in their PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
67 previous semesters. The third consideration dealt with the fact that the students in
the class were required to write a written work in the form of essay, consisting of a number of paragraphs. Certainly, these three essential considerations provided
wide opportunities to obtain rich data, which became the essential criterion in establishing a research setting Holliday, 2002. In that case, it was possible to
observe the logical arrangement of ideas among paragraphs from different essays written by the students in the class. The last consideration was that the selected
research setting has already met the nature and characteristics of academic writing stated in Chapter II.
Secondly, the setting of this research also considers “variety of relevant and interconnected data” Holliday, 2002: 38. This research was concerned with
coherence in the students’ essays. The selection of the class, as it was mentioned
formerly, might establish the relevant and interconnected data to analyze with the nature of this research. It was because the students in the class have been
equipped with the concept of coherence. They were also required to write a coherent essay in their Academic Essay Writing class. In that case, it would be
relevant to talk about coherence in the selected class as well as to analyze problems in coherence, regarded as an essential element to apply by students
when they wrote their essays. Then, conducting the research in the selected class, whose students are regarded as those who have been familiar with the concept of
coherence; I might expect to analyze various logical arrangements of ideas covering their different idea relationships Arnaudet Barret, 1984 in essays
written by different students. Overall, to conduct a research in a classroom where PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
68 coherence becomes an essential concept to consider and whose students have been
equipped with the concept of coherence showed the variety of relevant and interconnected data of this research.
Lastly, the setting of this research is concerned with the accessibility in conducting this research, as what it is believed by Holliday 2002 that a
researcher should have an access to take any necessary role in order to collect data. In that case, the fact that I was an alumnus of ELESP facilitated me to obtain
permission from the study program to conduct this research as well as to access the needed data effortlessly. Another fact was I have already had a good relation
with the lecturer in the class since I became one of the students at ELESP. This fact helped me a lot in accessing the data in his writing class.
The lecturer was also one of the alumni in the Graduate Program in English Language Studies of Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta, henceforth
called ELS, who has the same thesis advisor as mine. Therefore, having the same educational background, I, in fact, could obtain permission to conduct my
research in his class easily. Moreover, I could also fearlessly share the problems that I encountered during the data collection process done in his classroom and
significantly obtained the solutions to overcome the problems.
C. Types of Data and Data Sources
