30 Qualitative research in fact makes the researcher gain insight into the context
of the participants. By doing so, the researcher would better understand the behavior of the participants Ary, Jacob, Razavieh, 2002: 24. In other words, the use of
qualitative research makes the researcher come into the unforeseen areas of the participants Holliday, 2002: 5. It looks deeply into the quality of social life.
Since qualitative research uses human experiences to be observed, the data gained in the research is usually descriptive. It means that the data are in the form of
words rather than numbers. The research is focused on face to face interaction to obtain the data. Considering the theories above, the researcher applied qualitative.
Qualitative was best applied in the research since it was aimed to find out the influences of reading texts which construct participants’ prior knowledge in acquiring
listening skill and also how the students perceived the implementation of the reading materials to prepare them in listening section.
B. Research Participants
The target population of this study was the third grade students of science class of SMA Stella Duce Bantul of academic year 20062007 consisting of 14
students. The third science grade students of SMA Stella Duce Bantul were chosen as the population of the study since they had learned English for years. Therefore, the
students of this level were considered to have already mastered English language better than the lower level students. Furthermore, the researcher chose the population
because it was accessible. However, since it would not be possible to survey the entire population of the students, a small group of students was designed to be
31 representative of the population selected then. Therefore, eight students were chosen
as participants who gave sufficient data about the implementation of the reading text to build prior knowledge in listening section.
The selection of the participants in this study was based on several reasons. In this study, the researcher only chose eight students of third science grade of SMA
Stella Duce Bantul academic year 20062007 as the representatives of the population.
The eight students were to be interviewed by the researcher. The researcher decided to choose the eight participants based on their mark from the highest until the lowest
one to obtain more reliable data. Furthermore, the chosen students were believed to be able to give much information about the implementation.
C. Research Instruments
The study used three instruments to gather data. The instruments were interview, observation, and questionnaire. The instruments were used to make the
researcher easier to gather the data in order to answer the problems formulated in problem formulation.
The first instrument was interview. The interview was conducted to the research participants in order to answer the first problem of the research. Besides, the
interview also strengthened the data to answer the second problem of the research. According to Kvale 1996: 11, as cited in Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2000:
267, ”the use of interview in research marks a move away from seeing human subjects as simply manipulable and data as somehow external to individuals, and
towards regarding knowledge as generated between humans, often through PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
32 conversations”. The interview was aimed to gather information about the students’
opinion toward the use of reading texts as additional materials to construct their prior knowledge and how the additional materials helped them to acquire listening skill in
the class. The interview used in the research was structured. According to Wallace
1998: 146, there are three types of interview, namely structured interview, unstructured interview, and semi-structured interview. Structured interview, which
was used as one of the instrument of the study means that the questions for interviewee were already prepared before the interview was conducted. There were
13 questions prepared and asked by the researcher in order to answer the problems of the research. The detailed questions were enclosed in Appendix 4.
The second instrument, that was observation, was used to answer the first problem of the research. According to Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2000: 293,
“observational data are attractive as they afford the researcher the opportunity to gather “live” data from “live” situation”. In other words, by doing observation, the
researcher was able to look at the real condition of the participants being observed. The researcher used observation since it gave data on every detailed action taking
place in the classroom. Moreover, Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2000: 293 also state that observation enables the researcher to gather data on physical setting, human
setting, interactional setting, as well as programme setting. By using observation, the researcher was facilitated to gather data in every setting.
In the research, the observation forms were very useful in helping the researcher to gather data on the students’ improvement and how they were improved.
33 The observation helped the researcher to observe the students’ behavior and attitudes
as well as their ability in listening during the learning process. Besides, through observation, the researcher was able to gain information about the activities in the
classroom completely, whether or not the reading texts influenced the activities in the classroom while listening.
There are two types of observation, namely participant observation and nonparticipant observation. In doing the research, the researcher used nonparticipant
observation. In nonparticipant observation, the observer was not really involved in the activities of the group Ary, Jacob, and Razavieh, 2002: 430. The researcher
purely observed the students in the classroom. It was done in order to minimize the missing data on the students’ progress and to provide more truthful data. Therefore, a
nonparticipant observer was very helpful. The last instrument was questionnaire. According to Seliger and Shohamy
1989: 172 “questionnaire are printed forms for data collection, which include questions or statements to which the subject of the study is expected to answer”.
Thus, it was clear that the data from the questionnaire were in the written form. The questionnaire was chosen as the instrument in the research since it helped the
researcher to gather data in order to answer the second problem of the research. In the research, the questionnaire was given to the participants after they finished answering
comprehensive questions in listening section in each observation. By using questionnaire, the researcher was able to observe whether the additional materials, i.e.
reading texts, influenced the participants or not. The participants were to choose one option from three options provided related to the source of their answer to the
