Research Design Area Determination Method

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CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODS

This chapter discusses the research methods used in conducting this research. It covers research design, area determination method, respondent determination method, data collection methods, data analysis method and the operational definitions of the key terms in this research.

3.1 Research Design

Research design deals with the conceptual structure in conducting a research. According to Kothari 2004:32, research design stands for advance planning of the methods and the techniques used for collecting the relevant data in the analysisresearch, keeping in view the research objective and the availability of the staff, time and money. The design of this research was a descriptive research which was applicable to describe phenomena that could be expressed in terms of quantity. McMillan 1992:144 says, a descriptive study usually describes a phenomenon in the form of statistics, such as frequencies or percentages, averages, and sometimes variability. In this research, the researcher described the types of grammatical errors made by the eighth grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 1 Jember in a recount text writing in the form of percentage. Besides the research design explained above, there were some steps of conducting this research explained as follows. 1. Finding the research problems. 2. Determining the research area purposively. 3. Collecting the supporting data through interview and documentation. 4. Determining the research respondents by proportional random sampling using lottery. 5. Constructing the research instrument in the form of recount text writing test. 23 6. Collecting the primary data by administering writing test to the research respondents. 7. Identifying and coding the grammatical errors on the students’ writings. 8. Classifying the grammatical errors on the students’ recount text writings based on the types of errors and quantifying the errors. 9. Analyzing the data of the students’ grammatical errors. 10. Drawing the conclusion of the data analysis results to answer the research problems.

3.2 Area Determination Method

The researcher applied the purposive method to determine the research area. According to Fraenkel and Wallen 2009:99, a purposive method is used based on the specific purposes of doing the research. It means that the research area was chosen purposively based on some reasons considered by the researcher. Therefore, the researcher determined SMP Muhammadiyah 1 as the research area because of the following reasons. a. The headmaster gave permission to the researcher to conduct this research so that the data of the eighth grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 1 could be obtained. b. Based on the interview with the English teacher, writing a recount text was taught to the eighth grade students in this semester. c. The research dealing with the grammatical error analysis was not conducted at this school yet.

3.3 Respondent Determination Method