46
analysis discourse is empirical: actual data rather than intuitions are used; analyses are accountable to the data and are meant to be predictive of other as yet
unecountered data. In addition, what is said, meant and done is sequentially situated; that is, utterances are produced and interpreted in the local contexts of
other utterances. To put it in a nutshell, since the objects of this study were speeches
produced by the 3
rd
semester students varied on two different classes, it involved the study of an issue explored through one or more cases within a bounded
system. In another words, case study, as one of the approaches in qualitative study, was used. Creswell 2007: 73 states that case study research is a qualitative
approach in which the investigator explores a bounded system a case or multiple bounded systems cases over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection
involving multiple sources of information, and reports a case description and case- based themes.
According to the statements above, I attempted to employ qualitative approach to analyse the data. In addition, the quantitative approach was also used
to produce some statistical data in order to strengthen the qualitative analysis.
3.2 Object of the Study
In this study, I used the speeches of the 3
rd
semester students of English Department of State University of Semarang in the academic year 20142015
which were given on the final test of Speaking for General Purposes course. The
47
speeches were then transcribed to written text to be analysed the Thematic structures and Thematic progressions to investigate the organization of the texts.
It can be concluded that this study took two points which are Thematic structures and Thematic progressions to reveal textual meaning. Type of case
study considered to be appropriate was collective case study multiple case study as Creswell 2007: 74 states this type, one issue or concern is selected, but the
inquirer selects multiple case studies to illustrate the issue. Often the inquirer purposefully selects multiple cases to show different perspective on the issue.
In order to reveal the cases, as a general rule, I needed to select representative cases for inclusion in the qualitative study which focus on
participant level. Purposeful sampling strategy was then chosen as a way to select the participants in two different classes. I selected three students for each class, so
there were six students analysed on the speech produced. The intent of this selection was not to generalize the information in the overall 3
rd
semester students in English Department, but to elucidate the particular, the specific.
3.3 Roles of the Researcher
In this study, I had roles as: 1
The Data Collector I collected the data of this study by recording the 3
rd
semester students‟ speeches on the final test of Speaking for General Purposes course.
Then, the speeches were transcribed into written texts in order to enable the writer analysing the clauses of the texts.
48
2 The Data Analyst
I analysed the clauses in the transcribed speech using Thematic structures to figure out what the students were going to say about in the
beginning of each clause and how they developed the information. Moreover, all of the clauses were examined using Thematic progressions
in order to analyse whether the clauses made coherent and cohesive text. Both of them were used to reveal the textual meaning of the texts.
3 The Data Reporter
I reported the result of data analysis in the next chapter. Then, I drew the conclusions based on the research findings.
3.4 Procedures of Collecting the Data