Figure 1: The Model of Action Research Cycles from Kemmis McTaggart 1988 in Burns 2010: 9
In addition, the character of action research is small-scale, contextual and local. It is small-scale because in doing action research, the researcher
usually only involves few participants. The teaching-learning process is contextualized in order to achieve the aim of the research. It is local since the
researcher identifies and investigates the teaching-learning issues within a specific social situation, a school or classroom.
B. The Research Setting
There were three settings of this research. They were the place setting, learning setting, and time setting.
1. Place setting
The research was conducted in SMP 3 Berbah. The researcher chose the school since when he conducted observation, there were some problems
in the teaching learning process especially in writing.
The school is located in Berbah district in Sleman regency in the province of DIY. The school is far from the town and in the middle of
fields and villages. There were a computer laboratory, a language laboratory, a science laboratory, a library, a mosque, a teachers’ office, a
principal’s office, some canteens, a guidance and counseling room, an administration office, a health room, , and 6 toilets. The school building is
good and large enough with comfortable classrooms in its size, lighting, facility and environment surroundings.
The school has three English teachers; two of them are non-civil servant. It has 12 classrooms with 4 classrooms for each grade. Every
classroom is comfortable enough for teaching learning process. It has enough space in front and behind the students’ seats. In each classroom,
there is an LCD-Projector and a whiteboard. Grade VII consisted of 120 students, grade VIII consisted of 124
students and grade IX consisted of 130 students. Therefore, the total number of the students was 374 students. SMP 3 Berbah has 25 teachers, 5
employees and 2 guidance and counseling teachers.
2. Learning Setting
Teaching and learning process in SMP 3 Berbah is based on the KTSP 2006. The subject of the research is class VIII D which consists of 22
students.
For Grade VIII student, in a week, the English lesson is scheduled in three sessions in a week. For class VIII D, the English lesson is on
Wednesday at 08.20, Thursday at 08.20 and Saturday at 10.50. Each meeting will be in two hours lesson 2 x 40 minutes except in Thursday
there will be only one hour lesson. However, the researcher only took two meetings a week in order to avoid students’ boredom.
The English teacher used a course book accompanied with an LKS. In the teaching-learning process in the classroom, the English teacher
focused more on the reading skill. He seldom asked the students to write. In addition, the students of 8
th
grade are in ages between 13-14 years old. The students are in low level of elementary. They have similar cultural
background that is having Javanese as their first language.
3. Time Setting
