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D. Instruments and Data Gathering Technique
This parts elaborates the instruments of the research in order to answer the research questions as well as the data gathering technique of the research. Then, in
order to solve the two research problems, this research employed three kinds of instruments in gaining the data. They are human instrument, document, and
interview.
1. Human as a Research Instrument
In conducting a qualitative research, human does play an important role to gather and to analyze the data. In qualitative studies, the human investigator is
considered the primary instrument to gather and to analyze data Ary et al., 2002, p. 421. According to Lincoln and Cuba 1985, since qualitative research studies
human experiences and situations, researchers need a flexible instrument to be able to capture the complexity of the human experience as cited in Ary et al.,
2002, p. 421. In addition, Lincoln and Cuba further believe that only a human instrument is able to do this task as cited in Ary et al., 2002, p. 421.
In this research, the researcher collected and read students’ written work, analyzed subject-verb agreement errors which occurred in their written work and
interviewed them to find out the factors why they made those errors. It could be said that the researcher became the one who obtained and analyzed the data. The
researcher, therefore, could be classified as the research instrument for his contribution in the research.
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2. Document
In this research, the documents analyzed were students’ written work of their Progress Test II. The documents were used as the research instrument in
order to answer the first research question, which is “what are subject-verb agreement errors that are made by students in Paragraph Writing class of
ELESP?” The researcher decided to use students’ written work of their Progress Test II as the research instrument because of the assumption that all sentences in
the students’ written work to analyze were originally written by students in the Paragraph Writing class who at that time had studied the theories of paragraph
writing in the selected class for some months, who had studied and had prepared themselves for their Progress Test II, who had the same time given by the lecturer
in the classroom to do the test. Besides, the written work to analyze was also made by students who had the same learning environment when they did the test.
Another consideration why the researcher decided to use students’ written work of their Progress Test II as the research instrument was because in the
Progress Test II, students were asked to write a descriptive text, which required students to use Present Tense in writing the text. The researcher considered that he
would find various subject-verb agreement errors of the agreement in number and in person to analyze by analyzing the written work whose all sentences were
written in Present Tense.
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3. Interview