68 coherence becomes an essential concept to consider and whose students have been
equipped with the concept of coherence showed the variety of relevant and interconnected data of this research.
Lastly, the setting of this research is concerned with the accessibility in conducting this research, as what it is believed by Holliday 2002 that a
researcher should have an access to take any necessary role in order to collect data. In that case, the fact that I was an alumnus of ELESP facilitated me to obtain
permission from the study program to conduct this research as well as to access the needed data effortlessly. Another fact was I have already had a good relation
with the lecturer in the class since I became one of the students at ELESP. This fact helped me a lot in accessing the data in his writing class.
The lecturer was also one of the alumni in the Graduate Program in English Language Studies of Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta, henceforth
called ELS, who has the same thesis advisor as mine. Therefore, having the same educational background, I, in fact, could obtain permission to conduct my
research in his class easily. Moreover, I could also fearlessly share the problems that I encountered during the data collection process done in his classroom and
significantly obtained the solutions to overcome the problems.
C. Types of Data and Data Sources
Considering types of data and data sources, this section explains some essential points adapted from Holliday 2002. They were types and information
about where the research data was obtained. In line with the methodology of this PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
69 research, the data to analyze were in the form of documents, which become one of
three main sources of data in a qualitative research Merriam, 2002; Patton, 2002. Particularly, the documents to analyze in this research were argumentative essays
written by the students. According to Creswell 2003, the selection of documents as the data to analyze was believed to provide some benefits for me as a
researcher. Firstly, the documents enable a researcher to obtain the language and words that participants have. Secondly, the documents could be accessed at a
particular time that is convenient to a researcher. Thirdly, regarded as written evidence, the documents would not make a researcher spend his time to transcribe
them. Based on the classroom syllabus Iswandari, 2013 as well as the essays
written by the students, the essays were categorized into one type of exposition essays, namely analytical exposition. The information concerning with the type of
the essay, covering its purposes and components, was further clarified in Chapter II. Then, the essays to analyze were gathered from the fifth-semester students in
class D of Academic Essay Writing at ELESP in the academic year 2012 2013. How the essays were selected as the research data would be clarified further in the
subsequent paragraphs. In determining the essays to analyze, this research followed the steps of
sampling as shown in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 Steps in Sampling Ary, Jacobs, Razavieh, 2002: 164
target population accessible population sample findings
70 In this research, the target populations, which are
“the large group to which the researcher wishes to generalize the results of the study” Ary et al, 2010: 149, of
were argumentative essays written by the fifth semester students in Academic Essay Writing classes at ELESP. Then, in this research, the accessible
populations, which are “the population of subjects accessible to the researcher for
drawing a sample” Ary et al, 2010: 149, were twenty-seven argumentative essays, regarded as the first writing project, in Class D of Academic Essay
Writing. This research also needed to determine the samples of the research after
stating the target and the accessible populations. In this research, twenty argumentative essays written by twenty students in class D of Academic Essay
Writing became the samples to analyze. Generally, the samples could be categorized into probability sampling, in which each participant of the population
has a known probability to be selected as a sample Ary et al, 2010. Particularly, the selection of the samples in this research could be
categorized into simple random sampling, in which “all members of the
population have an equal and independent chance of being included in the random sample” Ary et al, 2010: 150. In that case, the first twenty argumentative essays
sent to my E-mail account were analyzed. The further clarification on the use of the E-mail account in collecting
the students’ essay could be read in the research instrument part.
Certainly, the findings drawn from the selected samples would become an overall picture of the target population in the research. Its underlying reason was
71 that the selected samples shared the same fundamental characteristics as the target
populations. Firstly, both the argumentative essays in the selected samples and those in the target population were all written by the fifth semester students, who
have been equipped with the concept of coherence, at ELESP in the academic year 20122013. Secondly, all lecturers teaching Academic Essay Writing class
used the same syllabus Iswandari, 2013 consisting of overview, models of argumentative essays as well as schedule and learning activities in writing the
essay. This possibly indicated that the argumentative essays written by the students in the selected samples followed the same general instructions printed on
the syllabus as those written by the students in other writing classes.
D. Data Collection Technique
