difficulties in citing, lecturers can revise or add materials or techniques in teaching. It is hoped that students can write better and more effectively in the
early stage of writing before they go further to writing more important documents such as journals or thesis. This is also for preventing the students to take major
and general mistakes to the next level of writing.
C. Research Instruments
Two instruments were used in this research. The first instrument was the questionnaire. The questionnaires were aimed at checking
students’ comprehension on writing quotations and the concept of plagiarism. Two types of
questions were used in the questionnaires, namely close-ended questions and open-ended questions Ary, Jacobs, and Razavieh, 2002. Close-ended questions
were questions which answers come in alternatives and students were expected to choose the answer that they thought best describes what they know. In open-
ended questions, students were free to write their own answers. Therefore, students could give various answers freely according to their own opinions.
The second instrument was the standard rules of citation provided by the APA. Since the English Language Education Study Program adopted APA
documentation style in Sarjana Pendidikan Thesis and Final Paper Guidelines, the researcher used APA Publication Manual 6
th
edition as the standard to examine whether the students make proper citation.
D. Data Gathering Technique
After asking permission to conduct research in Academic Essay Writing class, firstly, the researcher distributed the questionnaires to the students. The
result provided some insights of the students’ understanding about plagiarism and
writing quotations. The second step was collecting students’ works for the second
progress test. The researcher copied the works and kept the copied works to be studied while the original ones were returned to the lecturers.
E. Data Analysis Technique
Since there were two kinds of data collected from the students, first of all, the researcher analyzed the documents from the students. The researcher searched
for errors in citations that most of the students did. Later on, the researcher listed the major problems that the students faced when citing and added some examples
from the students’ papers for each of the problems. After the analysis of the
students’ papers was finished, the researcher continued analyzing the questionnaire. From the questionnaires, it could be
concluded whether the students understood the concept of plagiarism. The questions in the questionnaires also tried to find out the difficulties that they had
when writing quotations and their awareness about using quotations properly in their papers. The result came in two kinds of answers; the fixed answers from the
closed-ended questions and the free answers from the open-ended questions. The fixed answers were analyzed by calculating the total percentage. The open
answers were analyzed one by one as the way they are. The researcher looked if
there were similarities in the answers so that categorization was made out of them. The conclusion from the questionnaire added complementary information to the
conclusion from the students’ papers to describe the problems students had in citing.
F. Research Procedure
