RESEARCH METHOD RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter aims to ensure that the texts are valid texts, processes and interpretation of validity. This section discusses the methodology and the procedures that will be employed in the research. It is essential to the study as it explains in details the appropriate steps of how to answer the research question systematically. The elaboration deals with 1 research method, 2 texts, 3 participants, 4 text gathering instrument 5 text gathering, 6 research steps and text processing, and 7 trustworthiness.

A. RESEARCH METHOD

The review of literature for this study includes lived experience, language learning and meaning. The following explanation is the procedure of getting meaning of students lived experience conducted by the researcher in relationship to literature review. This study adapts Groenewald’s 2004 five steps of text explication, which are bracketing and phenomenological reduction, delineating units of meaning, clustering of units of meaning to form themes, summarizing each interview, validating it and where necessary modifying it and extracting general and unique themes from all the interviews and making a composite summary. 32 Delineating units of meaning is a critical phase where the experience researched is extracted. Here, I needed to make judgment calls while consciously bracketing my own presuppositions in order to avoid inappropriate judgments. The list of units of relevant meaning extracted from interview is carefully scrutinized and the clearly redundant units eliminated Moustakas, 1994. To do this, I consider the literal content, the number of times a meaning was mentioned and how it was stated. Clusters of themes are typically formed by grouping units of meaning together Creswell, 1998 and I identify the significant topics, also called units of significance Sadala and Ardono in Groenewald 2004. Moreover, it is important for me to go back to the recorded interview and forth to the list of non-redundant units to derive Holloway and Hycner in Groenewald, 2004. Summarizing, validating and modifying each interview – at this point I sum up all the themes elicited from the texts giving the holistic context Ellenberger as cited in Groenewald, 2004 or concludes the explication by writing the composite summary which must reflect the context which the themes emerged. I also return to the participant to determine if the essence of the interview has been correctly captured and any modification is done as result of this validity check. The problem with the interview is sometimes the participants mix the incident being told with the one happening in another case, so that I have to reconfirm to the participants several times. After the four previous steps of process have been done, I identified the themes common to most or all of the interviews. Care must be taken not to cluster common themes if significant differences exist. The unique and minority voices 33 are important counterpoints to bring out regarding the phenomenon researched Groenewald, 2004. The text collection and the process of text description reflect the literature on text gathering and text processing. This study is a phenomenological research that aims to transform lived experience into a textual expression of its essence – in such a way that the effect of the text is at once a reflexive re-living and a reflective appropriation of something meaningful: a notion by which a reader is powerfully animated in his or her own lived experience Manen, 1990. The participants in this study had directly experienced the phenomenon of learning English. In this study I captured and described the phenomenon, what students’ experiences in learning English as the main data through anything got from in-depth interview, field notes, document check, and re-interview meant to them. By doing so, I collected anecdotes, pieces of everyday life story of the participants, then described and revealed of what the phenomena themselves already point to Manen, 1990 in order to come to the essence of the universal truth. The triangulation could be made by using multiple sources of data, so that the reliability and validity of the result could be achieved. The study adopted the phenomenology method that aims to explicate the meaning of the lived experiences of a person persons around a specific phenomenon. This approach focuses on what students had experienced and how they related the learning English process as a mirror to reflect not only for improving their English mastery empirical meaning but most of all for becoming more self-actualizing transcendent meaning. Then, the way to know their experiences is to experience the phenomenon as directly as possible to ourselves Patton, 2002. 34 Moustakas 1994, p. 103 mentions that phenomenology commits itself to descriptions of experiences, not explanations or analysis and indicates the methods and procedures for conducting human science research including first, preparing to collect data text gathering. There are formulating the question – defining terms of question; conducting literature review and determining original nature of study, developing criteria for selecting participants – establishing contract, obtaining informed consent, insuring confidentiality, agreeing to place and time commitments and obtaining permission to record publish; developing instructions and guiding questions or topics needed for phenomenological research interview. Shortly, methods of preparation are reviewing the professional and research methods, formulating the research question, illustrating the topic and research question and selecting the participants. Secondly, collecting data text gathering that covers the Epoche process as a way creating an atmosphere and rapport for conducting the interview, bracketing the question, conducting the qualitative research interview to obtain descriptions of the experience. The interpretation of text by the researcher uses hermeneutic phenomenology focusing on understanding the meaning of experience by searching for the themes, engaging with the data interpretively, with less emphasis on the essence that are important to descriptive phenomenology Sloan and Bowe 2014. 35

B. TEXTS