49 over all data randomly Fraenkel Wallen, 2008, p.476. Hence, the researcher
chose the participants randomly. To gather the data of the first questionnaire and the first interview, 10 of semester four students were chosen. By doing so, the
researcher could determine the materials which would be used to compose the second questionnaire which would be distributed to larger samples. In distributing
the second questionnaire, the 30 students were selected as the participants and seven of them were chosen to be the subjects in the second interview.
The total number of participants in the study were 40 students 10 males and 30 females studying at the English Language Education Study Program in
Sanata Dharma University. The respondents were divided into two groups. The first group which consisted of 10 respondents was meant for the first
questionnaire and the first interview while the second group which consisted of 30 pariticipants was meant for the second questionnaire and the second interview.
D. Instruments and Data Gathering Technique
This part will deal with instrument and data gathering technique which was used in this study. Two instruments were used in this investigation, namely,
questionnaire and interview to enable the researcher to gather the data. Wiersma 1995, p. 103 argues that in quantitative research, it involves numbers. Therefore,
it is essential to design such instruments which can help the researcher to answer the research problems.
There were two questionnaires which helped the researcher to collect the data. The first questionnaire see appendix 3 dealt with the occurrence of idioms.
50 It only consisted of one part: close-ended questions or usually called as selected-
response items. To ease the process of analyzing the results, the researcher used likert scales. Brown and Rodgers 2002, p. 120 say that likert scales are
beneficial to help the researchers to get participants’ opinions, knowledge,
characteristics about almost any side of language learning and teaching. Therefore, the respondents were assigned to give their responses by putting a tick
in the column provided. For each item, the participants were asked to choose the frequency of the occurrence of certain English idioms by using four-point scale.
Figure 3.1 is the picture of the four-point scale used by the researcher in the first questionnaire of this investigation.
[ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ] Uncommon
Very Common
Figure 3.1 Four-point Scale
Twenty-five idioms which were used in the first questionnaire were taken from two books of English idioms. The books contain many English idioms along
with the meanings see appendix 1 and they were composed by Collins 1961 1966. The researcher selected the idioms by using purposive sampling. Those 25
English idioms fulfill the three criteria set by the researcher, namely being able to
be comprehended metaphorically e.g. put all your eggs in one basket, as true as steel
, and burn the candle at both ends
, having relation with students’
culture e.g. kill two birds with one stone, no smoke without fire, and an eye for an eye
, and widely used by native English speakers e.g. call it a day, under the weather
, and give a hand. The English idioms books only consist of the list
51 of idioms and the fixed meanings; there are no contexts provided by Collins.
Therefore, to give the English idioms contexts, the researcher used the British National Corpus BNC. The BNC is an official website which provides a 100
million word collections from many sources. The BNC is considered sufficient because it contains statements used in daily conversations. And the following are
the steps how the data were collected from the BNC:
Figure 3.2 Step 1 – Opening the BNC web httpwww.natcopr.ox.ac.uk
52
Figure 3.3 Step 2 - Typing the Key Word e.g. burn the candle at both ends
Figure 3.4 Step 3 - Finding Sentences Containing Appropriate Context for the Idiom
53
Figure 3.5 Step 4 - Finding the Source by Clicking the Code Written there
Figure 3.6 Step 5 - Repeating the Steps from Step 2-4
54 By using the first questionnaire, the researcher then composed the second
questionnaire. As the first one, the researcher only used selected-response items. However, the respondents were not requested to rank the four-point scale. Instead,
they had to choose one or more of the items which had been provided by the researcher. The items here mean the strategies which were obtained from the first
interview after distributing the first questionnaire. The first interview was conducted to get clear answers from the respondents about how they identified the
meanings of the English idioms. To be able to reveal the responses, the researcher made a list of the questions for the interview. There were about 13 questions see
appendix 4. Having administered the second questionnaire, the researcher conducted
the second interview. It was done to get some confirmations between the results of the second questionnaire and the statement from the participants. Besides, the
second interview was also conducted to gain more information regarding the responses on the second questionnaire. There were about five questions addressed
to seven participants see appendix 6. After constructing and preparing the instruments, the next step was gathering the data.
Basically, there were two major techniques in collecting the data, namely, administering the questionnaires and interviewing the participants. The researcher
distributed the questionnaires to the samples which had been chosen from the population. Then, the researcher assigned the respondents to answer all the items
in the questionnaire and the last the questionnaires were collected to be analyzed. The same principle was also applied when the researcher conducted the
55 interviews: 10 respondents from the first group were addressed 13 questions and
seven participants from the second group were addressed five questions. During the interviews, the researcher recorded all the process. This step was essential
because it would be helpful in processing the data. In analyzing the data, the researcher could refer to the recordings. Moreover, the transcripts of the
interviews were also made to encourage the researcher to interpret the data and the reader to understand more about the findings.
It has been mentioned previously that the researcher used the data obtained from the first questionnaire and the first interview to compose the main instrument
to get the main data. The preliminary instruments were important because by conducting the preceding actions, the researcher hoped that the data would be
sufficient and valid. The first questionnaire on the occurrence of English idioms aimed to find out the familiarity of English idioms by semester four students of
ELESP. The researcher considered that it was an important thing to be examined because when the participants were already familiar with the idioms, then there
was no need to use any strategies to help them to find the intended meanings. Hence, to avoid such results, the researcher administered the first questionnaire.
After distributing the questionnaire, the researcher analyzed the findings by counting the frequency of each item. The following is the formula to count the
results of the first questionnaire:
f = 100
Figure 3.7 Formula 1
56
f = relative frequency
⅀R = number of response
N = number of participants
Table 3.2 displays the results of the first questionnaire.
Table 3.2. The Occurrence of English Idioms
No. Idioms
Scale of 1 – 4
Can you guess the
meaning? 1
2 3
4
1 put all your eggs in one basket
60 30
- 10
20 2
dead beat 60
10 20
10 30
3 break the neck
50 10
20 20
40 4
in the nick of time 40
50 -
10 20
5 as true as steel
20 20
30 30
50 6
apple of his eye 50
- 20
30 30
7 blind side
40 10
20 30
50 8
drink like a fish 40
20 30
10 50
9 crocodile tear
40 10
10 40
40 10
burn the candle at both ends 50
30 -
20 50
11 fall on her feet
50 20
20 10
40 12
a fish out of water 50
- 20
30 50
13 call it a day
60 10
- 30
20 14
trump card 50
40 -
10 20
15 make head or tail of it
40 10
40 10
40 16
kill two birds with one stone 20
20 10
50 80
17 the devil to pay
60 10
30 -
10 18
sink or swim 40
10 40
- 40
19 smoke without fire
10 20
30 30
70 20
see how the wind blows 30
20 -
30 40
21 an eye for an eye
40 20
10 30
50 22
turn the tables on you 40
10 20
20 40
23 under the weather
50 20
20 -
10 24
weather the storm 60
20 -
10 30
25 give a hand
30 -
- 70
80
By analyzing the results in table 3.2, the researcher decided which English idioms are less familiar to the students. Since the findings do not show great
differences in the degree of familiarity of English idioms, the researcher counted the average on each item. In finding the average
– in order to be able to discover
57 unfamiliar idioms - the researcher used the frequency of scale 1 and scale 2. The
following figure, figure 3.8, is the formula to count the average: Average =
Figure 3.8 Formula 2
Items which are considered less familiar English idioms and which are used to compose the second questionnaire are those which are 25
If the frequency in number one is 40 100. By using the formula, the researcher
found 15 English idioms, namely, put all your eggs in one basket, dead beat, break the neck, in the nick of time, apple of one’s eye, drink like a fish, burn
the candle at both ends, fall on one’s feet, a fish out of water, call it a day, a
trump card, the devil to pay, an eye for en aye, under the weather, and the
last weather the storm . Moreover, in the rightmost column of the questionnaire,
the researcher also assigned the participants to state whether they could guess the meanings of the idioms or not. The purpose is to be used as another consideration
to determine the less familiar English idioms. The smaller the percentage, the more unfamiliar idioms they are; and the bigger the percentage, the more familiar
idioms they are, such as in numbers 1, 4, 13, 14, 17, 23. Their percentages are between 10 - 20 and automatically they belong to unfamiliar idioms.
However, in numbers 16, 19, and 25, the percentages are between 70 - 80 which show that most of the participants were able to identify the meanings of
those idioms. Therefore, automatically, they belong to familiar idioms and they were not used in the second questionnaire because the respondents were already
58 familiar with the idioms. Moreover, it also indicated that there was no need to use
any strategies to help them to find the intended meanings. After addressing the first questionnaire, the researcher conducted the
follow up action – the first interview and there were 10 interviewees involved.
From the interview, the researcher obtained six strategies used to process the meanings of English idioms, namely:
1. Using background knowledge of students’ first language to find the
equality or similarity in their first language 2.
Using context 3.
Using direct translation 4.
Creating some imaginations based on the words 5.
Focusing on certain words in the idiom that can help the students to reveal the meaning
6. Relating each word in the idiom to another word in the idiom
– association
And from now on, the researcher will use terms strategy 1 – strategy 6 to refer to
those six strategies. Besides those strategies, the researcher also gave the participants a chance to use other strategies which could help them to acquire the
meanings and the researcher will use term other strategies to refer to strategies which are out of the six strategies.
By using the preliminary instruments, the researcher composed the second questionnaire which would be used as the main instrument to collect the main data
for this study see appendix 5. The questionnaire consists of 15 less familiar
59 idioms selected by using the results of the first questionnaire and seven
strategies six strategies from the interview and one strategy is outside those six strategies. The questionnaires were administered to larger samples consisting of
30 students. They were asked to choose one or more strategies which could help them to find the meanings of those 15 English idioms. Moreover, they were also
assigned to write the meanings of the idioms so that the researcher could identify whether the strategies could lead them to the correct meanings or not because they
have relation with the purposes of this investigation.
E. Data Analysis Technique
