CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
This chapter elaborates aspects to do with the methodology of the study. Section 3.1 explains the research design; section 3.2 states the site and participants of the study; section 3.3 explains the data collection including instrumentation and procedures. Section 3.4 states the method of data analysis.
3.1 Research Design
This study employed qualitative method. It was conducted in qualitative design with some data collected quantitatively through questionnaire and some collected qualitatively through interviews and document analysis from students and teachers. It investigated a phenomenon which is described by Cresswell (1994) as an approach which inquires often makes knowledge claims based primarily on constructivist perspectives. The researcher physically went to the people, setting, site or institution to interview or record in its natural setting. The questionnaire was used for descriptive statistics, whereas interviews and document analysis were used for the collection of more in-depth and emergent data.
In this study, data were collected first through questionnaires. As Richards (2001) and Graves (2000) remark, questionnaire is essential instrument to gather
information about students’ needs and context. Then the interview and document
analysis were conducted in collecting the data from English teachers of vocational schools. The small numbers of participants who were interviewed were chosen based on a purposive sampling. This is in line with Silverman (2005) who stated that qualitative research designs tend to work with a relatively small number of cases. Generally speaking, qualitative researchers are prepared to sacrifice scope
for detail. Moreover, even what count as ‘detail’ tends to vary between qualitative
and quantitative researchers. The latter typically seek detail in certain aspects of
interactions. This is because qualitative researchers tend to use a non-positivist model of reality (Silverman, 2005; Alwasilah, 2008).
Qualitative research tends to be an effort to generate descriptions and situational interpretations of phenomena that the researcher can offer colleagues, students, and others for modifying their own understandings of phenomena (Stake, 2010). These techniques allow researchers to share in the understandings and perceptions of others and to explore how people structure and give meaning to their daily lives.
Therefore, as Nunan (1993) says, the data involved in qualitative research studies are likely to be in forms of words, pictures, charts, diagram, and so on instead of numerical ones. This does not mean that qualitative research cannot contain numerical data at all. Sometimes numerical data can be in qualitative research such as frequency and percentage (Emilia, 2000).
3.2 Site and Participants
The data were taken from a state vocational school and a private vocational school in Kuningan that become the pilot project schools for conducting 2013 Curriculum. The participants were 40 students of vocational school majoring economics and business and the English teachers who have been teaching EFL for at least 5 years. The reason to choose this site is because these schools are still trying out this 2013 curriculum. Some of them even planned to implement this 2013 curriculum in the future due to the effectiveness of this curriculum.
3.3 Data Collection
The instruments which were used are questionnaire and interview. As Richards (2001) and Graves (2000) remark, questionnaires are essential
inquire about their preferences, interests and socio-cultural environment. Graves (2002) stated that the data collection procedures of the qualitative method involved setting the boundaries for the study, which lead to classify the participants in specific area, collecting information through observation, and establishing the protocol for recording information. Interview is also needed in order to cover in depth elaboration (Punch, 2001).
3.3.1 Questionnaire
The data taken from questionnaire are structured and open-ended questions.
It gathered the data on students’ needs of English in target situation. Taking all the criteria mentioned into account, several versions of the students’ profile survey
were created with the intention of designing a suitable instrument that helped this research to gather information about specific characteristics of learners such as their attitude toward English, elements of access to information they have at home, artistic activities, music, TV program and places as suggested by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). On the other side, before applying the latest
version of the students’ profile survey, two other versions were implemented in
order to confirm its reliability.
The final version of the students’ profile survey consists of twenty questions with multiple answers where students have to either choose different options or rank their answers into some categories: a lot, more or less, little or nothing. Two parts formed the questionnaire are students’ self-assessment in language skills and their opinions about teaching materials, methods, and assessment. In the self-assessment section, students addressed how much school paid attention to skills, vocabulary and grammar teaching. The second section
3.3.2 Interview
Interview was used as instrument in collecting data from vocational school teachers. This was chosen to gain information from English teachers of vocational school in Kuningan in relation to the research questions. The semi-structured interviews were used in this study because they allow for standardized but in-depth probing of and elaboration on the original response. It enables one to follow a line of inquiry (Punch, 2001). The questions were prepared in advanced based on the theme being investigated. Interview is an interaction between two people, with the interviewer and the interviewee (Kvale, 1996). Thus, interview plays a
significant role in qualitative research because interview allows the researcher “to
check the accuracy of – to verify or refute – the impressions she had gained through observations” (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2012). Most of the interviews were conducted in Bahasa Indonesia. Nevertheless there were a number of occasions whereby English was used as the respective respondents felt more comfortable using the language.
3.3.3 Document analysis
Document analysis is derived from historical methods which are essentially concerned with the problems of selection and evaluation of evidence. Such methods were first developed by von Ranke and have influenced the form of all academic report writing (Evans 2000: 18; Barzun and Graff 1992: 5). In some projects documentary analysis will be used to supplement information obtained by other methods, as for instance when the reliability of evidence gathered from interviews or questionnaires is checked.
files and records can prove to be an extremely valuable alternative source of data (Johnson 1984: 23).
The documentary analysis included in this study was English for economics and business syllabus. It is a teacher syllabus which consists of thirty six meetings of first and second semester in a year. This method of data collection was useful to support data gained from questionnaire and interviews.
3.4 Data Analysis Framework
Data analysis comprised data from interview and questionnaire. The data gathered from the questionnaires were analyzed by counting the percentage of the
participants’ choices dealing with the statements about learning English for
vocational school students majoring economics and business. The questionnaires can be seen in appendix 1. Based on the data collected from the questionnaire, the researcher considered that deeper and detailed analysis is still needed. Therefore, the researcher also conducted the interview.
The interview was used to validate data from other data sources. It was also used in relation to triangulate the data given by each group of respondent. There are ten questions addressed to the English teachers of vocational school in Kuningan. The questions should be relevant to the central theme of the research guided by the theory. Regarding questions in interviews, there is one thing that needs a mention that is that researcher often avoid leading question, with the reason that the answer to the leading question is not detailed. This is not quite appropriate as leading question is not detailed. This is not quite appropriate as leading questions, especially in qualitative research, are important, as suggested by Fraenkel and Wallen (2012).
interview as soon as possible, as suggested by Osborne and Freyberd (1985). Immediate transcription allowed the interviewers to improve technique of asking questions for the next interview. The second was selecting the significant data related to the research problems from the transcription. The third step was interpreting the significant data to address research questions.
English for economics and business syllabus was analysed in relation to the research questions. The syllabus revealed the data whether or not the syllabus
