CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

A.    Research Design

Research design plays an important role in a research because the quality of research greatly depends on the design. The design of this research is classroom action research. It is called CAR because the research focuses on a particular problem and a particular group of students in a certain classroom. According to Suharsimi Arikunto, classroom action research is an action research which is carried out at the classroom aimed to improve learning practice quality. Mills defines an action research as any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers, principals, and school counselors in the teaching and learning environment to gather information about (a) how their particular school operates, (b) how teachers teach, and (c) how well their students learn.

Based on the definition above the implementation of classroom action research is enable to give improvement of the quality of teaching and learning of school in education since it can diagnose and solve the problem in teaching learning activity. Furthermore, CAR is a sequence research activity, that has purpose to improve social quality, that is done by collecting data or information systematically through four steps: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Therefore, there are elements in CAR: 

1.      Research is an activity to improve an object by using an appropriate methodology rules for getting data and information and then analyze to solve problem. 

2.      Acting is an activity that is done for certain purpose, in cycle sequence form activity.

3.      Class is group of students when at the same time, receive same lesson from their teacher.

B.     Setting and Subject of the Research

This research is conducted at SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih, Kediri. The school is located at Jl. Raya Ngadiluwih No. 30 Ngadiluwih - Kediri. This school was chosen as the field of the research because the writer graduate from this school, so the writer knows the real condition of this school.. Secondly, the writer suggests that innovation is needed in improving students’ writing skill for the better quality of school.

The writer selects the eighth year of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih class which is consists of 40 students in the 2014-2015 academic year as the subjects of the research. The population are all students in VIII C of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih. It consists of 40 students (26female) and (14male).

C.    Research Procedure

In this Classroom Action Research (CAR), the writer used the CAR principle to collect the data. This research consisted of two cycles and each cycle consisted of four elements.  

1.      Planning Phase

In this phase, the writer and the teacher make some planning based on the finding of preliminary study. The following activities in this action planning are designing lesson plan, preparing the model of clustering technique, preparing materials and media, and determining criteria of success. Designing lesson plan aims to provide the teacher with the guideline of teaching and learning activities. The lesson plan is included the following items: specific instructional objectives, the instructional materials and media, procedure of presentation, and procedure of assessment. Next step is preparing the model of clustering technique; the use of clustering technique in improving student’s skill in writing of descriptive text is applied. A model of clustering technique develops by the writer in teaching descriptive writing is using shapes, lines and box. It is an activity conducts by the students to generate and organize their ideas on the shapes based cluster.  The following step is preparing materials and media. The materials for implementing the action relates to schematic structure and language features in writing descriptive text taken from English text books for the eighth grade students of junior high school, English in Focus, for grade VIII junior high school. The last step is determining the criteria of success. It is useful for measuring whether the action of this study is successful or not. In line with the study, the criteria of success are decided based on the agreement between the writer and the teacher as follows:

a.       The students’ writing score improves at the same as the Minimum Mastery Criterion- Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal (KKM) of English (60.0) or above. And it is considered successful if 75% (27 out of 40) of the students with individual score in writing descriptive text achieve at least the same as or above 60.0. 

b.      The students’ participation in writing activities increase that 75% (27 out of 40) of the students should get involved in writing activities and their involvements are in scales “Good” and “Very Good”.   

2.      Acting Phase

In this phase, the writer carries out the action based on the lesson plan that will make. In implementing the action, the writer acts as the English teacher who taught descriptive writing using clustering technique. Meanwhile the teacher acts as the observer who observes all the activities that happen in the teaching learning process.

3.      Observing phase

This phase discusses about the process of recording and gathering all relevant data about any aspect occurred during the implementation of the action. The important aspects in observation are sources of data, the instrument used in collecting the data, and the technique for data collection. In doing the observation phase, the writer herself involves in teaching learning activities and the observer observes all the activities that happen in the class.    

4.      Reflecting Phase

After collecting the data, the writer will analyze the data of teaching-learning process. Then, the writer will reflect hesrself by seeing the result of the observation, whether the teaching learning process of writing descriptive text using clustering technique is good to imply in teaching learning process at the eight year of students of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih or not. If the first plan is unsuccessful, proven by students’ achievement, the writer should make the next plan (re-planning) to solve students’ problem and also to get a good result.

D.    Research Instrument

Some instruments are applied to obtain the data in this study. The writer uses interview, and questionnaire sheet dealing with the qualitative data. On the other side, the writer uses the students’ final writing as a pre-test and post-test to obtain the quantitative data.

1.      Interview is applied for the English teacher before the classroom action research and after classroom action research. It will apply before classroom action research to know the students difficulties in writing skill, the students’ participation in writing class, and the teaching strategy in teaching writing. Meanwhile, it will conduct after classroom action research to know the teacher’s response about the learning strategy focus on Clustering Technique. 

2.      Questionnaire is written of questions to be answered by the students. This instrument takes all students as the respondents. It will apply at the preliminary study. It consists of 5 items in order to get the data about students’ liking for learning English particularly in writing skill and the technique used by the teacher in teaching writing. Also, it will use after classroom action research to know the students’ response toward teaching and learning activities through Clustering technique.

3.      Test is given to the students focus on writing descriptive paragraph. The result of this test is students’ descriptive paragraph. The aim of this test is to measure the students’ skill in writing descriptive paragraph. The test is used in this study are pre-test and post-test. Pre-test will do before implementing Clustering Technique in preliminary study to know the students competence in writing descriptive paragraph. Post-test will do after implementing the Clustering Technique in teaching descriptive writing.

E.     Technique of Analyzing The Data

In analyzing the data related to the students’ test of writing skill, the writer uses analytical scoring rubric adapted from Weigle. There are five components presented in the analytical scoring rubric for writing, i.e., content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. In this study, the writer combine vocabulary and mechanic component. The following table is the analytical scoring rubric used by the writer to analyze the students’ paragraph writing.

Analytical scoring rubric adapted from Weigle.

Components of  Writing	Scores	Indicators
Content	4 3 2 1	Relevant to the topic and easy to understand Rather relevant to the topic and easy to understand Relevant to the topic but is not quite easy to understand Quite relevant to the topic but is not quite easy to understand
Organization	4 3 2 1	Most of the sentences are related to the main idea Some sentences are related to the main idea  Few sentences related to the main idea  The sentences are unrelated to each other
Vocabulary & Mechanic	4 3 2 1	A few errors in choice of words, spelling and punctuation Some errors in choice of words, spelling and punctuation Occasional errors in choice of words, spelling and punctuation  Frequent errors in choice of words, spelling and punctuation
Grammar	4 3 2 1	A few grammatical inaccuracies some Grammatical inaccuracies numerous Grammatical inaccuracies frequent Grammatical inaccuracies

To get the mean of students’ writing score within one cycle uses the formula:

            Mx      = åX

                             N

Mx : Mean

X : Individual score

N : Number of students 

In gaining the class percentage which passes the minimum mastery criteria- Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal (KKM) 60 (eighty) uses the formula:

            P          = F  X 100%

                           N

P : The class percentage

F : Total percentage score

N : Number of students

Next step, the writer identifies the improvement score on students’ descriptive paragraph from pre-test up to post-test score in cycle 1 and cycle 2 the writer uses the formula:

            P          = g-g1   X 100%

                              g

P : Percentage of Students’ Improvement

y : Pre- test Result

y1 : Post-test 1

            P          = g2-g  X 100%

                              g

P : Percentage of Students’ Improvement

y : Pre- test Result

y2 : Post-test 2

F.     The Scedule of The Research

No.	Activities	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Des
1.	Making Outline
2.	Preparing the class and instruments
3.	Giving treatment
4.	Analyzing the Data
5.	Writing Report