Chapter 3

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes and discusses the research design and methodology that the

researcher will be using in this study. These include the research locale, research participants,

instrumentation, and data gathering procedures.

Research Design

This study is a qualitative investigation using the triangulation design that includes in-

depth semi-structured interview, observation, and administering of checklist. These three means

of data collection strengthened the findings of the researchers. The semi-structured interviewer

abled the researchers to address toning questions that prepared the participants and follow up

questions that supported the data. This friendly manner of interview with the participants was the

aim of the researchers; making the interview process comfortable to them as they share their

perceptions on the different category of the interview.

Locale of the Study

This research was conducted at Mindanao State University-Integrated Laboratory School.

This school is located within the campus premises of the Mindanao State University in Marawi

City. The school was formerly called the Mindanao State University- Laboratory Elementary

School (MSU-LES). However, in line with the educational programs of the university and to

satisfy the increase in demand of free Republic Secondary Education, as amended by Section3,

Article XV of the Board of Regents (BOR) Res No. 1522 series of 1978, they duly approved the
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expansion of educational program of the MSU-LES and supplemented its pre-elementary

curricula with a four year high school general education consistent with the university

commitment for quality education.

The MSU- ILS was made a laboratory school especially under the College of Education

and its name was changed to Integrated Laboratory School (MSU- ILS). The goal of MSU –ILS

is to provide and equip the students with the basic knowledge, skills and values needed to grow

academically, spiritually, socially and economically for the total development of a well-rounded

personality. The vision is in line with the university’s vision to be the premier-supra regional

University in Mindanao-Sulu- Palawan region with the Education as the leading teaching

training, the ILS being the Laboratory school, aims for academic excellence and the development

of well- rounded person.

The researchers believe that the preferred secondary school institution is the suitable

locale of this study since it offers K to 12 Based English curriculum. The chosen locale is

accounted as one of the standard schools in ARMM and because of that, the researchers are

assured that this study investigated a homogenous group of either developing or advance

learners. The said institution is most accessible for the researchers in terms of its distance as

well.

Participants of the Study

The participants of this study were six Grade 10 students who were expected to have

developed already a fairly high English language competence. The researchers interviewed 10th

graders because in this particular level, students may already have identified different fields of
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academic interests in preparation for the senior high school aside from the fact that they possess

a variety of personalities.

According to Johannessen, Tufte, Kristoffersen (2006), 5 to 10 informants are appropriate

for this type of investigation. Molberg (2010) used in his study three boys and three girls were

selected as informants. Thus, since previous researchers had tested validity and reliability in that

number of informants with the equal division in terms of gender, the researchers considered that

number of informants.

The selection of the respondents of this study was lenient. The school principal referred

the researchers to the Grade 10 English teacher. With the permission of the English teacher, the

researchers inquired for the status of the students regarding their over-all performance in their

English Class. The chosen class consisted of a variety of personalities and different academic

interests. The researchers asked the Grade 10 class about the performance of their classmates and

who among them are orally active in classroom interaction. The students named six classmates.

Then the students involved were given brief orientation about the study and were asked whether

they were willing to coordinate and, fortunately, all of the six chosen participants found the study

interesting and agreed to be observed, given checklist and, lastly, be interviewed.

Instrumentation

The instruments used for this study are checklists on motivation and linguistic self-

confidence, observation tool for oral interaction and interview guide. The researcher made the

checklists for participants’ motivation and linguistic self-confidence were reliability tested before

these were used for this study. The observation tool and interview guide used were formulated

according to the research questions and interrelated with the two checklists so that the highest
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validity of these qualitative instruments was obtained. With the qualitative strategy used, the

phenomenon was explored closely which provided much detail and nuance and created

advantage because it made the participants open up their opinion and thoughts. In this manner,

qualitative strategy often has a high internal validity because the primary concern of the study is

not to generalize, but to develop an adequate description, interpretation and explanation of some

specific students’ notion with reference to oral interaction in the classroom.

The method used in this study made it possible to explore the themes. According to

Johannessenet.al. (2006), one can distinguish the difference between the two types of qualitative

interviews, the semi-structured and the unstructured interviews. In the semi-structured interview,

the researcher has to prepare an interview guide in advance; however, the questions, topics and

the order of the questions can easily be varied from interview to interview. Some questions of the

interview guide used in this study were adopted from the interview guide of Molberg (2010). The

interview guide then is not a questionnaire; it is rather a list of topics and general questions that

are to be discussed during the interview and these topics are, naturally, based on the research

questions one wants to answer.

In addition, a semi-structured interview allows the researcher to follow some fixed topics

and still have flexibility to ask follow-up questions. The interview guide includes linguistic self-

confidence, motivation and oral interaction. The questions included in linguistic self-confidence

are:

 How do you feel when you speak English? Are you comfortable?

 Rate your self-confidence in speaking English in your English class, from 1-4, is

the highest and 1 is the lowest.

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 What are the instances that you feel confident in speaking English? What about

instances that you do not feel confident?

For motivation, the questions are given distinctions regarding the Setting, the Topic, and

the Teaching approach. The questions for motivation were:

 When are you willing to speak?

 Does Setting motivate you to speak?

 Are there topics that you are interested to be discussed? Cite at least three.

 Does approach of the teacher for instance he throws a lot of questions influence

you to speak?.

For oral interaction, the following questions were asked:

 Are you raising questions regarding to the topic being discussed in the class?

 Do you share your ideas about the topic being discussed with your seatmate,

group, and in the class as a whole?

 Do you respond to the questions thrown by your teacher or classmates?

Another instrument used to support the data gathered from the interview was the

checklist on motivation and linguistic self-confidence. This checklist includes the two variables

in this study hence, divided into two parts. The first part which focuses on motivation contains

conditions that detect the degree of agreement of the participants regarding their motivation in

terms of setting, topic and teaching approach. The descriptive ratings used for the motivation are

strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree. The second part deals with

linguistic self-confidence and is comprised of items that detect the confidence level of the

participants in oral interaction using the English language. The participants rated themselves as

not confident, less confident, confident or very confident.

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The researchers also used an oral interaction observation tool. This instrument was used

to collect data regarding the frequency of occurrence of oral interaction inside the classroom

participants. This observation tool consists of six students’ activities such as asking queries about

the subject matter, initiation of discussion in the classroom or in a group, etc.

Data Gathering Procedures

This research was conducted at MSU- Integrated Laboratory School. The researchers sent

a letter to the School Principal and then to the English teacher of the Grade 10 students to seek

permission in conducting the research with some of their students as the participants. The

selection of the participants was then established. The researchers asked the participants whether

they were willing to participate in the study or not, and having deemed this study interesting, the

participants agreed.

To start the data gathering, the researchers distributed the checklist on motivation and

linguistic self-confidence to the participants. Then after the respondents had answered the

checklist, the researchers started the observation inside the classroom. After the two-week

observation, the researchers started the interview with the selected participants in a place which

is conducive, free from noise and interference.

Before the interview started, the researchers prepared the recording devices. The

documentation was conducted in two ways: voice recording and note-taking. The parts of the

interview were the introduction of the study, its purpose and the mechanisms of the interview,

and the brief introduction of the participants. Data analysis and interpretation ensued after all the

data were collected.

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Data Analysis Procedure

The core data were the responses of the participants in the interview, which were

interpreted and analyzed thematically wherein the responses in every question were analyzed and

coded according to the main idea. According to Woods (2011), thematic analysis is a way of

seeing, as well as a process for coding qualitative information and the researcher must decide

how he or she will code the data to enable categorization – themes to emerge.In this research,

each theme was given a reference number such as Theme 1.1: Willingness to Speak with

Friends, which is their response to the introductory question whether “When are you willing to

speak the English language?” The first part of the data that was analyzed was the participants’

motivation in terms of the setting, topic and teaching approach. The data gathered from the

checklist were used to support findings. The second part dealt with the linguistic self-confidence

of the participants. The last covers the oral interaction performance of the participants which was

supported by the data gathered from the observation tool that were collected for five observation

sessions.

Responses of every participant cited in the data analysis were coded P1 to P6. Discourse

unit was also used to address the reference point of the participants’ response and researchers’

question during the interview.