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and Brown (2009) stated that puppet give several
benefits in increasing speaking skills of young
learners.
Reflecting to the previous elaboration, this study
aims to describe the use of puppet in teaching
speaking to young learners, and the young learners’
responses of using puppet in their speaking activity.
Therefore, those concerns are within the context of
English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia. This
study attempts to answer the research questions
formulated as follows:
What are the benefits of using puppet in
teaching speaking to young learners?;
How do young learners respond toward the use
of puppet in their speaking activity?.
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1 Research Design
In order to answer the initial questions, this study
employed qualitative method by involving a case
study. Thus, a case study can be implemented to one
individual, one classroom, one school, or one school
district (Fraenkel and Wallen, 1990). Similarly,
Emilia (2005) states that a case study design could be
employed in “a small scale, a single case”, or only
focus on one particular instance of educational
experience or practice. The choice of using this
method considers the research questions and the aims
of this study that is to go in-depth understanding. This
is relevant to Merriam’s (1988) statement that case
study can be classified as an evaluated study because
it involves description, explanation, and judgments of
people’s individual and collective social actions,
beliefs, thoughts, and perceptions.
2.2 Research Site and Participant
The study was conducted in a public junior high
school in Bandung. This school was chosen for three
reasons. First, the school authorities allowed the
researcher to conduct this study in their school; hence,
this enhances the feasibility of this research. Second,
the curriculum of grade 7 is suitable with the purpose
of the research; therefore, this provides more
opportunities to conduct an observation. Third, the
chosen school belongs to the criteria of the research.
This also enhances the feasibility of the present study
which focuses on investigating speaking skills.
This study took nine seventh grade students. The
nine students were classified into three levels of
achievement, namely, low, middle, and high
achievers. This categorization was based on their
English course in the previous semester, indicated by
their grades in speaking.
2.3 Data Collection
Three instruments were used; they are classroom
observations, written documents, and interview.
Since case studies also allow one to present data
collected from multiple methods (i.e. interview,
document review, and observation) to provide the
complete story (Neala et al., 2006). Those
instruments were aimed to gain the data accurately
and to answer the research questions proposed. The
research was conducted along with the regular
schedule in the school. The data were collected in
three weeks.
Furthermore, classroom observation was used to
gain data during the implementation of using puppet
in teaching speaking. The classroom observations
were conducted six times. The type of observation in
this study was participant observation (Merriam and
Clark, 1991) since the researcher took part as the
teacher who implemented the use of puppet in
teaching speaking to young learners. Each meeting
spent 60 minutes per meeting. Video recording was
used in each meeting to be observed by the researcher
to gain more data about the speaking situations.
Written document is also one of the instruments
that was used to gather the data in order to answer the
research questions. The written documents are in the
forms of (1) lesson plans during the observation in six
meetings, (2) students’ checklist and teacher’s field
notes, and (3) video recording transcriptions.
Moreover, interview was aimed to collect the
information about the students’ thought, feelings,
responses, difficulties, and expectation towards the
use of puppet show in their speaking activity during
the observation.
2.4 Data Analysis
After gaining the data which were collected from
classroom observations, written documents, and
interviews, the data was analysed by following some
steps. Those instruments will be presented in a form
of descriptive explanation. Furthermore, the data
gained from three instruments were cross-checked
using triangulation to enhance research reliability and
validity (Vidovich, 2003). Video recording
transcriptions were analysed to find out some
evidences in using puppets by the students whether it
runs appropriately or not during the observations.
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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