AN ANALYSIS ON STATISTICAL USAGE ON A JOURNAL ENTITLED:

Does Collaborative Learning Improve EFL Students Reading Comprehension? by Esmail Momtaz and Mark Garner, Aberdeen UK

Reviewers: Dita Laras Cindy (08320010) Mufidlotul Zuliana (08320011) Ayu Kartika (083200015) B. Kamal Assalimi (08320024) Yessiana LM (08230037)

ENGLISH LETTERS AND LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF HUMANITY AND CULTURE MAULANA MALIK IBRAHIM STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSIRY OF MALANG DECEMBER, 2011

Introduction This paper is about to analyze and evaluate a thesis entitled Does Collaborative Learning Improve EFL Students Reading Comprehension? This research was done by Esmaeil Momtaz and Mark Garner, linguistic researchers from Aberdeen, UK. Through this research, they tried to answer a central question if collaborative reading lead to greater comprehension. The research is originated to the second year student at the Islamic Azad University of Malayer, Iran. The null hypothesis (H0) is, there is no significant difference in score between the class using collaborative reading strategies and class using private reading; and the alternative hypothesis (H1) is, there is a significant difference in score between the class using collaborative reading strategies and class using private reading. The researchers want to prove the assumption that collaborative learning (CL) is effective. It is because there is still few researches about collaborative learning in teaching reading, especially which concentrate in its relation to EFL or for non western educational institution. A mixed-method study was used in the research which being held in one of the university in Iran. There, EFL reading comprehension classes are given different treatment or instruction in order to establish whether (1) CL make the students get easier comprehension of a text than private reading, and, if it is true, (2) they should know the factors why it could happen. The participants were pre-tested for reading comprehension and divided into two classes. Then, they are given four texts with same length. Each class read two texts collaboratively and two privately. After that, they are needed to answer in writing ten comprehension questions. Collaborative reading resulted in consistently and significantly higher scores than private reading for all four texts. Group interactions during collaborative reading were tape recorded and transcribed, and 10 students selected at random from the two classes were interviewed in depth. Using these methods, certain processes of collaborative reading were identified, including brainstorming, paraphrasing, and summarizing.

Research Method Both quantitative and qualitative method is used here, but we will discuss the quantitative since our discussion is about t-test. It is applied in this research because there are some statistical computations in analyzing the data. The researcher tried to investigate the effect of collaborative learning in EFL students reading comprehension of 36 participants who are in the second year of studying in Islamic Azad University, in Iran. What we can evaluate here is that there is no explanation about how the participants were chosen. The researchers also didn't mention certain characteristics which should be fulfilled for them as participants. In other word, we have no idea about how and why the participants are them. In the discussion of research procedure, the researcher mentions some tests for this research. For the first, the researchers mention pretest. The next test which cannot be said as posttest- is held after the participants were taught some reading comprehension strategies in the 3rd week. They ordered one class to read the texts collaboratively, while the other privately. The researchers used independent-samples t-test to compare the means difference between the score of collaborative reading class and private reading class. Here, the things being compared are neither the pretest nor posttest, but between those two class. This independent ttest is also used to investigate whether the mean differences of collaborative and private class are significant or not.

Analysis and Discussion

Independent samples t-test for Test 1 (Group Statistics)
N

Independent samples t-test for Test 2 (Group Statistics)

Error N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Mean Error

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Mean

VAR00001

1.00

18

6.0139

1.77497

0.41837

VAR00001 VAR00002

1.00 2.00

18 18

5.3750 7.2500

2.28043 1.82507

0.53750 0.43017

VAR00002

2.00

18

3.8750

1.81345

0.42743

Independent samples t-test for Test 3 (Group Statistics)

N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Mean VAR00001 VAR00002 1.00 2.00 18 18 5.8472 6.4028 2.39506 2.17293 0.56452 0.51216 Error

Independent samples t-test for Test 4 (Group Statistics)

N
1VAR00001 1.00 18

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Mean

Error

7.1250

1.58404

0.37336

VAR00002

2.00

18

4.1111

2.42569

0.57174

Discussion The test 1 showed that there was a significant difference between collaborative reading class and private class score, that is 0,01. Instead of that, the researcher argued that there was a significant difference between both classes. According deviation standard in language error, the value of 0,01<0,05 is stated that it is not significant. This case happened in the test 3 as well, as the researchers said that there is no significant between the two class score. While, the standard deviation error showed the number 0,05 which means that it is significant. Moreover, they wrote down the wrong numbers became 47. Again, the test 4 reported the wrong statistical number. When the researchers said that it was significantly different, the significance number they wrote are 0,00. However, out of those all mistakes of writing numbers or interpretations, the test 2 is different. Its result showed an exact report both from the statistical numbers and from the researcher analysis. They found that there is a significant differences between the two class, that is 0,1.

Conclusion After evaluating this research, in choosing t-test in as the method to conduct the research is true due to the existence of two variable and its relations. Then, there are some unclear things that we found. The researcher didnt explain the certain characteristics that must fulfilled to be the participants of the test. Besides, the amount of the participants is only 36 which in this case couldnt represent the population in general. The analysis and discussion part is very important because it shows the crucial report of the research. After evaluating the research, we found mistakes that should not have happened in the research. That is in the process of writing the result of the analysis. The big mistake of the research is that the researchers are wrote the number which is not synchrony with what they said. For example, the researcher said in test 1 that the result is significant, but actually the correct one is not significant. Another mistake is found in the test 3. There is mistake of the researcher analyzing the data. Actually, after we evaluate the result of the test 3 is significant, but the researcher clearly said not significant. Instead of that, they wrong in writing the numbers of standard deviation error down. These mistakes show that the researcher was not precise enough when they wrote down the result of the analysis.