IG 121 - THE GRAMMATICAL COHESION OF READING TEXT OF YEAR SEVEN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOK

THE GRAMMATICAL COHESION OF READING TEXT

OF YEAR SEVEN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOK “SMART

STEPS” PUBLISHED BY GANECA EXACT

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1    Background of the Study

People live in what the so called social life, which always need companion. In this case, in order to facilitate their efforts to provide themselves with the necessities of life, human beings have to cooperate with one another which can only be carried out in a community. In doing so, they need a means of communication which is called language. With language they can interact with other people to establish and maintain relations between them and to express their ideas or view points on things in the world. Halliday in Feez and Joyce (1998:5) mentions “language arises in the life of the individual through an ongoing exchange of meanings with significant others”.

Languages are found among counties and English is one of the foreign languages that play an important role for the international relationship between English and non-English speaking countries. Harmer (2002:1) argues, English as a lingua franca. He adds “it is a language widely adopted for communication between two speakers whose native language is different from each other’s and where one or both speakers are using it as a second language”.

English itself has been taught in Indonesia as a first foreign language since the proclamation of Indonesia on 17th of August 1945 (Ramelan 1992:1). The teaching of English is aimed to develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Today, reading appears to be an essential skill for people. It is intended to get them always keep up with the development of sciences and technologies. Besides, it is indeed, useful for students for the sake of literacy mastery. Wong (1974:186) argues the importance of reading in his article ‘The Educational Role and Cultural Orientation of English Reading Materials’ by writing: “if young is to grow up viable in literacy society, they should be taught how to read. Reading is the infrastructure on which rest much of the knowledge made commonly available today”.

Students of foreign language should be prepared to read to have them deeply internalise the English they learn (Paul,2003:83). Furthermore, reading text can be used to improve and build up reading skill. Having a good reading skill benefits student to be able to speak well. Scott and Itreberg (1990:49) propose that the printed words become the main source of expanding and strengthening the language. Reading is also the language skill, which is easiest to keep up.

It is true that reading is essential for learners of foreign language as well as other subject of learning. Mikulecky (1986:1) makes the point that “reading may be the only way for us to use English if we live in non-English speaking country”. He adds why reading is more important when you are learning a new language in these following reasons:

1.)     reading helps you think in the new language.

2.)     reading helps you build a better vocabulary.

3.)     reading makes you comfortable with written English. You can write better English if you feel comfortable with the language.

4.)     reading may be the only way for you to use the English if live in a non- English speaking country.

5.)     reading can help if you plan to study in an English speaking country.

Above all, reading in the student native language is definitely different from the foreign language. In their native language, it is believed that students easily comprehend the text they read, as they are familiar with the vocabulary and grammatical rules used. Reading in the foreign language requires them of adequate knowledge of the language, which has a different vocabulary and grammatical system. In this case, it is necessary to prepare student to read with understanding each new unit of reading lesson. Thus, teacher is in an important role in choosing appropriate reading materials for the students.

A textbook is one of the material references of the English teaching at school. It is used to run English learning process. Reading text can be useful in running the reading class. It means that reading texts presented in the textbook should be meaningful. Although a text is made up of grammatical units (clauses, phrases, etc.), the text is not just a collection of clauses. As it is mentioned by Eggins (1994: 112), that “to be text, there must be texture, created through patterns of cohesion”.

Before presenting in a final version, furthermore, written texts are preplanned, drafted, and edited. The reader may be separated from the writer by both time and geographical distance, thus the writer cannot assume a shared context or shared knowledge with the reader. Hammond and Burns (1992:6) argue “written texts must be deconstructing in the sense that they must be independent of the actual physical context in which they were created. Written text must be cohesive within itself”. Baker (1992: 180) suggests that: “Cohesion is the network of the lexical, grammatical, and other relations or ties organize, and to some extend, create a text, for instance by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion is surface relation, it connects together the actual words and expression that we can see or hear”.

The language used in the textbook should be comprehensible. In this case, the text book writer should take note of the main functions of language usage in writing the reading text. One of the language functions, as mentioned by Halliday (1985: 23) is textual function. It is needed to attain cohesion and coherence in arranging text, as a result, the reader or hearer is easy to understand the text. It is hoped that reading texts in the text book serve a good cohesive ties.

1.2    Reason for Choosing the Topic

It is thought that students of junior high school, particularly year seven, are beginner learners of English. Therefore, they need more attention in learning this foreign language, mainly in reading class. They require to comprehend materials they learn. In this case, the reading materials they use are usually taken from an English textbook. For that reason, the reading text should be well organized.

Moreover, it is better if the reading texts in the textbook present good level of cohesion. Thus, they will comprehend the reading texts well. Irwin and Champman in Horning’s article accessed from http//jac.gsu.edu/jac/11.1/Articles/g.htm (9th Aug.2006) makes clear of theimportance of cohesion to reading and comprehending. In their studies they find that increasing the level of cohesion in text improves reading comprehension. In this case, cohesion plays a main role in reading comprehension. The more cohesive ties the text has, the more fully and easily the student will understand a text. As it is mentioned by Irwin in Horning’s article that “cohesion plays an important role in reading comprehension, and if writers increase the number of ties, readers will understand text more fully and easily”.

Grammatical cohesion as one of the cohesive devices seems to be important in the reading text. In this study I analyzed the realization of grammatical cohesion in reading text.

1.3    Statement of the problem

The problems of the study are stated in the following questions:

(1)            How is grammatical cohesion of reading texts in the student’s textbook written?

(2)            What is the dominant kind of grammatical cohesion found in the reading texts?

1.4    Objectives of the study

The purposes of the study are stated as follows:

(1)     To explain the realization of grammatical cohesion in each reading text.

(2)     To find out the dominant kind of grammatical cohesion in the reading texts.

1.5    Significance of the study

By conducting this study, it is expected that:

(1)     Teachers could use the finding as a consideration in selecting appropriate textbook for the teaching instrument.

(2)     Student’s textbook writers can take the result of the final project into concern in presenting reading text.

1.6    Limitation of the Study

There are two kinds of cohesion, grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. In this study, I limit the discussion on the analysis of grammatical cohesion in reading texts. Here, the source of the data is taken from junior high school textbook. The book consists of nine reading texts and I analyzed all of them.

1.7    Outline of the Study

To present the study easily, I organised the outline of this final project as follows:

Chapter I is introduction. It covers background of the study, reason for choosing the topic, statement of the problem, objective of the study, significance of the study, outline of the study.

Chapter II is review of related literature. It discusses the theories which are used as the bases of the research. It tells us about the types of meaning in language, the definition of cohesion, kinds of cohesion, reading text, and definition of textbook.

Chapter III deals with method of investigation, which explain the source of the data, collecting the data, and analysing the data.

Chapter IV presents the result of the study which tells about the grammatical cohesion found in the reading texts.

Chapter V puts conclusions and suggestions of the study.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Horning, A. Readable Writing: The Role of Cohesion and Redundancy. http//jac.gsu.edu/jac/11.1/articles/g.htm ( retrieved August, 9th 2006)

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Wong, R.H.K. 1974. The Educational Role and Cultural Orientation of English Reading Materials.

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