THE QUALITY OF MODEL WRITTEN TEXTS IN THE RECOMMENDED SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOK.
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LINGUISTIKA
THE QUALITY OF MODEL WRITTEN TEXTS
IN THE RECOMMENDED SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOK.
Dwi Rukmini
FBS Semarang
Abstract
The article is written based on the study on the model written texts provided in the Senior High School (SHS) English textbooks. It is aimed at finding out the quality of model written texts available in the textbooks for SHS students.
The method of the study is discourse analysis, and the approach is qualitative. The data are 115 reading texts provided in the six recommended English textbooks published by six different publishers. The units of analysis are text and clause. The instrument for analyzing the realization is the three strands of meanings that a clause can encode, which is suggested by Halliday (1994).
The results reveal that only eleven out of a hundred and fifteen reading texts are problematic in their rhetorical developments. This indicates that most of them achieve their respective social purposes and can be used as model texts.
In terms of the rhetorical development realization, ten out of eleven reading texts are problematic. Therefore they fail to achieve their social purposes.
It can be concluded that 90.43 % have good quality meaning that they are written based on the required conventions of genre writing suggested by English community.
Key words: genre, rhetorical development, realization, lexicogrammartical feature, model text.
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1. Introduction
Living in this era, people are greatly demanded to use the internet. Using it people can communicate, obtain information, entertainment, etc. However since English is the world language, when using the internet, they will be posed to English written texts. This becomes problem for those who are not good English users like many Indonesians. In Indonesia, the ones having low English proficiency are not only common people but the educated ones as well. This is supported by the following statement, ‘the reason why the greatest numbers of university members fail to get a scholarship to study abroad is because of their lack of English proficiency’ (‘Kompas’ newspaper, January 24th, 2006:31). Those may bring about an implication that the English education in this country is not so satisfactory. One of the efforts done to improve the condition was that the government of Indonesia through the department of education and culture changed the English curriculum. It was in 2004 when the English education curriculum was changed to the competence based curriculum which is famous with the 2004 English curriculum (2004 EC).
Since the changing, the English curriculum has changed its focus from sentences in isolation to text. Actually that change is also demanded by the recent paradigm in language education (Kern, 2000).
In that curriculum, 2004 EC, students, when learning a language, are involved with a text both spoken and written. They do not only discuss about the content of the text but also the rhetorical development -- the elements that construct a text and the realization in terms of the lexicogrammatical features used to realize those elements.
That a text should be the basis of learning a language is also supported by Carrell whose research finding reveals that in English second language learning, learners who possessed and activated the appropriate text background knowledge when processing texts were found to retrieve more information (Carrell, 1985:464).
Since a text is the concrete form of discourse, the focusing of the language education on text can be regarded as one of the efforts to suit with the communicative competence model offered by Celce-Murcia, et al. (1995) which proposes the students learning a language to achieve the discourse competence. According to them, the discourse competence is comprised of linguistic competence, socio-cultural competence, actional competence, and supported by the strategic competence.
In the process of teaching, like in other countries, teachers of English in Indonesia also make use of English textbooks, which are usually written based on the current curriculum. Considering the central role of a text in language learning, this study, on which this article is based, concerns about the quality of texts provided in them, whether they can be model texts for learning. However, the study only focuses on the six recommended textbooks provided for senior high school (SHS). The recommendation was actually given by the government to 14 publishers on December 12, 2006 after their textbooks had been reviewed by professional evaluators coordinated by ‘Pusat Perbukuan’-- an institution which is responsible of the quality of educational textbooks. This implies that the recommendation is reasonable.
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2. Theories Underlying the Study
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2. 1 Theory of Communication
The first theory underlying this study is the communication theory; Fiske (1990) proposes two schools of communication, process school and semiotic school. This study belongs to the latter. The diagram below illustrates how meanings of a writer in the form of a text are interpreted by the
Message and Meaning (adopted from Fiske,1990:4)
reader. When the meanings of a reading text are read by someone, the messages in the forms of signs and codes interact with him (the reader) producing meanings created by the text writer (producer). In doing so he brings with her the aspects of their cultural experience which have relation to the codes and signs that make up the text. Considering it, when reading a text, students are not only trained to interpret the content of the text but also its RD and realization. This is also done to suit with the shifting of paradigm in language education. What of language education are shifted is listed below.
Language as autonomous structural → Language as social phenomenon system
Product orientation → Process orientation
Focus on isolated sentences → Focus on connected stretches language
Focus on texts as displays of voca → Focus on texts realized as
bulary and grammar structures
Teaching as prescriptive norm
→
Focus on mastery of discrete skills Emphasis on denotative meanings
→
→
communicative acts (‘doing
things with words’)
Attention to register and style variation.
Focus on self-expression
Emphasis on communicative value in context
The shifting of paradigm in language education (Kern 2000:19)
It is explicitly written above that now the language education focus is changing from sentences in isolation to a text.
‘A text is a collection of meanings appropriate to its contexts’ (Butt, 1995:11). The context of a text, according to Derewianka (as cited in Hammond, et all.1992:2) in his model of language, consists of two — the cultural context and the situational one. The correlation between text and those two contexts is illustrated well on the diagram below.
Derewianka’s language model (adopted from Hammond, et al., 1992:1)
Referring to the diagram, the context of culture gives rise to genre. The term genre used to be related to the category of literary compositions, such as novels, plays, short stories, etc. However, today, it is widely used in rhetoric, literary and linguistics to refer to the distinctive type of text (Chandler in http://www.aber.ac.uk /media/Document /intgenre 2.html, 1997:1). The various kinds of text are characterized by the different Vol. 16, No. 30, Maret 2009 5 SK Akreditasi Nomor: 007/BAN PT/Ak-V/S2/VIII/2006
elements the text is structured. In this article the text structure is called the rhetorical development. Description’s rhetorical development, for example, has two elements: identification^descriptions; Procedure has three elements: goal^(list of things needed) ^steps.
The elements of a text can be obligatory and optional. It is obligatory if the existence in the text is compulsory. Unlike the optional element, a text may have it or not. The list of things, the second element of Procedure is optional therefore it is written in between brackets.
The context of situation gives rise to the lexicogrammatical features used to construct a text in order to achieve the text social purpose. Because of context of situation, Description, for example, has the following lexicogrammatical features: focus on specific participants, use of attributive and identifying processes, frequent use of ephitets and classifiers in nominal groups, and the use of simple present tense.
Both the structure of the text and its realization are conventions suggested by the parents’ community (Swales,1990). If the text is in English the parents’ community is English.
A model text is the one that fulfills both the elements and the lexicogrammatical features suggested by English community. The texts in the textbooks are those that the students work with, they do not only learn the content of the text but also its rhetorical development and lexicogrammatical features, since based on the current curriculum, at the end of the course they should be able to write various kinds of texts.
The study is aimed at finding the quality of the written model texts available in the textbooks for SHS students, explaining how their respective rhetorical developments serve the social purposes, describing how the linguistic features serve to accomplish their respective social purposes.
With regard to the scope, this study is included in discourse analysis since it analyses text as a whole. It also analyses the realization of RD, i.e. the choices of lexicogrammar used to realize the RD therefore it is included in stylistics particularly linguistics. The data are reading texts in the textbooks, so they are included in non literary text analysis in education.
It has been mentioned in the abstract that the data of this study are taken from 6 textbooks that are published by different recommended publishers. They are chosen purposively, two of them are for the tenth grade, two for the eleventh, and the other two are for the twelfth grade. All the reading texts (reading passages) in the chosen textbooks are the data of the study, they are all 115 reading texts.
The data are analyzed twice, the first is the rhetorical development analysis and the second is the rhetorical development realization analysis.
Based on the cultural context, every kind of text has its own rhetorical development. With regard to this, every text analyzed is segmented into its elements, followed by the labeling of each element and its function. Those are done to find out the genre, such as the one below:
Spring Gardens Apartment
|
Element |
Function |
Realization |
|
Identifi -cation |
Identifying what is going to be described, in this case is the Spring Garden Apartment. |
The Spring Garden Apartment Complex offers you and your family country living at its best. |
|
Descript 1 |
Describing the surrounding and location. |
Surrounded by beautiful woods and hills, Spring Garden is located ten miles outside the city but is only minutes downtown on the freeway. |
|
Descript |
Describing the inside of the |
Unfurnished two bedroom apartments are available. |
|
2 |
apartment; what each apartment Each apartment has a dishwasher, central heating, air has and the possibility to take conditioning, and laundry room. Children pets are pets inside it. welcome. |
|
Descript 3 |
Describing the existence of In addition, there are tennis and basketball courts, two sports facilities and parking swimming pools, and a playground. There are two area. parking spaces for each apartment. |
The above text is included in Description since the required elements of Description are provided in it.
Looking at the convention of RD realization suggested in the background, it can be seen that the terms used are the ones of systemic functional grammar of Halliday (1994). The RD realization of a text is, therefore, done by analyzing every clause in the text in terms of its three strands of meanings, interpersonal, textual and ideational. Since the text analyzed is written, the ideational meaning analysis is considered to be the priority.
Eggins suggests that analyzing the interpersonal meaning means establishing a relationship between the semantic organization of interaction and grammatical differences in the Mood configurations in clauses of different Mood types, and see the role of modality in interaction (Eggins, 1994:146). Mood is the subject and finite of the clause; while the rest of the clause is called the Residue. In connection with the written text, the text type that needs the appropriate role of modality is Exposition, of which the social purpose is to persuade the reader that something is the case (Analytical Exposition) or something should be the case (Hortatory Exposition).
The textual meaning analysis concerns a clause character as a message. What is mainly learned here is the thematic structure of a clause. Theme is the first meaning which is put at the beginning or in the front part of a clause. How the Themes of clauses in the text are structured govern how well the messages are developed in the text.
The ideational meaning analysis views a clause as its function to express experience; that is the clause as representation. ‘There are three semantic categories which explain in a general way how phenomena of the real world are presented as linguistic structure -- circumstance, process, and participant’ (Gerot, et al. 1994:52). Analyzing ideational meaning means exploring who does what to whom; who/what is what/who, when, where, why or how function.
The example below shows how the three meaning analyses are done to a given
clause.
A rule is “no talking while eating”.
|
Mood |
Residue | |
|
Subj |
Fin |
Complement |
|
Th |
Rheme | |
|
Token |
Rel P |
Value |
The first and second rows are the interpersonal meaning analyses. ‘A rule is’ is the Mood, and ‘no talking while eating’ is the residue. The Mood indicates that the clause is declarative, it gives information. In addition, the Finite of a clause may change its function. If is in the above clause is changed to should the clause becomes such a suggestion.
The third row is the textual meaning analysis. The Theme is ‘A rule’; the writer intends to first expose ‘A rule’ as the point of departure of the meaning, and it becomes the most important meaning exposed to the reader. By designing the Themes well a writer can maintain the meanings cohesively.
The fourth row is the ideational meaning analysis. It tells what is what, ‘The rule’ is ‘no talking while eating’. ‘is’ therefore is classified as identifying Relational Process. ‘no talking while eating’ is the value of the token ‘A rule’.
The results of the analyses are then compared to the conventions suggested by the parents’ community. Those requirements are used as the parameter of the study.
To present the findings systematically, they are divided into two, the findings related to the text rhetorical developments and the ones related to the rhetorical development realization.
There are 14 genres provided in 6 analyzed textbooks. The required genres, according to 2006 EC, are 13. The one which is not required but available in the textbooks is anecdote. That genre used to be required when the curriculum was firstly launched in 2003. The reason why that genre is not required to learn for SHS students is because it is hard; it is very culturally biased. Things which are funny for English cannot be funny for Indonesian. This finding also implies that the textbook writers do not keep up with the Vol. 16, No. 30, Maret 2009 10 SK Akreditasi Nomor: 007/BAN PT/Ak-V/S2/VIII/2006
latest issue of the curriculum. Usually improvements and revisions of curriculum are done continuously.
The proportion balance between genres is not achieved. Procedure constitutes 1.74 % of all 115 reading texts available in 6 analyzed textbooks. Narration gives 20% contribution: 14 out of 23 Narrations are imaginative stories. The indication of it is that only a few writers of textbooks know that Narrations are not always imaginative stories. They can also be factual Narrations.
Two reading texts have problematic rhetorical developments, and are not appropriate to be model texts. The problem is caused by the textbook writer’s suggestion on the genre to those texts. The suggestion is proved incorrect. The writer claims that one of them is Discussion, however the text has only one point of view. Discussion should at least consist of two arguments, argument for and argument against. This indicates that the text has no differing argument, so it can not be classified as Discussion. The other text is suggested by the writer to be included as Discussion but the result proves that the text should have been included in News Item since all elements are the ones belonging to News Item.
Nine reading texts have problems with their RD realization therefore they cannot be used as model texts. The inappropriate realizations are as follows:
There are clauses in 3 reading texts which have no subjects. This can not happen in written texts. One of them is written: Behind the diaphragm is a small cup filled with carbon. This clause only has a finite and no Subject. Actually the placing of an adjunct at the beginning of a clause followed by a relational process is acceptable as long as it is not a written text. Since it is so, there should have been inserted between diaphragm and is. There in that clause has no representational function but it is required because of the need of a Subject in English.
One reading text has a minor clause which functions as a major clause, it is written: Next, the pilot. This is an inappropriate use of a minor clause; all clauses in a written text should be major clauses. Observing further, it is found that the writer is a native speaker of English, this finding also suggests that a native writer cannot be guaranteed as being always correct in creating a text.
The time circumstance in one of the Recounts is inappropriately used, it is written: A few minutes ago, it started raining hard, and now the shower was coming down. Recount has a social purpose to retell past event, and now should have been changed to then. The clause should have been also rephrased to: and then it slowed down.
One of the analyzed Descriptions has this clause: You must visit Soho, the city’s current art scene center. The finite must has an implication that the clause expresses an absolute persuasion and should not have been used in Description. That finite does not describe Soho, therefore should have been changed to Soho is the city of current art.
Three reading texts do not use modals appropriately. One of them is found in Ana-
lytical Exposition. The problem is in the realization of the first clause. It is written: Cars should be banned in the city. The finite should (modal) involves the writer’s intent to persuade the readers to accept his advice. This clause, therefore, does not reflect the fact. In Analytical Exposition the argument given should be based on the fact otherwise the text with that clause is classified as Hortatory Exposition which argues that something should or should not be the case.
Two reading texts do not make use of the thematization organization well to maintain cohesion between clauses in the text.
There is one genre, Anecdote, which is not required by 2004 EC available in the textbook. 98.17% of 6 analyzed reading texts have good rhetorical developments and 90.44% of them have good rhetorical development realization, and therefore most of them achieve their respective social purposes. However, the inappropriate RD and its realization must be improved since being model texts, they should have had appropriate both RD and realization; considering that both of them are discussed thoroughly to form students’ appropriate background knowledge of text.
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The writer’s CV
|
Name & title Institution Education Publication |
: Dr. Dwi Rukmini : Semarang State University : S3 Graduate (2008) : Genres of Reading Texts for In the English Textbooks for Senior High School in Language Circle pages: 40-49, 2005. |
Vol. 16, No. 30, Maret 2009 15
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