relationships between elements in a text rather than just the sum of words and sentences Britton and Gülgöz, Kintsch, McNamara and Kintsch in
Benjamin, 2011: 69-70. For example,
Latent Semantic Analysis LSA is used to report the cohesion to measure the difficulty of a text by comparing the semantic relatedness
of adjoining sentences. By measuring cohesion, LSA can determine that certain texts are suitable for certain level of readers. A highly cohesive text tends to be
easier for novice readers than a text with low cohesion that requires more connections and inferences made by readers to form mental representation of the
content McNamara et al., in Benjamin, 2011: 70-71
. Besides, as previously mentioned, it is also important to take into account
reader s‟ characteristics in assessing readability. Selecting appropriate texts for
readers involves some understanding of both the reader and the text Benjamin, 2011: 64. It includes
readers‟ physical capabilities, reading abilities, engagement motivation, prior knowledge and gender Wray Janan, 2013: 79.
4. Previous Study
This research is not the first study analyzing cohesion in narrative texts. There has been a study investigating cohesion in narrative texts entitled
“Cohesion and Semantic Understanding”. The study was conducted by Iqra Jabeen, Rabia Faiz, Asad Mehmood, and Naveed Yousaf from department of
English, University of Sargodha, Pakistan. The paper was published on November 2013.
There are three similarities between this research and the research conducted by Jabeen et al. First, both studies investigate the cohesive devices
consisting of grammatical and lexical cohesion. Second, the object of the research is narrative texts. Third, both studies have implications for English language
teaching. Therefore, the method of the previous study can be applied to this study.
T he principles of grammatical cohesion, namely reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction, and lexical cohesion, namely reiteration and collocation presented by Halliday and Hasan 1976 and Bloor and Bloor 1995 applied in the previous study
are also used in this research. The aim is to highlight the significance of cohesive ties
in the text which from its semantic base. All devices are first identified from narrative texts. After that, number of ties, types of cohesive ties and presupposed items are
written. Then, ties placed under the relevant categories. Finally, the conclusions and the implications can be drawn.
B. Conceptual framework
This research aims to investigate the cohesion in narrative texts presented in the electronic textbook for senior high school grade X entitled “Developing
English Competence” using the theory of cohesion proposed by Halliday and Hasan 1976 and
Bloor and Bloor 1995
. The investigation was done by looking at the surface structure of the narrative texts. As previously mentioned, by
investigating the surface structure of a text, the researcher would know how the meaning is constructed and decide whether the text is understandable and
compatible as language input or not. The surface structure of the text includes the
