To sum up, by conducting this study the quality of reading texts can be seen. This
is needed to determine whether they can be either used as model texts, or revised, or substituted with the good ones.
1. 5 Scope and Limitation
The philosophical basis of this study is rhetoric. Two of five rhetoric arts, i.e. the arrangement and style, become the concerns of this study. The former is
parallel with the rhetorical development RD of the reading text. The latter, style, can be regarded as parallel with the realization of the text RD. This is true, since
in the realization there are suggested lexicogrammatical features that if they are applied in the RD, the text becomes culturally and situationally acceptable by the
native speaker. This means the style of writing is appropriately done. Another basis of the study is the discourse theory. Discourse is defined as
‘a communicative event within situational contexts that takes place systematically based on the cultural and situational contexts encircling it’ 2004EC:38. In the
discourse study, the context of culture is analyzed through the stages that construct the text; whereas the context of situation, through the clauses that realize
the stages. Those are the analyses done in the study therefore, this study is included in a discourse study.
The instrument used in this study is the theory of systemic functional linguistics SFL. SFL confirms that language is useful as the basis for achieving
the two nexus of literacy skills, communicating orally and in writing, for it has three tenets Hammond,
1992:1, which are summarized as follows: First, language is functional; grammar and vocabulary are used to make a
specific meaning. Second, language can only be understood in relation to the context in
which it is used. This means that a different purpose for using a language and a different context bring about a different language text, and, vice versa, the
construction of language context affects on the context. Third, a text should be viewed as a whole, therefore, students need to
acquire the knowledge of how a text is culturally structured, developed, and how the structure and development are realized by the chosen lexicogrammar so that
the goal is achieved. The second and third tenets are used as the bases for analyzing the text’s
RD, and the first tenet is the basis for the realization of RD analysis.
In short, the scope of this research is philosophically rhetoric basis in the form of discourse analysis with the SFL theory as the instrument to analyze both
the RD of a written text and its realization. However, this study limits the scope by only analyzing a hundred and
fifteen reading texts available in six recommended SHS English textbooks published by different publishers. Those publishers were recommended by the
government of Indonesia, out of fourteen others, to publish English textbooks for both junior and senior high schools in Indonesia Kompas, January 12, 2006:31.
1.6 Key Terms
