Background of Study INTRODUCTION
Reading, specifically reading comprehension is considered as a difficult skill to be mastered. Linse in her book states that in teaching reading skills,
teachers have to teach their students to acquire meaning and also analyze and synthesize what they have read, and those complex activities are elemental
components of reading process.
4
Additionally, Harmer argues that even learners who use English as their mother tongue consider reading skills as difficult to
master because there are many complex skills to be learnt.
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Due to the difficulty in teaching reading skills, language teachers and learners absolutely need tools to help them achieving their reading learning goals.
One of the tools is a good textbook. This is in line with Sasan and Amir’s argument in their journal that a good textbook assists and supports teachers to
reach their goals in teaching process.
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The argument is also supported by Harmer’s statement that a good textbook helps students to understand what they
have to learn and review what they have learned.
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In addition, Richards expresses that a good textbook must provide effective language models and input.
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One of effective language models and input is passages, and one kind of passages to be taught in second year of junior high school is narrative passage.
Teaching narrative passage in current curriculum is not only aimed to make students understand and create the passage, but also to introduce values to
students. Additionally, the kind of narrative passage that should be taught for second year of junior high school students based on the current curriculum is
fable.
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To be good and effective language models and input, narrative passages should be readable and the crucial things to determine the readability factors are
4
Caroline T. Linse, Practical English language Teaching: Young Learners, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006, p. 71.
5
Harmer, op. cit., p. 191.
6
Sasan B. And Amir H. R., Evaluation of an ESP Textbook for the Students of Sociology, Journal of Language Teaching and Research
, Vol. 2, No. 5, 2011, pp. 1009-1014.
7
Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach English. New Edition, Oxford: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, p. 152.
8
Jack C. Richards, Curriculum Development in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 254.
9
Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan 2013, Kurikulum 2013, Kompetensi Dasar SMP, p. 69.
the harmony and the link among sentences in a passage. Those crucial things are defined as cohesion.
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However, there are some English textbooks used in Indonesia which do not expose good narrative passages in term of cohesion. Some
narrative passages have excessive usage only on one cohesion device, while others do not expose some cohesion devices which actually those devices could be
appeared in the passages.
As an empirical evidence of the ‘in cohesive’ passages, the writer has found two studies which point out it. The first study was carried out by Rofikoh.
The study showed that there are no complete existing cohesion devices within 4 narrative passages which had been analyzed. Furthermore, there are no ellipsis
appeared within those passages.
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The second study was conducted by Fawziah. The study pointed out that there are only 2 narrative passages having complete
kinds of grammatical cohesion from 6 analyzed passages.
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Therefore, an investigation of cohesion within learning material passages could be claimed as an
important duty for teachers in consequence to expose effective language models and input to their students.
Further on the importance of cohesion, Halliday and Hasan argue that text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever
length, that does form a unified whole.
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They also state that cohesion is meant as a semantic bound between an element and other in a text that is really important to
the interpretation of it.
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A text or a passage in this case has to be a unified whole. It means that the sentences in a passage should be well connected one and
another. It can be concluded that an analysis of cohesion in a passage is extremely needed because the analysis could be a measurement for teachers to determine
10
Kushartanti, et al., Pesona Bahasa: Langkah Awal memahami Linguistik, Jakarta: PT. Gramedia Pustaka Utama, 2005, p. 96.
11
Karimatul Rofikoh, “A Grammatical Cohesion Analysis of Reading Texts in ‘Get Along with English’ Published by Erlangga”, Skripsi
, Jakarta: UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, 2013, not published.
12
Syifa Fawziah, “Grammatical Cohesion in Narrative Passages of English Textbook ‘English in Focus 2’ ”, Skripsi
, Jakarta: UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, 2013, not published.
13
M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Cohesion in English, London: Longman Group Limited, 1976, p.1.
14
Ibid., p. 8.
whether the passages are an effective language input or not. Hence, the effective language input hopefully could convey good learning outcomes.
To be clear about definition of cohesion, examples of ‘cohesive’ sentences and ‘in cohesive’ sentences are as follows:
a. Dhea and Dede bought the book yesterday. She went to the bookstore by bus. b. Dila and Dinis bought the book yesterday. They went to the bookstore by bus.
The sentences in a are ‘in cohesive’ because the pronoun ‘She’ does not clearly refer to anyone. It is not clear whether ‘she’ leads to Dhea, Dede, or both
of them. If it leads to both, pronoun ‘she’ should be replaced with ‘they’. The sentences cannot be understood by readers and the meaning becomes ambiguous
because there are no connections between those two sentences. On the other hand, the sentences in b are ‘cohesive’. The pronoun ‘they’ does refer to Dila and
Dinis.
Cohesion is divided into two main parts. They are grammatical cohesion and lexical or vocabulary cohesion. Grammatical cohesion has four main
branches. They are reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. While, lexical cohesion has two center kinds. Those are reiteration and collocation.
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In this study, the writer is intended to investigate cohesion devices within narrative
passages of eighth grade textbook “Bright 2” which is published by Erlangga and used at SMP Pelita 2 Depok only focused on its grammatical cohesion.