COHERENCE ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTSAo WRITINGS:
A CASE STUDY OF THE 4TH SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH
DEPARTMENT.
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND LETTERS DIAN
NUSWANTORO UNIVERSITY
Setyo Prasiyanto Cahyono .
cahyono2010@gmail.
Dian Nuswantoro University Abstract: The title of this research is coherence analysis of the students A writing A: a case study of the fourth semester students of English Department.
Faculty of Language and Letter Dian Nuswantoro University.
This analysis is conducted to know the coherence of studentsA writings that are made by the fourth semester students in writings class.
The study of this research is descriptive qualitative, which includes a simple quantitative The subject of this research is the studentsA writings by twenty students in Faculty of Language and letters Dian Nuswantoro University, in Academic years 2003/2004.
The result of the data reveals that all the texts which have been analyzed are coherent and the content was relevant to the topic Auunforgettable experienceAy.
There were only four texts showing that the content was not relevant to the topic sentence.
Most of the students employed the thematic progression of theme reiteration or constant theme pattern in their writing.
Keywords: coherence, studentsA writings, thematic progression Language as a means of communication can be used not only for the transmission of informative message but also for establishing and maintaining social relationships with other.
Every people express this social function of language when he/she interact with another (Halliday, 1979 : .
and Taylor state that language is a system of sign .
speech sound, hand gestures, letter.
used to communicate messages.
These definition tend to systemic linguist to advance to main theories that claim about language is a system of sign .
g speech sound, hand gestures, letter.
used to communicate message.
These definitions tend to systemic linguist to advance four main theories that claim about language that language use is functional, semantics, contextual, and grammatical.
Chomsky in Thompson .
defines a language as a set of sentences.
These sentences have meaning .
and pronunciation, and so in effect the grammar has to define a set of meanings whereby particular sense are matched with particular According to Matthiessen .
, language is a shared code that enables user to transmit idea and desires to one another.
English is very importance language in real communication in the world, so many people are interested in learning this language.
There are four skills in study of English: reading, listening, writing, and speaking.
Volume 7 Nomor 1.
Maret 2011 Writing is a part of importance basic study of English.
In principle, to write means to try produce or to reproduce written message.
Before writing, we need to determine what the write, we should have something meaningful to To put forward our message successfully, we, the writers, apply a number of writing strategies.
These strategies are not talent Ae oriented.
Every writer can learn and apply them in her or his writing.
Every learner is than encouraged to keep on practicing.
In other cases, we realize that many students get problems to know how to write well.
They can write but the result is far from the greeting well, so usually in the final test the result is unsatisfactory.
The students usually make errors in the process of writing and it usually takes place in the sentence coherent.
Many mistakes are frequently found when the students start to write.
They tend not to obey the rules in writing and say that writing is a complicated skill, that this skill is concerned with the talent.
Writing is not easy.
It involves much work and practices.
Trying to puts our ideas on paper in just the way we want them is never easy.
When we write, we have to think of several things at the same time.
Some of them are ideas, vocabularies, spelling, grammar, punctuation, hand writing.
We have to think all of these things even in a very simple piece of writing.
When writing, we should not forget to KISS (Keep It Simple and AStupidA).
In addition, it should be kept in mind that the writer has the right to present the readers with easy-to-understand writing.
Certainly, the word AeasyA may mean different thing to the audience, and to the readers.
By easy-tounderstand language, we mean that, as writer, we ought to know the average level of the reader mastery over the English language.
The level of language that we use should not be too AsimpleA or too AcomplicatedA.
Finding the main idea is very useful.
In writing, the main idea gives unity and order to our paragraph.
We need a good grammar as professional reference and we need theory of grammar to understand how the word text.
A good grammar will help the readers to understand to analyze what the text is about and whether the writing is a good or not.
Different types of writing are required for different purposes.
In addition to unity, coherence plays a crucial role in making a paragraph.
Every coherent paragraph contains smoothly Ae connected ideas.
Each sentence moves on naturally.
The paragraph is like a well Ae built high way.
A coherent paragraph consists of interrelated sentences which have in such a smooth way.
Writing is difficult skill for native speaker of non native speaker because a writer must balance multiple aspects such as content, organization, purpose, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and mechanism such as capitalization.
Martin .
According to Faulkner .
5:11-.
writing is governed by rules, it means that writing process takes a set of convention of rules to make the writer Awriting make sense to their readers.
According to Faulkner .
AuTo write is put down the graphic symbols that represent a language one understands.
, so Setyo Prasiyanto Cahyono.
Coherence Analysis of the StudentsA writings that others can read these graphics symbols if they know the language and the graphic representation.
Communication in writing tend to involve a thinking process as suggested by Schifrin .
, because writing requires the process of selecting and organizing ideas into coherence and the contents must be logical.
In line with this requirement.
Bhatia .
says that writing has been characterized as written Students should be encouraged to express their ideas, experiences, thought, and feeling.
In addition to a thinking process, writing also deals with In course books produced in the 1960s and 1970s, there is a belief that before students be expected to write coherent paragraph, they should have mastered the language at the level of sentence.
Writing as process focuses more on the various classroomA activities which are believed to promote the development of skilled language use.
Then, writing as product oriented approaches to the development of writing favor classroom activities in which the leaner is engaged in imitating, copying and transforming models of correct According to Martin .
argues that the form of process writing encourages the development of critical thinking which in turn encourages individual to explore and challenge social reality.
According to Bhathia .
the writing class should take into account the learners purposes for writing which transcend that of producing text for teacher evaluation.
Writing skill can develop rapidly when studentsA concern and interest are acknowledge, when they are given numerous opportunities to write, and when they are encouraged to become participants in community of writers.
Coherence means to hold together, in basic that paragraph in writing has the right order with the clear process.
In addition to unity, coherence plays a crucial or important role in making a paragraph read well.
Every coherent paragraph contains smoothly Ae connected ideas.
Each sentence moves on The paragraph is like a well Ae built high way.
vehicles run smoothly on it without encountering too many obstacles.
On the contrary, the incoherent paragraph might be like a zig Ae zag, bumpy mountain road.
vehicles cannot move fast or easily on it.
A coherent paragraph consists of interrelated sentences which move in such a way that they smooth the way for one another.
In a clear paragraph the sentences must follow each other in good order if they do not, the paragraph becomes mixed up and confusing.
The supporting sentences must be related to the topic sentences must follow each other.
If the ideas re to be clearly understood by the readers, there must be close connection between the sentences.
When we read a paragraph, we may not be conscious of how closely related the sentences are.
Who probably think about the ideas and do not notice how the sentences are connected.
If they were not closely connected, however, we would have difficulty in following the authorAs ideas.
A sentence in a paragraph is said irrelevant when the sentence does not deal with the topic of the paragraph.
a sentence is irrelevant, it does not belong to the paragraph and should take out.
Volume 7 Nomor 1.
Maret 2011 a paragraph contains irrelevant material, it does not have unity, the AtrafficA of the paragraph will be zig Ae zag or confusing like what has been mentioned above.
A well Ae written paragraph has coherence.
it Auhangs togetherAy.
The reader sees how the material in the paragraph relates to the main point.
The problem of this research is how is the coherence of the writing of the fourth semester students of English Department.
Faculty of languages and letters Dian Nuswantoro University? In achieving a coherent paragraph, it is useful for the students to apply a thematic pattern in their writings.
Thematic progression refers to the way in which the Theme of a clause may pick up or repeat, a meaning from a preceding theme and rheme.
According to Martin and Rother in Paltridge .
, there are three kinds of thematic development patterns, they are:
Theme reiteration/ constant theme pattern This pattern shows that the first theme is picked up and repeated in the beginning of the next clause.
This is the example of this pattern:
Theme 1 Rheme 1 Theme 2 Rheme 2 Theme 3 Rheme 3 Theme 4 Rheme 4 Theme 5 Rheme 5 A zig-zag/ linear theme pattern It is a pattern when the subject matter in the rheme of one clause is taken up in the theme of the following clause.
The example of zig-zag pattern can be seen below:
Theme 1 Rheme 1 Theme 2 Rheme 2 Theme 3 Rheme 3 Theme 4 Rheme 4 Theme 5 Rheme 5 Setyo Prasiyanto Cahyono.
Coherence Analysis of the StudentsA writings Multiple theme/ split rheme pattern In this pattern, a rheme may include a number of different pieces of information, each of which may be taken up as the theme in a number of subsequent clauses.
The example of multiple theme patterns can be seen Theme 1
Rheme 1
Theme 2
Rheme 2
Theme 3
Rheme 3
Theme 4
Rheme 4
Theme 5
Rheme 5
METHOD
Arikunto .
says that data source means a subject form which the data are obtained.
Data are the most important items in research because the information about problems which are discussed could be achieved from the data.
The data of this research were taken from the assignments of the fourth semester students of English Department.
Faculty of Language and Letters Dian Nuswantoro University.
To collect the data, the researcher used elicitation The elicitation prompts were design and administered by 75 students.
They were given 100 minutes to do the instruction in the elicitation prompts.
The instructions are: .
each student has to make a writing which consists of one paragraph with a topic Auunforgettable experienceAy.
the students must finish their writings in 100 minutes.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
There are 10 studentsA writings used as the data of this research.
The writings are in the form of paragraphs with different topics.
The students choose their own topic, unforgettable experience, such as, accident in the class room, young mother, canter pillar, my funny story, etc.
In this part the writer presents the Theme and Rheme of every studentAs writing and also its thematic progression based on Butt et .
to know the coherency of the studentsA writing and types of thematic progression patterns the students mostly employ.
The errors concerning with grammar or spelling are ignored.
In the academic circumstance, the teaching of language skills should not just treat the skills as they are.
however, teachers should position these skills as realization of meanings in communication.
By this consideration, teachers should teach their students to act of communicating with these skills about any Volume 7 Nomor 1.
Maret 2011 In so doing, the teaching of language skills, for example writing skill, should encourage students to write well.
In this thought, teachers should train students to develop their awareness of their context for their own By the end of the overall courses of writing subjects, students will be able to write a well paragraph especially a coherent paragraph in their Based on the findings of 10 studentsA writings.
it can be drawn in the following table below.
Table 1.
Thematic Progression Pattern of the StudentsAo Writing.
Thematic Progression Patterns Constants Zig-zag Multiple Total of Clause StudentsAo Writings As shown in the table above, it can be seen that the most dominant thematic progression pattern found in the studentsA writings is reiteration/constant theme patterns.
In this case, the students tend to use pronouns such as I, he, she, it and they in their writings.
The students think that it is easier for them by repeating theme of one clause to another at the beginning of a clause.
In this type of thematic pattern, the purpose of the students repeats those pronouns because the students tell about their own unforgettable experiences to their friends or somebody else.
ThatAs why they produce those third singular and plural pronouns.
Then, it is followed by multiple theme patterns.
In this part of pattern, the students try to develop their paragraphs by picking the rheme which may include a number of different pieces of information, each of which may be taken up as the theme in a number of subsequent clauses.
Meanwhile, the last pattern is zig-zag theme The students try to develop their paragraph by taking the subject matter in the rheme of one clause is taken up in the theme of a following clause.
As the table above shows, it can be seen that the total number of clauses in every text is close to the numbers of the thematic patterns in every text.
It can be concluded that all writings the students made are coherent, besides that, their writings are also relevant to the topics they employed.
The example of those thematic patterns found in the studentsA writings can be seen in the figure below:
Setyo Prasiyanto Cahyono.
Coherence Analysis of the StudentsA writings Theme Rheme have experience of love.
get broken heart.
many people do something to lose their sadness like watching movie with friends or playing many people feels were alone have many friends besides often feels nothing spirit and power to do are also feels wants to cry and Now, many people Many people Because of this Because of broken heart They Although they And they They They And .
Many people Although it Sometimes they And .
Mayoritas of the people But some people That she And she are looks so sad canAt smile to everyone can suicide is very crazy and stupid feel lazy to eat And the girl become to sick feels like that is free can do anything without boy She can get more friends After she is broken heart Figure 1.
1 Thematic Progression of the StudentAs Writing 1 The figure above shows that the student employs three types of thematic Those are constant, zig-zag, and reiteration patterns in his writing.
The first type of thematic patterns found is constant theme pattern.
It can be seen in the first clause that the theme Aumany peopleAy is repeated in the second clause with a similar phrase Aumany peopleAy.
Then the third plural pronoun AutheyAy in the fifth clause is also repeated in the sixth until the tenth clauses with the similar pronoun Volume 7 Nomor 1.
Maret 2011 AutheyAy.
Another constant theme existed in the example above is in the nineteenth clause, there is a word Auand the girlAy is take up as the theme in the twentieth clause by replacing with a singular pronoun AusheAy.
The second is zig-zag theme It is found that there are only two zig-zag theme patterns found in the example above.
They occurred in the second clause where the rheme of the second clause Auget broken heartAy is taken up as the theme of the third clause with demonstrative pronoun AuthisAy.
Whereas, the rheme in the eleventh clause Aucan suicideAy is taken up as the theme in the twelfth clause with personal pronoun AuitAy.
Meanwhile reiteration theme, the last theme patterns found in the example above, is the most dominant theme pattern found in the figure above.
There are five multiple patterns found in the example above.
It is found that the rheme of the third clause Aumany people do something to lose their sadness like watching movie with friends or playing gamesAy is almost taken up as the theme in some clauses This rheme is repeated in the fifth, the eleventh, the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the fifteenth clauses.
As a result, it can be concluded that the studentAs writing above is coherent since the clauses are related to each other.
Another example shows thematic pattern produced by the students is given in the illustration below.
The figure below depicts that the student also produced three types of thematic progression pattern in his writing.
It can be seen that constant theme pattern is the most dominant pattern found in the example below then, it is followed by reiteration and zig-zag simultaneously.
There are sixteen clauses existed in the studentAs writing.
From those clauses, it is revealed that constant theme pattern occurred in some clauses.
For example, the theme in the first clause AuNowadays, many thingsAy is repeated in as theme in the second clause with personal pronoun AuthemAy.
Afterward, the theme of the fifth clause AuIn view of my experience, the playersAy is repeated in the following theme, the sixth clause, with personal pronoun AutheyAy then it is repeated in the seventh clause with the similar pronoun.
Whereas, zig-zag theme pattern is the only theme pattern existed in the studentAs writing.
It is occurred in the second clause, where the rheme Auis playing online gamesAy is taken up as the theme in the following clause by replacing the phrase with personal pronoun AuitAy.
Another theme pattern found in the studentAs writing here is multiple theme patterns.
This type of theme patterns is the most occurrences found in the example given below.
It is seen in the rheme of the second clause Auis playing online gamesAy is repeated as theme in the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth clauses.
As a result, it can be drawn in a figure below.
As a result, it can be concluded that the studentAs writing above is coherent since the clauses are interrelated to one another.
Setyo Prasiyanto Cahyono.
Coherence Analysis of the StudentsA writings Theme Nowadays, many things Rheme can entertain the One of them is playing online Beside, it can entertain the Playing on line games also have bad effect In view of my experience, the players will be addicted.
They will do anything So they can play The players also have to increase their level So they will spend much money to play on Because of spending the time in front of computer, it will broke their sight.
Light from computer will destroy eyes function step by So they have to use glasses in the end.
can make their hip and back can be Also too much play game on line can decrease the memory and brain.
So they have to control If they donAt want to destroy Step Figure 1.
2 Thematic Progression of the StudentAs Writing 2
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
The ability to make a coherent paragraph in writing is very important writing skill that students need to master.
This skill is considered very helpful in their studies, when writing in their natives language as well as in foreign Based on the data analysis outcome, all of the texts are coherent.
In every text, the sentences are related to each other and the content of every text is relevant to the topics.
Volume 7 Nomor 1.
Maret 2011 In writing their texts, the students have tendency to use unmarked topical Theme.
in this case, in the form of pronouns, whether singular or plural.
In their writings most of the students employed the thematic progression of theme reiteration or constant theme.
The second preferred in multiple patterns.
Meanwhile, zig-zag pattern is in the third place employed by the students in their In line with the findings above, teachers and curriculum developers should pay attention to this, and it is suggested they can explain the important of thematic progression patterns in writing in order to be coherent.
REFERENCES