AN ANALYSIS ON LEXICAL DENSITY OF READING MATERIALS IN “ENGLISH IN FOCUS” TEXTBOOK FOR 8TH
GRADE OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AT SMP N 12 MALANG
THESIS
By:
INFITTA NAJKHATIN SILVIA YUHANA NIM: 09360270
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG
AN ANALYSIS ON LEXICAL DENSITY OF READING MATERIALS IN “ENGLISH IN FOCUS” TEXTBOOK FOR 8TH
GRADE OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AT SMP N 12 MALANG
THESIS
This Thesis is submitted to meet one of the requirements to achieve Sarjana Degree in English Education
By:
INFITTA NAJKHATIN SILVIA YUHANA NIM. 09360270
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG
This thesis written by Infitta Najkhatin Silvia Yuhana was approved on January 28,
2014.
By:
Advisor II, Advisor I,
MOTTO
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
(Albert Einstein)
DEDICATION:
I dedicated this thesis to
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alhamdulillah, all praises are due to Allah SWT, who gives His blessing,
guidance and merciful in my life, then finally I could finish this thesis.
Furthermore, I would like to express my deepest thank to Rina Wahyu S.
M.Ed and Drs. Imam Mahfud for their advices, corrections, motivations and ideas in
guiding my thesis until it is finished. My gratitude also goes to all lectures of English
Department in the University of Muhammadiyah Malang for knowledge that may
worthwhile.
Indeed, l would like to thank to my beloved Mother (alm. Winarti), Father
(Antono Edy S.), Grand Mother (Mbah Putri), Sisters (Emma S. Yuhana, Ning and
Erna Yuhana), Brothers (Sapta Yuhana, Govinda Asva Y. and Dwi Adi Y.), nephew
and niece (Ibel, Maya, Aya and Dzeko) who always support, pray, love and be patient
to me. For my beloved person (Conk) who always gives spirit, love and motivation to
finish my thesis.
To all my close friends at English Department and my boarding house
(Novita, Anna , Diah, Ipeh, Icha, Nila, Unyuk, Wiwik, Dean, Niar, Vinda, Ayu, Via,
Sandi, Uki, and Ramli) thanks for your togetherness and kindness, help and support.
And for all my friends who cannot be mentioned one by one, thank you very much.
Malang, January 28, 2014
The Writer,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2.4 Lexical Density ... 13
2.4.1 Content Words ... 13
2.4.2 Grammatical Function Words ... 17
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1Research Design ... 19
3.2Research Instrument ... 20
3.3Research Object ... 20
3.4Data Collection ... 20
3.5 Data Analysis ... 21
CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Research Findings of Lexical Density ... 22
4.2 Discussions ... 25
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1 Conclusions ... 27
5.2 Suggestions ... 27
REFERENCES ... 29
REFERENCES
Arikonto, Suharsimi. 2013. Prosedur Penelitian. Jakarta: PT Rineka Cipta.
Ary, Donald. Jacobs, lucy. Cheser, etc. 2010. Introduction to Research in Education 8th Edition. United State: Nelson Education,Ltd.
Ferris, R. Dana, John. S, Hedgcock. 2005. Teaching ESL Composition 2nd edition. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Graves, Kathleen. 2000. Designing Language courses A Guide for Teaching. Boston: Heinle and Heinla.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Spoken and Written Language. Berlin: Oxford University Press.
Harianto, Nurfitriana. 2013. Analysis of Cohesion found in English in Focus Textbook
of “look Ahead 2” for Eleventh Grade of Senior High School Published by
Erlangga. Thesis. Universitas Muria Kudus.
Harmer, Jeremy. 2001. How to Teach English. Malaysia: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.
Johansson, Victoria. 2008. Linguistics and Phonetics. Lund University.
Johns, Ann. M. 2002. Genre in Classroom. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Knapp, Peter. Megan, Watkins. 2005. Genre, Text, Grammar. Australia: University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
Lee, David, Y.W. 2001. Genre, Register, Text Types, Domains, and Style: Clarifying the Concepts and Navigating a Path through the BNC Jungle. United Kingdom : Lancaster University.
Rahmansyah, Habib. 2012. Grammatical Intricacy and Lexical Density of the SMA
Student’s Textbooks. Thesis. Universitas Negeri Medan.
Wardiman, Artono. 2008. English in Focus for Grade VIII Junior High School. Jakarta: Pusat Perbukuan Departemen Pendidikan Nasional.
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of Study
Language is one of the important things for all people to communicate.
Language is useful for gathering, connecting information all over the world. The
importance of the language includes all of the aspects of life because people can
express their experience, feeling, and idea using a language. It means that language is
a means of communication. As a medium of international communication, English is
very important and has a lot of interrelationships with various aspects of life. In
Indonesia, English is a foreign language and taught formally and informally from
primary schools to universities.
English is an international language. It plays in important role in the process
of modernization as an international language to be taught in schools. The purpose of
teaching English is to develop four language skills; listening, speaking, reading and
writing. These four language skills enable the students to take part in information
exchange, to build interpersonal relationship, and to gain knowledge as well as to
enjoy the language aesthetic of English. The teacher should develop students’ four
language skills, so that they can use the language to communicate and to express their
2
Of the four skills to be mastered, reading skill is a very important domain in
the context of Indonesia, so students need to be exercised and trained in order to be
good readers. Reading is also important and indispensable for the students, if their
reading skill is poor they are very likely to fail in their study or at least they will have
difficulty in making progress. On the other hand, if they have a good skill in reading
comprehension, they will have a chance to succeed in their study.
Essentially, reading is conveying or guiding the students to get some
important messages and get meanings from written texts. By reading, many students
can get new information, idea and inspiration. Some students are interested in reading
books, novels, articles, etc. The reading material can be authentic materials, for
example: textbook, newspaper or magazine. The reading material refers to any texts
or passages that bring certain messages or ideas to be shared to the students through
the process of reading activity.
Nowadays, the students are expected to read and understand not only the
sense of the text but also the aspect of generic structure of the text which leads them
to be able to write the text based on the genre (Sutikno, 2007). In this study, the
researcher analyzes the lexical density. The lexical density is the ratio between the
number of content words and number of clauses (Halliday, 1985:63). The concept of
lexical density is developed, and further refined by Halliday in 1985. He points out
the importance of discriminating between lexical items and grammatical items. An
3
According to Ferris and Hedgcock (2005:125), “A textbook provides teacher
and learner with reading materials, activities, exercise, and sometimes visual aid”.
This means that the materials in the textbook should help teachers in teaching and
learning process, so it is important for teachers to select and to analyze the content of
a textbook. Ferris and Hedgcock (2005:131) state that there are two categories of a
good book in English for second language. First, the contents of the textbook should
deal with the current curriculum. The second category is that a textbook should have
an interesting display because it can give motivation to the readers to read the
textbook. In addition, the language of the textbook should be corrected in context and
situation (graves, 2000:13).
A research about textbooks has been done previously. It was done by Harianto
(2013), the title is “An Analysis of Lexical Cohesion Found in English Textbook of
“Look Ahead” for Eleventh Grade of Senior High School”. His research was
analyzing lexical cohesion in English textbook. The lexical cohesion can be identified
through the types of lexical cohesion. The types of lexical cohesion are repetition,
synonym, hyponym, antonym, metonym and collocation. It was almost similar to the
writer’s research that analyzes the lexical density in English textbook. So, the writer
expects that the result of the research gives new knowledge to the teachers or book
4
Based on the explanation above, the writer would like to analyze the reading
materials found in “English in Focus” textbook for 8th grade of junior high school.
There are two reasons why the writer chooses the book; first, “English in Focus” is
one of the books published by The Ministry of National Education (MONE) which is
easy obtainable or even free for students. Second, “English in Focus” textbook was
used by the writer when she was a student teacher at SMPN 12 Malang in teaching
English.
1.2Statement of the Problem
What lexical density found in the reading materials based on the genre in “English in
Focus” textbooks for 8th
grade of Junior High School?
1.3Purpose of the Study
To find out the lexical density found in the reading materials in “English in Focus”
textbook for 8th grade of Junior High School. 1.4Significance of the Study
The writer hopes that the research will be useful for
1. The teacher
The teacher can apply the result of this study as feedback their teaching activities
5 2. The students
The students can improve their knowledge and ability in English reading skill, so
that the students are able to understand the meaning of the steps of rhetoric
development in the written text (narrative, descriptive, recount, procedure, report,
etc).
1.5Scope and Limitation
The scope of this study is an analysis of the lexical density in the reading
materials in “English in Focus” textbook for Junior High School. The study is limited
to reading materials based on the genre in “English in Focus” textbook.
1.6Definition of Key Terms
1. Reading material is written material intended to be read.
2. Textbook is the textbook as a stimulus or instrument for teaching and learning
(Graves 2000:175)
3. Lexical density is the term most often used for describing the proportion of
content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and often also adverbs) to the total
