THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR THROUGH GENRE-BASED WRITING.

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ABSTRACT

Habeahan, Aslin 2010. The Teaching of Grammar through Genre-Based Writing. A l'besis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program Postgraduate School, State University ofMedan.

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PROGRAM

l''OSTGRADUA.\I'E SCHOOL

ST AT.fi:

UNIVERSITY OF MED

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THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR

THROUGH

GENRE-BASED WRITING

Registration Number:

081288330052

Postgraduate School

State University ofMedan

This Thesis was examined on September the

2°d 2010

by the Board of.Examiners

z

Adviser I

M.Pd

Approved by

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No.

Approval of Board of Examiners

Thesis Examination of Magister Humaniora

Name

Signature

01.

Prof. Amrin Saragih,M.A., Ph.D.

NIP.195501131982031002

02.

Prof. Tina Mariany Arifin, M.A, Ph.D.

NIP.19440302 196902 2001

03.

Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd.

NIP.19590713 1986011 001

04.

Prof. Dr. Lince Sihombing, M.Pd.

NJP.19610425 198601 2 001

05.

Student

Name

: Aslin Habeahan

Registration Number :

081288330052

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Countless individuals have contributed directly and indirectly to the research

and to the completion of this thesis. The 'Writer is deeply indebted to each one and

therefore he would like to express his heartfelt gratitude.

He first wishes to thank his Board of Aaviser: members who guided his study,

particularly his first adviser Prof. Amrin Saragih, M.A., Ph.D. who stimulated his

interest in genre-based writing and taught him everything he knows about functional

grammar. From the initial stage of the proposal thrpughout the entire process, he

gave him invaluable advice, guiding him in formulating IUs research goals, defining

his approach, and generally keeping his thesis on track. He cannot thank him enough

or his excellent and patient assistance. Prof. Tina Mariany Arifin, M.A., Ph.D. who

was always ready to discuss rhetorical and graphological questions wiih him and

generously provided him with concrete suggestions on organizing his ideas and

research materials.

He is also especially grateful to his Board of Reviewer members Prof. Dr.

Busmin Gurning, M.Pd. also the Head of the English Applied Linguistics

Postgraduate School, Prof. Dr. Lince Sihombing, tvLPd. also the Secretcpy o the

English Applied Linguistics Postgraduate School, and Dr. Eddy Setia, M.Ed., TESP.

who reviewed his proposal and offered many extremely helpful suggestions without

hich he would not have been able to bring this thesis into a final form.

He would like to thank his colleagues Jhonny Ekson alu, S.Pd.,

feasible to its own extent of academic accl aim,

ana

all his classmates belonging to

wllG have always been available-for ong aistance communication

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11

To the Board of Leadership members of SCMM Foundation of Sibolga

Sr. Rosa Sihotang, SCMM (Chairperson), Sr. Angela Siregar, SCMM (Secretary),

Sr. Scholastica Tamba, SCMM (Treasurer), and Drs. Kamaruddin Gultom, MM

(Superintendent) he is indebted in very many ways. Words cannot express how

grateful he is for their trust, encouragement and support. Once again, he is indebted

in all these respects and more.

He is extremely indebted to his landlady, Herlina Matondang who has forever

been generous to him and treated him as

if

he were her sibling son that he has received the best of everything

Sincerest appreciation IS especially addressed to his beloved parents

S. abeahan and E. Mator:dang whose eternal love and continuous prayers have

always empowered him to travel twenty four hours every week to attend classes at

the State University of Medan in his endeavor of academic accomplislllnent.Their

philosophy of life irispires him to make sense of profourid meaning of education for

the good of humanity. Their hard work ethic examplifies his guiding princiQles of

life and makes him believe that impossible is nothing.

All time and whole-hearted gratefulness is due to his dearest wife Mega

Liridaria Hutabarart, and whole life three children Wonderaldo, Kezia Valentine, and

theirs on him and constantly been supportillg and encouraging duririg the course 0f

his education. This thesis is dedicated to them and they deserve it.

Medan, September 2010.

Tile writer,

Aslin Habeahan

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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE

z

2.1 2.2 Genre ... ... 8

Genre-Based Writing ... 9

?

2.3 2.4 Approaches to Grammar ... 1~

m

2.4.1 Traditional Grammar ... 13

2.4.2 Formal Grammar ... ... 14

2.4.3 Transformational (Generative) Grammar ... .. 15

2.4.4 Functional Granunar ... ... . ... ... 15

The Teaching of Grammar through Genre-Based W 'ting ... 42

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v

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD

3.1 Research Design ... 49

3.2 Subjects ... 50

3.3 Data ... 50

3.4 Instruments ofData Collection ... 51

3.5 Procedure of Data Collection ... 51

3.6 3.6.1 Activities in Data Reduction ... 52

3.6.2 Activities in Data Display ... .. 52

3.63

Activities in Conclusion Drawing/Verification ... 53

3.7 Techniques for Establishing Trustworthiness of the Data ... .. 53

CHAPTER IV DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS 4.1 Data ... . 4.3 Findings ... 6"7 4.4 Discussion on the Findings ... 68

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1 Conclusions ... 73

5.2 Suggestions ... 95

REFERENCES ... .. . T6 INFORMATION ON THE RESEARCH SUBJECTS ... 78

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 Seven Basic English Clause Types ... ... 14

2.2 The teaching-learning cycle ... ... 45

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Table

2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

2.5

2.6

2.7

2.8

-

z

Vll

LIST TABLES

Page

Process and Participant ... 21

Circumstances ... 23

Dominant and Dependent Clauses ... 25

Taxis and Logico-sematic Relations ... 26

Principal Markers ofE.xtension ... 30

Pnncipal Markers and Meanings ofParatactic Enhancement ... .32

Principal Markers ofHypotactic Enhancement ... 34

Four Types of Projection ... ... ~ ... .3

?

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LIST OF MATRIX

Matrix Page

4.2.1 The Teaching of Grammatical Aspects through Recount

Genre- Based Writing (Subject 1) ... 66

4.2.2 The Teaching of Grammatical Aspects through Recount

Genre-Based ritiilg (Subject 2) ... ... ... 67

z

?

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Appendix

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

ix

LIST OF APPENDICES

Page

Interview Questions and Responses

(Given to and by Subject !) ... 80 Self-report Inventory

(Responded by Subject!) ... ... .. ... . 84

Interview Questions and Responses

EGiven to and by Subject 2) ... ... ... 86

Self-report Inventory

(Responded by Subject 2) ... ... ... ... . 89

esson Plan for Recount Genre-Based Writing

(Subject 1) ... ... ... .. ... .... .... . 91

Syllabus for Recount Genre-Based Writing

(Subject 1) . ... ... ... ... .

Lesson Plan for Recount Genre-Based Writing

(Subject 2) ... ... .... ... ... ... 94

8. Syllabus for Recount Genre-Based Writing

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background ofthe Study

Language skills have c

ntral

roles

in

learners' intellectual, social, and

emotional development and serve as key factors toward success in mastering all

subjects. Language skills prepare the learners to accomplish compet en c~ which enables them to reflect their own and others' experiences, e:<pres. ideas and

feelings as well as understand varieties of meaning nuances. Language sKills also

help the learners know themselves, other people's cultures, participate in the

language speaking societies, make responsible decision at personal and social

levels, and discover as weii as apply the analytical anJ imaginative abilities

existing in themselves.

Traditionally, there are four divisions or areas of language skills and they

are often categorized as productiYe and receptin. Speaking and writing are the

productive skills. Listening along with reading is a receptive skill. The

categorizations are made in terms of their directions. In speech or writing, language

is generated. ln reading and listening language is perceived or conceived, l~->t is a person is required to receive and understand incoming infonnation (input). In other

words, receptive skills are the ways in which people extract meaning from the

disco

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important language skill senior high school students as well as the leavers need to

posses owing to its functional nature for their development, either to farther their

education to university or to play their roles in the societies having completed their

education. Writing is one

of

the most powerful communication tools that they

will

use to share thoughts an ideas with others, to

help

them remember facts and

details and even to communicate with themselves. At school, they may have to

write to answer test questions, take notes during a lecture, generate ideas

fora

nevt

project or journal, prepare a science laboratory report, and produce research

reports.

Even after they have finished their last school assignment, writing will still

b~

pa.rt

of

their

daily

business.

and

p~rsonal

lik

At hom~.

they

might jOt

down

~

·'TO DO" list, take a phone message, a quick reminder, send a letter, a short

message by a mobile phone or an e~mall or fill out an application or order form. Writing, either simple or complex, is already and will continue to be an important

part of daily life (Carrol, Wilson, and Forlini, 2001).

Conforming to the significance of writing skill, the Department of Nationa

Education set out to apply a curriculum characterizing on written language

proficiency development called Genre-Based Curriculum. As far as its framewGrk

is concerned, the most important objective

of

English teaching and learning in senior high school is to enable the learners to possess communicative written

Philosophically, genre,b.ased ~writing views that all texts conforrn to certain conventions and if a student is to be successful in joining a particular

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language community, he will need to be able to produce texts which fulfill the

expectations of its readers as regard grammar, structure, and content. Genre-based

writing places grammar centrally since grammar is just as important instrument of

communication as content and a text cannot be written coherently and cohesively

without attention being paid to how meaning is being expressed through grammar.

Despite the we -established position of granunar in g nre-based writing,

the teaching of grammar through genre-based writing has been discovered

problematic. That Is to say since he writing skill of senior high school students as

well as that of graduates who were during the course instructed under this ap roach

has pro..ven, with a few exceptions, to be less than satisfactory and grammar-related

aspects are noticed a large domain

of

_{the shortcomings.}

A study was conducted by Linda (2006) on 300 twelve graders of 3 senior

high schools in Sibolga and Central Tapanuli writing recount and report texts. Thi

study shows that the most obvious weaknesses of the students lie in the area of

grammar, particularly in the aspects of morphology ll?d syntax. Source of the

problematic grammatical categories are affixes, adverb, adjectives, plural forms,

copula, and subject-verb agreement.

This

contributes 60% of the total mistakes committed by the students. This inquiry convinces that the attributing factor to this

proble ·s the different grarnrnatical structures existing between Indonesi

English. For example, indonesian does not have morphological markers for adverb

(i.e. -ly), plurality (i.e. -s, es , com~arative and superlatLve forms for adjectives Engllsh language. Meanwhl e, the different structure in syntax can

be

observed in relative pronouns, subject-verb agreement, copula and determiners. In the case of

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agreement is not required

in

indonesian.

The other study executed by Rosa (2005) on error analysis in writing

argumentative essay done by the second year students of English Department of the

State University ofPadang reveals that the most dominant type of errors committed

by the students investigated can be traced back to sentence skills or grammatical

structure. It was found that 264 errors or 92% out of287 are grammatical structure

problem.related. Errors in coherence come in the second place with 14 numbers.

Occurrence of errors in unity is only 4 numbers or 1.3% among all. The result of

the study prevails that the second year students of the English Departmen of the

State University of Padang have good abitity in developing and organizing ideas;

however, they are very weak in English structure.

This reality is much of a digression to the objective of genre-based writing

which aims at enabling students to have communicative written discourse

competence. The target is to foster students' ability in using

internationally-accepted English. The term 'internationally internationally-accepted' here refers to grammatical

EngHsh with rules or systems familiar with the native speakers. Thus, any texts

created by the learners should conform to this norm.

To achieve such a purpose, the theoretical basis

implementation of gy:amrnar teaching In genre-based writing

i

to be put i to

account. Muncie (2002:82} ascertains that the focus o gramrnar instruction in

pecuHarities of the particular type of ext being looked at. Furthermore, Hyland

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(2004:68) asserts that in genre-based writing, grammar must be treated as more

than sets of rules and the teaching of grammar should not take a form of tasks that

are disconnected with writing activities or sets as supplementary work to address

persistent errors. He argues that the forms students need often remain elusive as

they cannot make connection between grammar they study and the meanings these

items express in the context of. particular genre. Most im ortantly, genre~ based writing is consistent with the theoretical work of Halliday (1994: xvii) who

conceptu;tlizes lMgmlge as a set of systems for creating- meanings in social

context. It is concerned with the ways we use language as a resource fur

communication rather than with rules for ordering grammatical fonns. Halliday

claims that the only approach to the construction of grammar that is likely to be

successful will be one that recognizes meaning and use as central features of

language and tackles the grammar from this point of view. It follows from this tnat grammar taught through genre-based v.Titing should be the one which is semantic

(concerned with meanings) and functional (concerned with how language is used).

1.2 Problems of the Study

As pointed in· the background of this research, the writing competence of

Indonesian senior high school students as well as the graduates have ye to be

impro ed to a great extent. Grammar has been identified, as shown by the fmdings,

contributing to the drawback for the most part. This is a dev· ation from the

expectation of tHe currently applied Genre-Based Curriculum which characterizes

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study are formulated as the following.

1. What aspects of grammar are taught through genre-based writing?

2. How are the aspects of grammar taught through the genre-based writing?

3. Why the aspects of grammar are taught the ways they are through the

genre-1.3 06jectives of the Study

This research is aimed at studying a phenomenon - e t~aching of grammar through genre-based \vTiting. It specifically attempts to desc ·oe and schematize behavior - the procedures of teaching grammatical aspects through

recount genre-based v.Titing as well as explain values - reasons of conduct

originating in ideals underlying such behavior. The objectives of the study are

elaborated as the follov.ing.

1. To describe what aspects of grammar are taught through the

writing.

2. To schematize the procedure of teaching the grarnrnatical aspects througH toe

writing course.

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1.4 Scope oftbe Study

The teaching of grammatical aspects through genre-based writing covers

various aspects such as the types and number of the genres through which the

grammatical aspects are taught, the teachers who teach the grammatical aspects

through the genres, and the level of education to which the grammatical aspects

are taught through the g nres. Therefore, this study is focused on the inquiry of

the teaching of grammatical aspe~ts through recount genre-based writing by senior high school English teachers in the first term of grade ten. This genre is

chosen since it is one of the genres to be instructed to senior high school students

prescrioea in the curriculum and based on the frndings by Purba (2009) it is one

of the most frequently-appearing genres in both senior high school state

examinations and university entrance tests.

1.5 Significance of the Study

It is expected that the findings of this study are significant theoreticall

and practically. Theoretically, the research findings are expected to provide a

basis for farther researches of different stages for linguistic development.

Practically, on the other hand, the research findings are expected to be valuable

for government in charge of education, universities preparing teachers t - e and senior high school English teachers in-service in a way that they serve as

empirical materials on which pertinent proceedings for quality augmentation in

genre-based wnting instruction can be based.

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5.1 Conclusions

CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Based on the description, expl.anation, and discussion in the previous

1. In the instruction of recount genre-based writing, the subjects presented two

types of grammatical aspects:

a. Schematic/ generic structure of the text (also termed text- level grammar),

namely Orientation " Event " Reorientation.

Word, phrase, and clause level grammar, namely the simple past tense.

Subject 1 presented the tense more extendedly in which he covered

actional and non-actional, active and passive voice, and regular and irregular

verb forms and patterns in three polarities, whereas subject 2 presented only

actional sentences in the same polarities.

2. Both subjects presented merely one word, phrase, and clause level grammar

aspect that was the simple past tense instead of five aspects: focus on specific

Participant, use of material processes, circumstances: temporal and spatial, se

of past tense, and focus on temporal sequence. The so pracf ce was

underpinned by their notion that meaning in a recount text was largely realized

by the simple ast tense and that the tense was also complicated for their

accomplish. This leaves something to emphasize what has been

the theoritical pers~ctive of genre-based writing that characteristic

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recount genre deploys the five aspects for the sake of comprehensive meaning

making.

3. Both Sl1bjects presented the simple past tense indirectly in the context of

writing a recount text. This is incompatible to the genre-based writing

philosophical assumption which highly motivates context-based grammar. The

presentation of grammatical aspects through genre-based writmg specifies and

4.

to promote students' ability in connecting forms and

formal approaches. They adopted the approaches because they prioritized in

~~ applicability, pra_cticality, and ~~ s~itability of su.ch approaches to lheii settings and the demand of the writing itself for fonnal language use which

according to them is achieved through traditional or fonnal approaches to

grammar. This is a deviation from a genre-based pedagogy whose assumption

holds that functional grammar approach examplifies the guiding principle of

presenting any grammatical aspects through any genres. This is so because

functional grammar is concerned not only with the structures but also ow

those structures cons:truct meaning. This is a grammar attempting to describe

.. gua_ge

irl

a.ctual use so focuses on texts and their contexts,

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-5.2 Suggestions

Genre-based writing ha.s been implemented for some years in senior high schools in Indonesia. In fact, the prescribed curriculum for English language

education of that level in effect at present is called Genre-Based Curriculum.

However, the findings that prompted this research and more importantly those of

this study in its own right have served as evidences that the implementation of the

genre-based writing is problematic. Problems related to what grammatical aspects

to teach and how they are to be taught stelllining from divergence of notion on the

teachers' side were discovered.

ro overcome the existing problems, some worth

suggestions are fol)Varded.

I. Governments through the

facilitate teachers in service of teaching English in senior high school with training and upgrading in genre-based \¥Tiling and function:-tl grammar y

inviting professionals with creditted expertise in the ielated iield s as keynote

speakers.

2. Universities or colleges which prepare prospective senior high school English

teachers are suggested to provide writing and gralllinar courses with emphasis

in genre theory and functional approach.

3. English teachers of senior high school are greatly encouraged

teacher's forum through which those with better proficiency at genre-based

\\-Tiling and functional grammar ca·n do a "brain drain", and act of.

disseminating knowledge and skill from the experienced to the inexperienced.

t individual level, every English teacher of seruor high school is sugges e to

enhance his knowledge and skill in genre-based writing and

grammar. by engaging in independent study of related literature.

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Carol!,

A.

J. Wilson, . Edward, and Forlini,

G.

001. Writing and Grammar: Communication i11 Action: Platinum Level. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Garoll, A. 1. _{Wilson, E. Edward, and Forlini,}_G._200l.Writing_and_Granunar:

Communication it Aciion: Diamond Level. New Jersey: Pren ice-Hall, Inc.

Carol!, A. J. Wilson, E. Edward, and Forlini, G. 2001. Writing and Granunar:

Communication in Action: Ruby Lerel. Nev; Jersey: Prentice ll- all, Inc.

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'MA..

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Harmer, J. 2001. The Practice of English Language Teaching. England: Pearson Education Limited.

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Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. 1994. A Communicative Grammar of English. New

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