COHESION AND COHERENCE OF SPOKEN TEXT IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL ELECTRONIC BOOK

Abstract

One of the English teaching aims in senior high school is to develop the students’ competence in communicating both oral and written language to solve their daily problems. One of the ways to develop it is through texts. But not all the included texts in the senior high school book display the coherence and cohesion aspect, as the important requirements of a good text. This study is aimed to find out the cohesion and coherence of the spoken text, including; (i) how the text is structured?, ii) how negotiations are carried out to keep conversation going?, and (iii), what spoken language features characterize the text? The object of the study was the conversation text, taken from Senior High School electronic book, for students XI, 2008. The data analysis used in this study is based on the Thornburry’s theory of analyzing spoken text (2005), involves cohesion, coherence (macro and micro), and linguistic features of spoken text. The findings showed that (i) in terms of text structure, it has dynamic structure because the speakers discuss more than one topic. The speakers also perform interactive staging during the conversation., (ii) the speakers negotiate most on logicosemantic aspect (4x), rather than interpersonal aspect (1x), and. (iii) the linguistic features which characterize the text are simply divided into four; spontaneity, interactivity, interpersonality and coherence.