Grammatical Cohesion in "The Sailing Bali" Student Texts: Systemic Functional Linguistics Perpective

Abstract

English is very important because English is used by most people living the word. Because of that reason, Indonesian communities are trigger to learn English from early age because having English competence makes the user be able to compete in the world. The Sailing Bali is one of tourism colleges found in Denpasar which prepares the students work in cruise line or oversea. This research would like to explore the level of English competence owned by The Sailing Bali. This research is very important to know the readiness of the student before working in cruise line or overseas. To explore the English competence for the students of The Sailing Bali, the researcher used theory of grammatical cohesion proposed from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by Halliday. The theory has advantage to explore the competence owned by the learner of English through conjunction, reference, and substitution, ellipses as well. The data were taken from the students’ work in written work. The clauses made by the students were identified, examined, and analysed with theory of grammatical cohesion. The result of research is presented in narrative. Each student work is formulated in text, namely; Text I, II, III, IV, and V. Each text is analysed based on the part of grammatical cohesion, namely; conjunction, reference, substitution, ellipse as well. The result of the research showed grammatical cohesion used in the texts are dominated by reference personal. The reference personal used in the texts indicate introduction for themselves. Conjunction used in the texts are very limited. The elaboration conjunctions found in the texts are used to state the reasons to work in cruise line. The extension conjunctions used in the texts serve to state the students get some advantages while working in cruise line. The substitution is not found in the texts. This research is categorised as multi-disciplines so this research gives some significances for applied linguistics such as; semantic, SFL, semiotic, and teaching. In addition, this research plays an important role for The Sailing Bali because the result of the research can be used as reference to improve teaching. The result of the research can be used as measurement so the management of The Sailing Bali can take the decision based on the evaluation. This researcher expects other SFL researchers to do research in teaching field so the SFL research become more popular in linguistics field.