The High School Students’ Narrative Writing Development: A Transitivity Patterns Analysis.

This research is an attempt to track the students’ narrative writing development using analytical tools developed in systemic functional linguistics theory, i.e. transitivity system. The development in this research is analysed through (1) the proportion of different process types deployed in constructing each stage of the students’ narrative texts, and (2) transitivity system networks drawn up from the students’ narrative texts. In order to achieve such objective, it employed a sequential explanatory mixed-method approach. The quantitative data gathering and analysis entailed a simple descriptive statistic in order to reveal the proportion of the different process types deployed in each stage of the students’ narrative texts. These quantitative data, then, were used as an entry point to undertake the qualitative analysis of transitivity system networks found in the students’ narrative texts. With regard to the data gathering, this research applied a cross-sectional method in that the researcher gathered the texts from a number of different students at the single point in time. The texts were gathered from an English classroom in a highly reputed senior high school in Yogyakarta. The 34 texts gathered then were selected to represent three level of achievement: low, middle and high achievers’ texts. The similarities and differences found in these three categories of achievement were used as the basis of comparison in order to draw a general conclusion about development likely performed by the students. The analysis of the texts reveals that the developmental phases are indeed performed by the students. Looking through the proportion of process types, the students deploy more various choices of process types as they achieve better narrative writing quality. This happens especially for Relational, Behavioural and Verbal processes where they are found in higher rate in the high achievers’ texts compared to the other two levels of achievement. This can be interpreted as the students’ increasing capability to incorporate richer descriptive story and more psychological and physiological aspects of human experience. Looking through the networks of transitivity system found in the students’ texts, the students perform more delicate networks of transitivity system following the increasing levels of achievement. This especially can be seen in the three major process types of constructing the texts, i.e. Material, Relational and Mental processes