The Relevance of Writing Materials of the English Textbook “English On Sky” for the Seventh Year Students With the Institutional Level English Curriculum For Junior High School

Abstract

Curriculum development is very vital because it will determine the success of a teaching learning process. What the Indonesian government has to do to solve the students’ difficulty in learning English is revising the curriculum. Basically, curriculum is an important tool for successful education. Without appropriate curriculum, it is hard to achieve the goal and the target o f education. Indonesian government has developed the 2004 Curriculum (Competence Based Curriculum) based on the competence approach. This, then, is further developed to be the 2006 Curriculum called the Institutional Level Curriculum (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan/ KTSP). One o f the most important curriculum components in the Institutional Level Curriculum is a textbook. Textbook is a learning medium which has an important role in class besides as a medium to deliver curriculum materials in the education system. A textbook has to be analyzed comprehensively before they are selected and used for the English instruction in school. This research was intended to analyze the relevancy o f writing materials o f the English textbook “English on Sky” for the seventh year students with the institutional level English curriculum for Junior high school, focusing on writing text and writing task presented in the textbook. This research was designed as a content analysis study. The data of this research were all kinds o f text and writing task o f the writing materials taken from the English textbook “English on Sky” for the seventh year students published by Erlangga. The institutional level English curriculum was used for standard measurement of analyzing textbook. From the data analysis, the result showed that the English textbook for the seventh year students published by Erlangga in 2006 referred to the Institutional Level English Curriculum (KTSP), all o f the writing sub-skills in the Institutional Level English Curriculum (KTSP) are available in the English textbook “English on Sky” for the seventh year students. The analytical results o f the writing sub-skills provided in the English textbook for the seventh year students of in 2006 are relevant to those in the Institutional Level English Curriculum (KTSP) covering Basic competence, Indicators, Core materials and types o f texts.