THE RELEVANCE OF WRITING MATERIALS OF THE ENGLISH TEXTBOOK ‘GET ALONG WITH ENGLISH’ FOR GRADE X OF VOCATIONAL SCHOOL WITH THE INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL ENGLISH CURRICULUM FOR VOCATIONAL SCHOOL

Abstract

The design of this research was content analysis study. The purpose of this research was to analyze whether the writing materials of the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ for Grade X published by Erlangga in 2010 were relevant to the Institutional Level English Curriculum for Grade X of vocational school as claimed by the authors. This research used two documents, namely the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ for Grade X of vocational school published by Erlangga in 2010 and the Institutional Level English Curriculum for vocational school. First, in the English textbook, the researcher wanted to find the relevance of writing materials presented in the textbook. Second, the Institutional Level English Curriculum was used to measure how far the relevance of the writing materials presented in the English textbook to the Institutional Level English Curriculum. Firstly the researcher read the Institutional Level English Curriculum. The researcher focused on the writing materials stated on the standard competence and basic competence. They were transactional text, interpersonal text, short functional text, and simple essay text. Then, in reading the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ for Grade X, the researcher focused on kinds of writing texts and writing tasks presented in the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’. The second step was finding the relevance between the writing materials presented in the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ for Grade X of vocational school to the Institutional Level English Curriculum. The researcher used checklist ( √) in parallel column. The checklist ( √) was given to the Relevant column or Irrelevant column in the data collection instrument. xv The percentage of the writing materials based on the institutional level English curriculum include 53.8% of interpersonal functional text, 15.4% of transactional functional text, 7.7% of short functional text, and 23.1% of simple essay text. Interpersonal functional text has the biggest portion than others and short functional text has the smallest portion. The writing materials in the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ consist of 11.43% of transactional functional text, 25.71% of interpersonal functional text, 11.43% of short functional text, 31.43% of simple essay text, and 20% of other kinds of texts which are not stated in the curriculum. The transactional functional texts in the textbook are 3.97% less than required. On the other hand, the portion of interpersonal functional texts in the curriculum is 58.3%, but in the textbook they are only 25.71%. It is 28.09% less than required. Short functional texts in the textbook are 3.73% more than the required number. Furthermore, the simple essay text is 8.33% more than required. The English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ contains 77.8% of writing materials which are relevant to the institutional level English curriculum and 22.2% of irrelevant writing materials. This textbook include sufficient quantity of the writing materials stated in the institutional level English curriculum for Grade X of vocational school. This textbook can help both the teacher and the students, because it provides the teacher with relevant writing texts and relevant writing tasks that can be used in the teaching learning process. Based on the result of this research, the English teacher is advised to use this book in teaching English especially writing because it has been proved that the writing materials of the English textbook ‘Get Along with English’ for Grade X of vocational school are relevant to the institutional level English curriculum.