Taxis and Logico-semantic Relations in EFL Student's Writing Compared to an Expert's

Abstract

In writing, students are expected to be able to deliver meaning in context. One of elements affecting good quality of writing is the development of clauses. Scholars have long been interested in studying clause complexes in various texts; however, research focusing on writings produced by students in Indonesia seems under-explored. Therefore, this study aims to analyze clause complexes produced in a high school student’s text compared to an expert’s concerning taxis and logico-semantic relations. This qualitative study employed a document analysis through systemic functional linguistics perspective (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). The findings show that there is a difference in the percentages of clause complexes produced by the student (50%) and the expert (70.83%). Notwithstanding, the student is able to produce parataxis and hypotaxis of two, three, and four clauses in order to deliver meanings. Moreover, like the expert’s text, the student also produces types of logico-semantic relations: expansion and projection. In conclusion, the student owns the ability to construct a meaningful text by using a variety of relations in clause complexes. Comparing texts written by students from different levels – high, middle, and low achieving students – to expert texts is recommended for future research so that students’ practices can be enhanced, and the obstacles can be both identified and overcome.

Keywords: clause complexes; taxis relation; logico-semantic relation; a student’s text; an expert’s text