TRANSTIVITY ANALYSIS OF EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS READER RESPONSES TO SHORT STORIES

Abstract

The present study reposrt on the usefulness of transitivity for scrutinizing EFL college students written responses to short stories assignes as shown in their negotiated response journals. Under the spirit of the integration of Literary Criticism and Halliday's Systemic Functional (SFL) (Beck and Jeffery, 2009; Moore, 2004), the study sees the shared points between the two trends. The former is concerned with approaches to selecting teaching pedagogy, the latter supports the ways of how to critically see the construing process of resulted discourses. Rosenblatt's (2005) reader response theory-based treatment in teaching literature class has potentially allowed students as readers to driven by Vygotsky's view on socio-constuctivism in that sociocultural aspect of learning influences its nature. The reader transaction process is socially constructed, contextually and culturally bounded, shaped by the state being of the researh site, and enchanded by their literacy (negotiated reading-speaking-writing events in classroom as a community) experiences. Writing reader response journals then simulated the readers as writers to use personal and critical expressions as seen in their use of certain linguistic elements. Aesthetic stances normally include both personal and critical accounts. Personally and critically speaking, writers' reaeder response strategies embrace personal responses in that the first person pronouns and mental processes are uniquely dominant in their response (Feez and Joyce, 1998). Owing to the limitedness of using traditional approach to categorize the used verbs in response journals, the so-called transitivity analysis is then essential to uncover linguistic features and to determine the 'process' types. The study took place in a reader response-based literature class in the English Education Program in a private college of EFL teacher education in Ciamis, West Java, Indonesia. Twenty two third grade student teachers as an intact gruop participated in the study. Along one semester course study, they were trained how to personally and critically respond to several short stories. They deserved freedom in expressing their own ideas, wants, and expectations in non-threatening classsroom atmosphere and actualized them in reader response journals (Parsons, 2001). Teacher's scaffolding strategy, small group and classroom discussions, and peer-feedbacks illuminated the response activities. In addition, their medium literacy level was indicated by writing skills that still needs improving and their TOEFL-like score with mediocre level from 450 to 475. The study focused on the succesful student writer's final written response drafts after being peer-reviewed. The findings indicated that the more the responses represent their aesthetic expriences. the more the first person pronouns and mental processes the writers use. The present study recommends that further study explore on the gender effects on the 'processes' realized in their reader responses to literary works.