A TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF DESCRIPTIVE TEXTS BY SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: A GENDER-BASED COMPARISON

Abstrak

This study investigates the use of transitivity processes in descriptive texts written by eleventh-grade EFL students and examines potential gender-based differences in meaning-making. A descriptive qualitative design was employed, involving fourteen students (eight females and six males) from a senior high school in Bogor, Indonesia. Data were collected through students’ individually written descriptive texts and analyzed at the clause level using Halliday & Matthiessen (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics framework. Clauses were categorized into six process types: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential. The results revealed that relational processes were the most dominant, followed by material and mental processes, while verbal, behavioral, and existential processes occurred minimally. Female students tended to use more relational and mental processes, reflecting a stronger focus on describing attributes and internal experiences, whereas male students showed a relatively higher proportion of material processes, emphasizing observable actions. However, overall patterns of transitivity use were similar across genders, indicating the influence of genre conventions over gender. The findings suggest that students’ descriptive writing relies primarily on attributive patterns and highlight the need for instructional strategies that encourage richer and more varied descriptions.