Macro-structure of the American short stories for the EFL classroom

ABSTRACT

Macrostructures organize texts globally, while, microstructures do it locally. Texts need to be structured both locally (connections between clauses and sentences) and globally (larger fragments of discourse, e.g. paragraphs). Macrostructures that are formed by macro rules may be subject to another cycle of macro rules in generalizing the text. Macrostructures are abstract semantic descriptions of the semantic content of the text, similar to the text’s global meaning and theme and providing global coherence. (Louwerse, 2006) Labov and Waletzky identified five structural features, such as Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution, and Coda. The Macrostructure of a story (narrative) is the structure of an episode that includes the story grammar components of character, setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempts, direct consequence and resolution.(MindWing concept, Inc 2009). Narrative clauses are independent clauses with verbs in the indicative mood and (in English) the simple past tense, the historical present, or the past progressive.(Allan, 2007)

The research design of this research is descriptive qualitative because I want to explore the elements of macro-structure found in the American Short Stories descriptively. I used qualitative method because the data of analysis are sentences or words of the American Short Stories. In addition, this research is conducted in a natural setting of case study that is narrative macro-structure which is conducted in natural condition. Moreover, this research uses the human instrument. The purpose of the study is to get deep understanding about how macro-structure applied in American Short Stories.

Based on the analysis, it turns out that most of the short stories have the elements of macro structure that are abstract, orientation, narrative clause, evaluation, result, and coda. There are two short stories that have completed elements of macro-structure and eight stories do not have complete macro- structure. Although not all of the elements of macro structure are applied in each story, those stories are able to make the readers understand what story is about because the plot is not confusing and the contents of the story it self is easy to be understood.

From this research, it is recommended that the macro-structure are needed to be analyze on the other theory of macro-structure that have different elements and characteristics and how the macro-structure are applied in the natural conversation in different condition such as in the conversation in a certain topic or in a conversation with the different topic.