1 Presented at International Conference on Language and Education (ICLE) Medan, 13 – 14 th of December 2014 METAPHOR AS A MEANS TO WRITE A GOOD ENGLISH WRITTEN TEXT Rusdi Noor Rosa FBS Universitas Negeri Padang Suprakisno FBS Universitas Negeri Medan Abstract A written text should be different from a spoken text for their different characteristics. The complexity of grammar in clause constructions of written texts may serve as the core distinguishing factor between the two kinds of texts. However, the question arises about how complex or how complicated the written text grammar is. This paper is aimed at applying the concept of systemic functional linguistics based metaphor to distinguish a written text from a spoken text. The application of the metaphor concept is related to the lexical density of a clause through which a characteristic of a written text is generated. The realization of lexical density should give a credit to nominalization as a technique of reducing the number of clauses in a written text. Furthermore, a written text is closely related to a scientific text taking academicians including students, teachers, and lecturers as the readers. This paper also demonstrates the way of reformulating spoken texts into written texts. This concept is particularly helpful for those in the writing process of their final projects at universities. Key Words: Systemic Functional Linguistics, metaphor, written text, lexical density, nominalization A. Introduction Language facilitating the daily interaction of human being is delivered in either oral or written form. Oral language, also known as spoken language, is the language used in a variety of human social interactions dominating everyday use of written language. Spoken language is more widely used for the purpose of effective and efficient communication. The effectiveness as the measurement of successful communication is in different angle from the efficiency with its attention to the time consumption in communication. Meanwhile, written language is the language realization in scientific articles, books, newspapers, magazines, and other written media. The problem arises when the spoken language is used in written texts, a common problem of people in the language with a poor classification of spoken and written language. English as a language with a strict distinctive classification of spoken and written language has some characteristics of written language in terms of incongruence, impersonality, lexical density, and more condensed