An Analysis of Cohesive Devices in EFL Students’ Essay Writing
Abstract
Students need to be able to make effective use of cohesive devices in order to produce high-quality essays. This research aimed to investigate the use of cohesive devices in EFL students’ essay writing in the 2nd Semester of the English Language Department at a State University in North Sumatera. The data sources of this research were essays and transcripts of interviews. The method used in this research was qualitative content analysis and case study. The model used in data analysis were frequency count and content analysis by applying interactive models such as data collection, data condensation, data display, and conclusion. The research finding showed that Reference (59%) was the predominant grammatical cohesive device used by EFL students in essay writing compared to other types. Meanwhile, Ellipsis (0.3%) was the lowest. Moreover, compared to lexical cohesive devices, EFL students used Repetition at the highest rate (89%) in their essay writing whereas the percentage of Hyponyms used was the lowest (0.3%), however, Meronyms did not appear in this research. Furthermore, the students had adequate knowledge to apply grammatical cohesive devices appropriately (990 data), as opposed to the incohesive use acquired (105 data). Whereas in terms of lexical cohesive devices, all the phrases are cohesive. In this regard, the reasons for incohesive writing by students are interference from their native language and overgeneralization whereas the interference of the learning context is not found in this study. In conclusion, the understanding of cohesive devices can improve and embellish the knowledge in building a good and true sentence. This is also useful in avoid students from writing inappropriate sentences. Therefore, English writing lecturers are expected to help students facing obstacles such as the use of cohesive devices by applying explicit teaching and increasing their performance in terms of cohesive devices in essay writing.
References
Alarcon, J. B., & Morales, K. N. S. (2011). Grammatical Cohesion in Students Argumentative Essay. Journal of English and Literature, 2(5), 114–127.
Ampa, A. T., & Basri, D. M. (2019). Lexical and Grammatical Cohesions in the Students’ Essay Writing as the English Productive skills. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1339(1), 012072. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1339/1/012072
Andayani, P. O., Seken, I. K., & Marjohan, A. (2014). An Analysis of the Cohesion and Coherence of the Students’ Narrative Writings in SMP Negeri 2 Banjar. Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, 2(1), 1–9.
Bahaziq, A. (2016). Cohesive Devices in Written Discourse: A Discourse Analysis of a Student’s Essay Writing. English Language Teaching, 9(7), 112. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n7p112
Brown, H. D. (2007). Principle of Language Learning and Teaching (5th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.
Castro, C. D. (2004). Cohesion and the Social Construction of Meaning in the Essays of Filipino College Students Writing in L2 English. Asia Pacific Education Review, 5(2), 215–225. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03024959
Ekowati, A., Rahmat, A., & Murtadho, F. (2019). Gramatical Cohesion and Lectical Cohesion in Text Report on Student Observation Results. JETL (Journal Of Education, Teaching and Learning), 4(1), 169. https://doi.org/10.26737/jetl.v4i1.991
Fadillah. (2018). Grammatical Cohesive Devices Analysis in Jakarta Post Newspaper. Thesis. Universitas Sumatera Utara.
Gerot, L., & Wignell, P. (1995). Making Sense of Functional Grammar. Gerd Stabler.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. Routladge.
Halliday, M. A. K., Matthiessen, C. M. I. M., Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C. (2014). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203783771
Hidayat, A. (2016). An Analysis of Grammatical Cohesive Device of the Short Story the Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen 2016/2017. English Education: Jurnal Tadris Bahasa Inggris, 9(2), 232–244. https://doi.org/10.24042/ee-jtbi.v9i2.282
Hinkel, E. (2003). Teaching Academic ESL Writing. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410609427
Hsieh, H.-F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15(9), 1277–1288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732305276687
Hubbard, P. (1983). A Training Course for TEFL. Oxford University Press.
Hung, D. M., & Thu, V. T. A. (2014). Vietnamese Learners’ Attention and Use of Cohesive Devices in English Essay Writing at Dong Thap University. Asian Journal of Educational Research, 2(2), 1–14.
Janjua, F. (2012). Cohesion and Meanings. Canadian Social Science, 8(2), 149–155. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/j.css.1923669720120802.2060
Khalil, A. (2019). An Investigation of the Use of Lexical Cohesive Devices in Academic Writing Essays of Grade 9 Learners at an American School in Sharjah. Thesisi. The British University in Dubai.
Klimova, B. F., & Hubackova, S. (2014). Grammatical Cohesion in Abstracts. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 664–668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.276
Kristiana, N. (2020). Grammatical Cohesion of the Narrative Writing the Ninth Grade Students of Junior High School. International Conference on the Teaching English and Literature, 1(1), 264–271.
McCarthy, M., & O’Dell, F. (2005). English Collocations in Use. Cambridge University Press.
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldana, J. (2014). Qualitative Data Analysis. SAGE.
Mohammed, A. S. (2015). Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices in the Writings of English as Second Language Learners. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 208, 74–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.182
Ngo, T. T. H. (2019). Grammatical and Lexical Cohesion: Their Contribution to Rhetorical Effect of Barack Obama’s Presidential Inaugural Address. Social Science and Humanities Journal, 3(2), 1299–1305.
Noprival, N., Alfian, A., & Soma, R. (2022). Analyzing Grammatical and Lexical Cohesion in A Legendary Short Story. Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 7(2), 251. https://doi.org/10.21462/ijefl.v7i2.488
Nunan, D. (1993). Introducing Discourse Analysis. Penguin English.
Nurwahidah, N., Hidayat, D. N., Husna, N., & Alek, A. (2022). A Discourse Analysis of Grammatical Cohesion in News Item Text of “Symphony 3” XII Grade English Textbook. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 7(1), 171. https://doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.v7i1.764
Rahman, T. (2017). Investigation of Grammatical Cohesion on Students’ Academic Essay Writing (A Discourse Analysis). Thesis. UIN Syarif Hidayatullah.
Redmen, P., & Maples, W. (2017). Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide (5th ed.). SAGE Publishing.
Rochma, A. F., & Triyono, S. (2019). A Discourse Analysis: Cohesion of the Introduction Section of Research Article. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 4(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.v4i1.173
Rudiana, R. (2021). The Realization of Grammatical Cohesion Devices in EFL Students’ Argumentative Essays. JALL: Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literacy, 5(1), 101–108. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.25157/jall.v5i1.4975
Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H. E. (2001). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell.
Sinambela, S. I., Nurlela, & Zein, T. T. (2021). The Study of Lexical Cohesion on Germany Prime Minister’s Speech Angela Merkel. Asian Social Science and Humanities Research Journal (ASHREJ), 3(1), 82–87. https://doi.org/10.37698/ashrej.v3i1.65
Tanskanen, S.-K. (2006). Collaborating Towards Coherence (Vol. 146). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.146
Yasuda, S. (2019). Children’s Meaning-Making Choices in EFL Writing: The Use of Cohesive Devices and Interpersonal Resources. System, 85, 102108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.102108
Yin, R. K. (1994). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. SAGE.
Copyright (c) 2023 Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.