| dc.description.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 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students‘ essay writing
in the 2nd Semester of the English Language Department at a State University in
North Sumatera. In detail, it was aimed to know the types of cohesive devices, the
cohesiveness used of cohesive devices, and the causes of the students‘ committed
incohesive writing. The method used in this research was qualitative content
analysis and case study. The models used in data analysis were frequency count
and content analysis by applying interactive model such as data collection, data
condensation, data display, and conclusion. The essay writing was analyzed by the
concept of cohesive devices that proposed by Halliday and Hasan and Halliday
and Matthiessen. Whereas the interview is analyzed by Brown‘s framework. In
this respect, the data sources of this research were essays and transcripts of
interviews. Consequently, the analysis of this research consisted of two phases,
textual analysis and interpretive interview. Furthermore, the research finding
showed that reference (59%) was the predominant of grammatical cohesive device
used by EFL students in essay writing compared to other types. Meanwhile,
ellipsis (0.3%) was the lowest. Moreover, compared to other lexical cohesive
devices, EFL students used repetition at the highest rate (89%) in their essay
writing. The percentage of hyponyms used was the lowest (0.3%), however,
meronyms did not appear in this research. The results demonstrate that students‘
overall attention to cohesive devices use in English essay writing was not
particularly high, as they relied too much on certain types of cohesive devices. In
addition, the students had sufficient knowledge to use the grammatical cohesive
devices appropriately (990 data) compared to the incohesive use gained (105
data). Whereas in terms of lexical cohesive devices all the phrases are cohesive. In
this sense, the causes of the students committed incohesive writing interference
from their mother tongue and overgeneralization. Meanwhile, the context of
learning was not identified | en_US |
