The table shows the number of cohesive devices in all texts analyzed. All categories of cohesive devices occur in the data. It can be seen that the most frequent
of number cohesive devices use is reference, followed by lexical cohesion, conjunction, ellipsis, and substitution. The occurrences of ellipsis and substitution are
low because these two cohesive devices are not familiar to be used in students’
composition. Another reason is that the use of ellipsis and substitution commonly occurs in conversation.
Meanwhile, the occurrences of errors on the use of cohesive devices are also dominated by reference. The explanation of each category of cohesive devices can be
elaborated as follows:
1. Error on the Use of Reference.
The errors in personal reference mostly occurred in the students’ text, followed
by the error of demonstrative reference, and comparative reference. In this case of error in personal reference, students made errors because of pronoun shift. It means
that the students start a sentence or a paragraph using one particular type of pronoun and then suddenly shift to another.
Then, the students also made errors on the use of demonstrative reference “the”. The definite article “the” is usually used when one specific case of a noun is
meant. The errors include the
incorrect usage of article “the” and also the missing articles
of “the”. Here, the students are still confused whether they had to put “the” or not.
The errors in comparative reference occurred when the students are failed in constructing the comparative reference into the correct one. Sometimes they did not
complete the form of comparison according to the rule and wrongly put the comparison form when it is no need to put it. All the errors in reference make the
text is not cohesive and difficult to understand. The consistent pronoun is one of the criteria in constructing the cohesive ad coherence text. On the contrary, inconsistent
pronoun will make the sentence not cohesive and will not lead to the coherence.
2. Error on the Use of Conjunction.
The error in conjunction is dominated by additive conjunction, followed by adversative, and causal, conjunction. In accordance with the results of errors on the
use of conjunctions given, students seemed to have a problem in using conjunction in three subcategories respectively. They often used additive conjunction
“and” instead of causal conjunction
“therefore” in showing the idea of causal condition. Sometimes they also wrongly choose the additive conjunction instead of adversative conjunction
in showing the contrastive ideas. The other error is double conjunction occurred in the sentence, such as:
“although…but” Furthermore, the students also made some errors in using
“because” and “because of”. This problem can be due to the misunderstanding of causal devices as its function, and the difficulty of processing
causal forms that are not yet mastered.
The wrong use of conjunction disturbs the cohesiveness of the text because the logical relationship between ideas is not stated correctly. Therefore, the readers
cannot easily understand the relationship between parts of a text.
3. Error on the use of lexical cohesion.
