COHESION AND COHERENCE OF ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING OF THE STUDENTS WITH NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE MAJORS

The objectives of this study were to investigate the way of how Natural and Social
Science students used cohesion and coherence in their argumentative writing. The
data needed to achieve the objective was the students’ writing that was elicited by
assigning them to write two different topics related to their interest namely
National Examination and Wearing Uniform. The cohesion was analyzed
following Halliday and Hasan (1976); while the coherence was analyzed through
the use of three principles of coherence by Carlos and Ceballos in Garing (2014)
and text structure by Knapp and Watkins (2005). In addition, it was also aimed at
seeking the influence of their majors on their using of cohesion and coherence.
This study revealed that both Natural and Social Science students had different
ways of using cohesion and coherence for each topics: National Examination and
Wearing Uniform. It was concluded that Natural Science students had more
cohesive and coherent writing on National Examination topic; while Social
Science students presented more cohesive and coherent writing on Wearing
Uniform topic. However, their majors did not influence the use of cohesion and
coherence, but it was influenced by their interests on the given topics