The Cohesive Devices of Students’ Writing Recount Text

The aims of the study were to discover the kinds of cohesive devices that were
used in students’ writing recount text, to investigate the contribution of cohesive
devices in students’ recount text, and to find out the reasons why students used
cohesive devices. The study used the frameworks of Halliday & Hasan (1976) and
Eggins (2004). The study used descriptive qualitative research. The data was
analyzed based on Miles, Huberman, and Saldana’s (2014) framework. The
results of the findings revealed that students in Grade X at SMA Negeri 15 Medan
used four cohesive devices, namely reference, substitution, ellipsis, and
conjunction. There was 58,97% contribution of lexical cohesion, which was
indicated through the use of vocabulary of nouns and verbs, followed by reference
that had 30,69% contribution. It was derived from category of person as well as
the scale of proximity. Conjunction, on the other hand, had the percentage as
much as 10,34%, which was obtained through extension and enhancement type.
Furthermore, the findings of the study found 8 out of 12 reasons why students
used cohesive devices.