An Analysis of Cohesion and Coherence of Descriptive Texts Written by Junior High School Students

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210427.030How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cohesion, coherence, descriptive text, theme system, systemic functional linguistics

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the cohesion and coherence of descriptive texts written by seventh grade junior high school students. This study was conducted in the even semester of the 2019/2020 academic year during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study used a qualitative case study design, and the data were obtained from six texts representing high, middle, and low achiever students. To identify the texts’ cohesion and coherence, the grammar of textual metafunction from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), that is the theme system was used. The findings show that all students had the ability to make descriptive texts in terms of cohesion and coherence. All texts successfully used different types of themes, including topical and textual themes, and thematic progression, including the zigzag and reiteration patterns to create coherence especially at the clause level. Various cohesive devices such as reference, conjunction, lexical, and ellipsis were also used to create a cohesive text. It was also found that the texts written by high achiever students were more coherent than the texts written by middle and low achiever students due to several aspects such as the more diverse pattern and the more frequent use of pattern. In addition, the high and middle achiever texts seemed more cohesive than the low achiever texts due to the high number of cohesive devices used in the middle achiever texts, and high number of conjunctions used in the middle and high achiever texts. Based on the findings, more support is needed from teachers when teaching descriptive text to middle and low achiever students, especially in a pandemic era.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Galis Muthia Zahra
AU  - Emi Emilia
AU  - Iyen Nurlaelawati
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/04/28
TI  - An Analysis of Cohesion and Coherence of Descriptive Texts Written by Junior High School Students
BT  - Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 195
EP  - 202
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210427.030
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210427.030
ID  - Zahra2021
ER  -