EEJ 10 (3) (2020) 301- 306 

  

English Education Journal 

  
http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej 

 

The Use of Cohesive Devices in the Narrative Texts of the 11
th

 Graders  

 

Nurbaeti Lestari, Djoko Sutopo 

 

Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia 

 

Article Info 

 

Article History: 

Received 15 September 

2019 

Accepted 16 January 2020 

Published 15 September  

2020 

________________ 

Keywords: 

Cohesive devices, 

coherence, narrative text. 

____________________ 

Abstract
 

___________________________________________________________________ 

Writing is one of the skills learned by 11th graders. It makes the students 

consider to make their text communicative to the readers. To recognize 

whether the students can communicate the text or not, one can analyze its 

cohesive devices. This study aimed to find out the use of cohesive devices in 

narrative texts written by 11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School. Qualitative 

method was used in this study. Five texts were chosen by the researcher from 

11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School Cirebon. The analysis focused on students’ 

texts analyzed by the theories of Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Thornbury 

(2005). The findings showed that reference, conjunction, substitution, ellipsis, 

and lexical cohesion were used by the students. However, both substitution 

and ellipsis were infrequently used by the students. Meanwhile, reference and 

conjunction were frequently used by the students. In addition, the relationship 

of the devices in achieving text coherence was important. Cohesive devices 

create a text that makes sense to read. In conclusion, some cohesive devices 

were familiar to the students, only substitution and ellipsis were rarely used by 

them. Moreover, the relationship of cohesive devices in achieving text 

coherence was the direct involvement of all cohesive devices in making text 

coherence.  

 

© 2020 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Correspondence Address:  

Kampus Pascasarjana Unnnes, Jl. Kelud Utara III Semarang 5023, 

Indonesia 

E-mail: nurbaeti.lestari12b@gmail.com 

 
 

p-ISSN 2087-0108 

e-ISSN 2502-4566
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mailto:nurbaeti.lestari12b@gmail.com


Nurbaeti Lestari, Djoko Sutopo / EEJ 10 (3) (2020) 301 - 306 

 

302 

INTRODUCTION 

 

In today’s learning environment, many 

students have difficulty in learning English. This 

problem arises as the students are unfamiliar 

with English. The students can make different 

mistakes in proper grammar and vocabulary 

usage. In addition, the students are not 

interested in English learning, since they assume 

that English is difficult and it is unimportant to 

learn. Additionally, they typically consider it is 

enough to purely have the native language. 

Therefore, the teachers should alter their 

perception about that and make the students 

more interested in language learning by 

generating their motivation or giving some 

rewards in the learning process. It can be an 

effective way to produce the students more 

interested in the learning process. Hence, the 

students will be enthusiastic to learn English, 

and it makes the students are more capable of 

penetrating the material. 

There are four skills in English, i.e. 

listening, speaking, reading, and writing 

(Sadiku, 2015). Those skills have a precisely 

important element. However, many students still 

have not mastered all those skills. For instance, 

in learning writing skill, the students find it 

difficult to create a text. It can be due to the lack 

of vocabulary, or they feel reluctant in writing 

the text.  

English texts are divided into some types, 

i.e. narrative, recount, descriptive, report, 

expository, and procedure text. Those types 

produce their generic structure. Hence, before 

the students compose the text, they should 

recognize the text type first. It is substantial to 

produce their writing to achieve the purpose of 

the text. For instance, the narrative text includes 

a purpose to entertain the reader or listener 

(Anderson & Anderson, 1997). It has 

orientation, complication, resolution, and 

sometimes there is a coda in it. The narrative 

text contains a fictitious story or imagination of 

the author. It means that the text is not about a 

true story or a factual situation. In fact, the 

narrative text has been taught since the students 

are in junior high school. However, in some 

schools, they have been unasked for writing a 

text yet. It seems that writing an English text is 

difficult to do by the students in junior high 

school. They merely learn the generic structure, 

the purpose, and the language features of the 

text. 

Furthermore, in composing written text, 

they should concern with how to communicate 

it to the readers well. It generates the text to 

achieve its purpose. To recognize whether the 

students can communicate the text, one can 

analyze its cohesive devices. The term cohesion 

is important to recognize, although it is not 

taught by the teachers at the school level. 

Cohesion is a part of the system of language and 

relations of meaning that exist within the text 

(Halliday & Hasan, 1976). It means cohesion 

refers to how the writer connects the text and 

relates to the meaning of the text. For instance, 

the conjunction is managed effectively to 

connect a new clause or sentence. It produces 

the text join together. In other words, if cohesion 

exists in the text, each paragraph or sentence can 

connect, and the readers can communicate the 

text well. 

Therefore, if the components of cohesion 

exist in the text appropriately, the text is called 

cohesive. Moreover, cohesion is essential to 

recognize the writing quality of students. Several 

studies highlighted the importance of cohesion 

in the text (Alarcon & Morales, 2011; 

Amperawaty & Warsono, 2019; Ersanli, 2015; 

Singchai & Jaturapitakkul, 2016; Yousef, 2017). 

They said cohesion was important to investigate. 

It encouraged the teacher to develop their 

teaching in English. Moreover, cohesion is 

needed to make the text easier to understand.  

In cohesion term, there are cohesive 

devices in it. These devices make the text 

connected together. As Thornbury (2005) stated 

that to analyze cohesion in the text, it should 

consider some significant elements in the 

cohesive devices itself. There are two particular 

elements in cohesive devices, i.e. grammatical 

cohesion (reference, conjunction, substitution, 

and ellipsis) and lexical cohesion (the 

vocabulary). 



Nurbaeti Lestari, Djoko Sutopo / EEJ 10 (3) (2020) 301 - 306 

 

303 

However, based on the interview with one 

of the students in senior high school, cohesion 

term has not been applied in school level yet. In 

checking the students’ writing, the teacher only 

focused on the use of vocabulary and the 

English tenses without considering whether the 

text is cohesive or not. Some possible reasons 

are the teachers do not recognize the term of 

cohesion, or the teachers consider the use of the 

vocabulary is more substantial than the others. It 

would be preferable if the teachers take into 

consideration of cohesive devices. It produces 

the students’ writing better than before. 

Therefore, related to the discussion above, the 

researcher attempted to examine the students’ 

text related to the use of cohesive devices in the 

narrative text.  

This study aimed to find out the use of 

cohesive devices in narrative texts written by 

11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School. 

 

METHOD 

 

A qualitative case study was operated in 

this study. The comprehensive result was 

generated by this design regarding the quality of 

students’ text on the use of cohesive devices. In 

addition, it was employed to produce a deep 

description of the use of cohesive devices in the 

11th graders’. As Merriam (2009) said that 

qualitative case study was “an intensive, holistic 

description and analysis of a bounded 

phenomenon.” Hence, this design was 

appropriate to apply in this research, since this 

research focused on the use of cohesive devices 

(references, conjunction, substitution, ellipsis, 

and lexical cohesion) and the relationship of 

these devices in achieving text coherence. 

The participants of this study were the 11th 

graders of Pelita Bangsa School Cirebon. The 

researcher took five narrative texts from students 

in the 11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School who 

had learned the narrative text. In categorizing 

cohesive devices, the researcher classified the 

clause and sentence from each narrative text, 

and then arranged it in the datasheet of the use 

of cohesive devices in the narrative texts. The 

datasheet was produced through several tables. 

The analysis focused on the theory of Halliday 

and Hasan (1976) and Thornbury (2005).  

 

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 

 

References 

The findings showed 3 kinds of references 

were used by the students in the 11th graders, i.e. 

personal reference, demonstrative reference, and 

comparative reference. Personal reference was 

frequently used than the other kinds of reference 

as much as 208 from all the texts. It was 

followed by demonstrative reference as much 

156 clauses from all the students’ text, the last is 

comparative reference as much 25 clauses. It is 

due to the students were mostly used personal 

pronouns with their object forms and their 

possessive forms. Here is an example of the use 

of reference in the by 11th graders of Pelita 

Bangsa School Cirebon. 

(1)She only loves her two daughter (2) and 

giving all her best to them.  

The example showed there were 2 

clauses, each clause has personal reference. It is 

presented by bold letters. The example was 

taken from text 3, entitled “Chickenrella”. 

Pronoun “she” was used to replace noun of 

“stepmother” in the previous sentence. 

Subsequently, pronoun “her” was used to 

replace noun of “stepmother’s daughter”. The 

last is pronoun “them” was used to replace 

words of “two daughters”. 

 

Conjunction 

  The findings showed that there are six 

different categories of conjunction used by the 

11th graders’ students. The result showed 

additive conjunction was mostly used in the 11th 

graders students as much as 94 clauses from 5 

texts. It was followed by temporal (21), 

adversative (18), causal (16), and continuatives 

(1). Subsequently, the students mainly used 

additive conjunction to connect further 

information, like the use of “and, or”. Here is an 

example of the use of conjunction in the 11th 

graders of Pelita Bangsa School Cirebon. 



Nurbaeti Lestari, Djoko Sutopo / EEJ 10 (3) (2020) 301 - 306 

 

304 

(1)This little chick is force to clean all the dish 

(2)and things in the house (3)and left her alone 

(4)and locked inside the room.  

The example showed there were additive 

conjunctions in it. It is presented by bold letters. 

The example was taken from text 3, entitled 

“Chickenrella”. Additive conjunction of “and” 

was used to connect one clause to another. It 

makes the text holds together. 

 

Substitution 

The findings showed there were only two 

categories of substitution, i.e. nominal and 

verbal substitution. There was no clausal 

substitution at all. However, the researcher only 

found 1 nominal substitution and 4 verbal 

substitutions from five texts. It is due to the 

students preferred to explain in detail their ideas 

rather than substitute their ideas to be simpler. 

Here is an example of the use of substitution in 

the 11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School Cirebon. 

(1)it was even seldom for them to make quarrel 

with any animals, (2)save for the ones they preyed on. 

Clause 2 showed nominal substitution of 

ones. It was used to substitute animal from the 

previous information. The example was taken 

from text 1, entitled “Why Wolves Howl”. 

 

Ellipsis 

The findings showed there were only two 

categories of ellipsis, i.e. nominal and clausal 

ellipsis. It means there was no verbal ellipsis at 

all. The researcher only found 1 nominal ellipsis 

and 21 clausal ellipses from five texts. It might 

the students are more inclined to explain all 

items in the text in detail. Here is an example of 

the use of ellipsis in the 11th graders of Pelita 

Bangsa School Cirebon. 

(1)“It doesn’t matter (2)if my pace are different 

than yours, (3)at the end of it we will still achieved 

(4)what we want though mine might be slower at 

time.”  

Clause 2 showed nominal ellipsis of 

yours. It included deictic ellipsis. It was used to 

omit nominal group become simpler. The 

example was taken from text 2, entitled “The 

Undefeatable Ant”. 

Lexical Cohesion 

The findings showed reiteration and 

collocation were used by the students. The 

researcher found 97 clauses are included in 

reiteration and 38 clauses included in 

collocation. It means reiteration items were 

frequently used by students. It is due to there 

were many repetitions that showed by the 

students’ narrative texts. It can be said that the 

students used these items as a signal to connect 

the idea until the story ends. Here is an example 

of the use of lexical cohesion in the 11th graders 

of Pelita Bangsa School Cirebon. 

(1)Once upon a time there a lived an unhappy 

young chicken. (2)Her mother died and her father 

married a widow that already have two children. 

The example above showed there were 

hyponymy of family (mother, father, and 

children) and a general word of chicken. Those 

are included in lexical cohesion. It was used to 

explain that family has its own subclass. 

Subsequently, the general word of chicken 

referred to a kind of animal. The example was 

taken from text 3, entitled “Chickenrella”. 

 
The Relationship of the Devices in Achieving 

Text Coherence 

The findings showed some clauses have 

logical relationship in using cohesive devices. 

Moreover, cohesive devices have a major 

influence to support text cohesive. Furthermore, 

cohesive devices also make a text make sense to 

the reader. Therefore, the relationship of 

cohesive devices in achieving text coherence was 

the direct involvement of all cohesive devices in 

making text coherence. However, there are some 

placements of cohesive devices that were 

incorrect in the students’ narrative text. It makes 

the text was not cohesive, and less coherence.  

Therefore, it makes cohesive devices were 

important in achieving text coherence. The 

researcher used logical relationship to find out 

the relationship of the devices in achieving text 

coherence. The result was some sentences were 

not logical due to inappropriate used cohesive 

devices. Here is an example of logical 

relationship used by 11th graders of Pelita Bangsa 

School Cirebon. 



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305 

(1)Lion loved to trick other animals, and while 

Bee was flying, he accidentally threw his food at Bee 

and caused him to fell down. (2)His small body was 

lying on the floor and no one helped him to stand up. 

  Sentence 1 above showed conjunction 

“and” as a relation of addition. He and his are an 

unidentified pronoun. It is due to the placement 

of pronoun he and his still make the reader 

confused as to who is being referred. Him refers 

to the bee. Subsequently, sentence 2 showed 

Pronoun his and him refer to the bee. 

Conjunction “and” as a relation of addition. The 

example was taken from text 4, entitled “The 

Strong Bee”. 

 
CONCLUSION 

 

Based on the findings and discussions, the 

researcher drew six conclusions. The first 

research question answered the use of reference 

in narrative texts written by 11th graders of Pelita 

Bangsa School. The researcher found 3 kinds of 

references were used by the students in the 11th 

graders, i.e. personal reference, demonstrative 

reference, and comparative reference. Personal 

reference was mostly used in the narrative texts 

of 11th graders. 

The second research question answered 

the use of conjunction in narrative texts written 

by 11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School. The 

findings showed that there were six categories of 

conjunction used by the 11th graders’ students of 

Pelita Bangsa School. The researcher found 

additive conjunction was frequently used in the 

11th graders students. It was followed by 

temporal conjunction, adversative conjunction, 

causal conjunction, and continuatives 

conjunction. It can be said the students are more 

familiar using conjunction to connect previous 

information with another in the text. 

The third research question answered the 

use of substitution in narrative texts written by 

11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School. The 

researcher only found two categories of 

substitution, i.e. nominal and verbal 

substitution. Clausal substitution was not found 

in the texts at all. However, both nominal and 

verbal substitutions were rarely found in the text. 

It can be argued the students preferred to explain 

in detail their ideas rather than substitute their 

ideas to be simpler. 

The fourth research question answered 

the use of ellipsis in narrative texts written by 

11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School. The 

researcher only found two categories of ellipsis, 

i.e. nominal and clausal ellipsis. It means there 

was no verbal ellipsis at all. The use of ellipsis in 

the students’ narrative text was rarely found. It 

can be argued, the students did not get used to 

using ellipsis in their text. 

The fifth research question answered the 

use of lexical cohesion in narrative texts written 

by 11th graders of Pelita Bangsa School. The 

researcher found reiteration and collocation 

items in the text. Reiteration items were mostly 

used by the students in the 11th graders. It is due 

to there were many repetitions that presented by 

the students’ narrative texts. 

The last research question answered the 

relationship of the devices in achieving text 

coherence. The findings showed cohesive 

devices were important elements to produce text 

cohesive. Moreover, cohesive devices also create 

a text make sense to read. Therefore, the 

relationship of cohesive devices in achieving text 

coherence was the direct involvement of all 

cohesive devices in making text coherence. 

However, there were some placements of 

cohesive devices that were incorrect in the 

students’ narrative text. It makes the text was 

less cohesive, and less coherence.  

In addition, the weaknesses of this 

research are the researcher did not observe the 

students in the class directly. It is due to the 

researcher only received the students’ text via 

email. It makes there was no any interaction 

between the researcher and the students. 

Therefore, the researcher did not know the 

students’ ability directly. Moreover, the findings 

of this research were not significant since this 

was subjective research. It only tended to the 

researcher’s assumptions and opinions. There 

were no specific results as in quantitative 

research.  

 

 



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