96 

 

 

EEJ 12 (1) (2022) 96-103 

 

English Education Journal 
 

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

 

The Use of Cohesive Devices in Descriptive Text by English Training   

Participants at PST” 

 

Kifti Halimah Islami, Mursid Saleh,  Dwi Anggani Linggar Bharati 

 

Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia 

Article Info 

________________ 

Article History: 

Accepted 30 

September 2020 

Approved 29 January 

2022 

Published 15 March 

2022 

 

________________ 

Keywords: 

Cohesion, descriptive 

text, English trainees. 

____________________ 

 

Abstract 

 

Today, many media to large companies are starting to invest English skills in 

their employees, including Pura Smart Technology (PST). This research aims to 

find out the use of cohesive lexical devices, the use of cohesive grammatical 

devices, the correctness of cohesive device uses, and the correlation of cohesive 

device use and descriptive text writing skills of the participants. The researcher 

took eleven employees as the participants. The researcher analyzed the data with 

Halliday & Hasan's theory, Coh-Metrix 3.0, and Spearman Correlation. The 

results were repetition with 54.92%, synonym with 6.81%, hyponym with 

33.71%, meronym with 3.40%, and collocation with 1.14%. In terms of 

grammatical cohesion, the researcher found a reference with 29.54% and 

conjunction with 69.31%. The result also showed that the participants' cohesive 

device use excellence was 39.65%, with a very strong correlation, (rs) = 0.95. The 

researchers found that the English training participants had low mastery of 

cohesive device use quality. The researchers also found that the participants' 

cohesive devices and writing skills had a strong, significant, and immense 

correlation. The researchers suggest that future researchers upgrade the study's 

object and involve participants from different and complex backgrounds. From 

the pedagogical perspective, cohesive device uses are important to create a good 

image and judge an excellent educational background between the writer and 

the reader while understanding the meaning. Thus, writers can produce texts 

without any hoax information nowadays. Practically, these results help people 

use text appropriately in formal and non-formal settings. 

 
Correspondence Address:  

Kampus Pascasarjana Universitas Negeri Semarang,  

Jl. Kelud Utara III Petompon, Gajahmungkur, Semarang 50237, 

Jawa Tengah, Indonesia 

E-mail: kiftihalimahislami@gmail.com 

p-ISSN 2087-0108 

e-ISSN 2502-4566
 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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INTRODUCTION 

 

Use of cohesive devices in writing is 

essential; therefore, it is important to study. Not 

to mention, researching about how writers 

develop their writing skills particulary descriptive 

texts by using appropriate cohesive ties is also 

important. Cohesive devices also facilitate 

authors to build meaningful passages. Everyone 

needs this study, both those academicians and 

non-academicians. Likewise, every English 

training participant in Pura Smart Technology 

(PST) is expexted to have excellent English 

writing proficiency. In this 4.0 industrial change, 

communication becomes a life skill. Thus, 

everyone must have it, including private workers.  

In the present day, large corporations 

perceive the English skills of their employees as 

an investment. Thus, they search for English 

training for their employees to apply their English 

skills in the working field. The corporations 

expect the employees with English skills could 

contend and encounter new challenges in the 

future. This effort does not require the 

corporations to employ international workers.   

English training is considered extremely 

suitable as the main asset in surviving national 

and international competitions and character 

building and competency in the 4.0 era. This 

demand makes PST, a leading manufacturer of 

smart card product technology and Radio 

Frequency Identification, RFID, in South East 

Asia, obligate the employees to join English 

training for six months from 18th August 2019 to 

7th January 2020. The corporation requires the 

employees to have excellent writing skills for 

daily working activities, daily working 

descriptions, and writing specific text.  

This research focused on the cohesive 

devices used in writing descriptive text. The 

researchers also investigated the writing skills of 

staff, head division, and manager at PST. The 

researchers designed writing skills instructions by 

observing the participants' condition, 

expectations, and reality. Here is the frame of the 

research problem formulation: 

 (1). How are lexical-cohesive devices used in 

descriptive texts written by English 

training participants at PST? 

(2).How are grammatical-cohesive devices used 

in descriptive texts written by English 

training participants at PST? 

(3). How do the English training participants at 

PST use cohesive devices in writing 

descriptive texts? 

(4). How is the correlation between using 

cohesive devices and writing skills in 

descriptive texts written by English 

training participants at PST? 

 Scholars also refer cohesive devices to 

ways of writing. Cohesive devices also indicate 

the writing quality. Thus, writers must pay 

attention to cohesive devices and factors such as 

case, individual lore, culture, and contextual 

edging based on writers' situations. Most writers 

avoid complex forms (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). 

Puspitorini (2011) found grammatical cohesion, 

such as reference, substitution, conjunction, 

ellipsis, reiteration, and collocation. The author 

found the most applied lexical cohesive devices 

were: reference (52.6%), conjunction (28.7%), 

reiteration (16%), collocation (1.9%), and 

substitution and ellipsis (0.4). Rahman (2013) 

uncovered a significant correlation between the 

natives’ and the learners’ use of cohesive bonds. 

However, learners often employed repetition and 

reference and neglected to utilize another tie. 

Thus, their texts were non-cohesive.  

Writing is also useful to communicate. 

This communication via writing occurs beyond 

the sentence level. For example, a writer that 

connects two clauses must ensure the cohesion 

and coherence of the connected clause, the 

sentence. Latifah and Triyono (2020) explain that 

cohesion is important for language users to 

produce meaning. Suwandi (2016) explains that 

cohesion allows readers to build a sense of 

reading with some devices or ties. Thus, readers, 

observers, or listeners can draw the meaning of 

the text while writers or speakers can make the 

passage more communicative.  

Many scholars have investigated cohesion, 

coherence, and cohesion devices. McNamara et 

al. (2014) used Coh-Metrix at multiple language 



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98 

 

levels to determine the complexity of a text. They 

found that referential cohesion and deep cohesion 

played important roles in lowering the 

complexity of a passage. Mora et al. (2021) found 

that incorrect cohesion ties lowered the 

readability of a passage. They found this result on 

learners while writing narrative texts. Razaque 

and Jat (2020) found that the reflection of low 

language proficiency was observable using 

cohesive devices. This situation would make 

passages lose their unity and meaning. Lio's 

(2020) study result suggested proficient students 

could use more types of cohesion, such as local 

cohesion, global cohesion, and text cohesion. 

Rahman (2013) revealed a correlation between 

writing proficiency level and cohesion. Moini 

(2016) presented different percentages of 

cohesion in terms of conjunctions, elaboration, 

and extension between L2 learners’ writing and 

pieces of regular literature. 

The frequency of cohesive device uses also 

influences the readability of a passage. Gizatulina 

et al. (2020) found that the frequency of cohesive 

device uses influenced the length of clauses. They 

used various instruments to measure the 

readability, including Coh-Metrix. Then, the 

results indicated a high frequency of cohesive 

devices used could lower the clause length, an 

average of 7 words per clause. This average score 

made the reading passage readable for readers.  

Shorter clauses are more understandable 

than longer clauses. It happens because the clause 

provides meaningful and adequate information. 

Hiebert (2017) explains content words of a clause 

provide information. These words answer the 

basic WH questions while readers read. Thus, the 

readers will find the clause confusing if a clause 

contains more content words than the basic WH-

questions answer. Eventually, the writer must 

separate and break the longer clauses into at least 

two clauses with cohesive devices, for example, 

conjunction, to create meaningful clauses. 

The researchers took some references on 

descriptive text study reviews, one of them is a 

study by Anggun (2016). The researcher showed 

incorrect cohesive devices in descriptive texts 

made the text deviate from the original objective 

of descriptive text functions. Kirana et al. (2018) 

encountered one of the English learners' 

difficulties in writing the descriptive text was – 

vocabulary of cohesive devices. Noprianto's 

(2017) research uncovered challenges for English 

learners to write descriptive texts included 

realizing the social function of the text, writing 

chronologically, and using the language features. 

Helmie et al. (2021) displayed improved learners' 

descriptive text writing from five aspects: content, 

organization, grammar, vocabulary, and 

mechanics. From Helmie's research, the 

researchers used the author's finding of 

vocabulary improvement. The current 

researchers considered vocabulary improvement 

also consisted of cohesive device use 

improvement.  

Since the existence of PST is more credible 

at the national and international level, colleagues 

always come and engage from around the world. 

Thus, the employees must excellently master 

international communication skills in English. 

All divisions in the factory used English, 

starting from production, financial, training, etc. 

They used English from simple matters, such as 

offering products, describing objects, negotiating, 

presenting products or ideas, and many more. 

Communication skills develop from spoken to 

written mode (Faizah, Sutopo & Faridi, 2020). 

Usually, people can get information and share or 

convey ideas through writing (Undayasari & 

Shaleh, 2018; Faizah, Sutopo & Faridi, 2020). 

Harmer (cited in Muhib, Anggani & Hartono, 

2014; Anggrayani, Sofwan, & Saleh, 2015; 

Priangan, Saleh & Rukmini, 2020) suggest that 

writing is as important as listening, speaking, and 

reading, although writing skill is more 

complicated for learners to study. This is due to 

the fact that writing requires high-level thinking 

skills (Hidayat, Rukmini, & Bharati, 2019, p.166; 

Priangan, Saleh & Rukmini, 2020).  

From a pedagogical point of view, writing 

is important. However, many parties perceive 

that this skill is unimportant (Struthers, Lapadat, 

& Mac. Millan, 2013). Writing holds an extensive 

manner to reveal the concept (Mamduhan, 

Fitriati & Sutopo, 2019, p.85, Priangan, Saleh & 

Rukmini, 2020). Fitriati and Yonata (2017) 

describe that creating text is not simple to express 



Kifti Halimah Islami, et al./ English Education Journal 12 (1) (2022) 96-103 

99 

 

the thought under the magnificent-denotative 

quarreling.  

This research only focused on descriptive 

text writings. The researchers assumed that some 

training participants had difficulties writing based 

on the preliminary observation. Then, the 

researchers were only concerned with the use of 

cohesion in descriptive text. The researchers used 

an online database to ensure and support the 

standard analysis process to answer the problems 

and execute the research plan. 

 

METHODS 

 

Cohesion’s unity is a text system with the 

fundamental element of making meaning of the 

text. It is an apparatus for the readers to 

understand the text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). 

All texts must have cohesion, including 

descriptive text. In this research, the researchers 

investigate how the staff and manager at PT Pura 

Smart Technology (PST) implemented the 

cohesive devices in the text.  

The researchers used the discourse analysis 

approach. Kamalu and Osisanwo (2015) describe 

the discourse analysis approach as a study 

approach toward a language. This language may 

include spoken and written languages. Then, the 

design of this research is a qualitative case study 

design. Sugiarto et al. (2015) and Creswel (2014) 

argued that the qualitative study is a methodology 

whose “the researcher is interested in the process, 

meaning, and understanding gained through 

words or pictures.” Although qualitative research 

uses words, pictures, interviews, and non-

quantitative means, the data and the analysis 

must ensure validity and trustworthiness (Denzin 

& Salvo, 2020). Thus, qualitative research could 

provide meaningful results for readers and future 

researchers (Wang, 2021). 

The researchers also used some formulas 

to find the frequency of cohesive devices, the 

correctness of the cohesive device uses, and the 

correlation between the use of cohesive devices 

and writing skills. The researcher anatomized the 

cohesive bonds employing manual calculation 

adopted from Halliday and Hasan’s theory, the 

correctness of cohesive devices for descriptive 

text with Coh-Metrix 3.0 tool, and the correlation 

between cohesive devices and writing skills via 

Spearman Rank correlation statistics.  

The researchers used a statistical technique 

to test the non-parametric statistic hypothesis. 

The indication was observable from the ordinal 

data types. The statistical test that the researcher 

applied was the Spearman Rank.  

Based on Sugiyono’s explanation, the 

researcher used Spearman Rank correlation (rs) 

because the research variables were ordinal scale. 

Here is the formula of Spearman Rank 

Correlation (rs). 

rs = 1-
6∑𝑑2

𝑛(𝑛2−1)
 

Note: 

rs  : Spearman Correlation Coefficient." 

∑d2 : the sum of the square of the difference 

between rankings." 

n : “the sum of the research sample." 

 

The researchers also determined the significant 

values with the following formula 

(Sugiyono, 2008, p. 250): 

 

t = r√
𝑛−2

1−𝑟2
 

 Notes: 

r: correlation 

n: samples 

t: significant level (t count), which is then 

compared with t table 

 

The researchers used the r-table to 

compare the critical value of the correlation 

coefficient at the significant level of 1. Here is the 

formula:  

a) rs count > rs table to indicate the significant 

effect between cohesive devices and 

writing skills. Thus, the result rejected H0 

and accepted Ha;  

b) rs count < rs table shows no significant effect 

between cohesive devices and writing 

skills. The result accepts H0 and rejects Ha.  

The researchers determined the influence 

of X to Y with the determination coefficient, KD. 

The researchers represented the coefficient with a 

percentage (%). 

 



Kifti Halimah Islami, et al./ English Education Journal 12 (1) (2022) 96-103 

100 

 

KD = (rs )
2. 100% 

: 

KD : coefficient determination, stating to what 

extent the dependent variable changes 

(considering the materiality level 

rs  : Rank Spearman Correlation 

Here are the interpretations of the 

correlation coefficient calculation. Table 1 is 

useful to determine the strength and correlation 

of the variables.  

 

Table 1. The Guidelines to Interpret  the 

Correlation Coefficients 

 

 

The researchers used cohesive devices and 

writing skill data to determine the correlation of 

the variables. The participants were English 

training participants at PST. The research object 

consisted of eleven descriptive texts. After 

obtaining the data, the researcher promoted the 

planned step to reach the objectives. 

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

 

The researchers analyzed the data 

regarding the lexical and grammatical cohesive 

bounds in the English training participants' 

written text at Pura Smart Technology, PST. 

Graphic 1 shows the lexical cohesion of the data. 

 

 

Figure 1. Lexical Cohesive Devices 

Graphic 1 shows the cohesive lexical 

devices. They are repetition (54,92%), synonym 

(6,81%), hyponym (33,71%), meronym (3,40%), 

and collocation (1,14%). The repetition, or 

restating the same lexical item, dominates the 

cohesive ties of the texts. The evidence is from the 

third participant’s written sentence. 

 “I think PST will be able to compete with 

similar companies also PST will be to expand 

their companies as a total solution and will be 

able to be a leading company in Asia" 

(Participant 3). 

The participant restates the abbreviation, 

PST, in the following sentence. 

 “In PST, there is so many type of people, 

division, working area” (Participant 3).  

Halliday and Hasan's theory clarifies that 

lexical cohesion is important in creating meaning. 

Rahman (2013) found the frequency of cohesion 

in various items. The author also found a 

cohesive device balance in writing quality. In 

Halliday and Hasan’s theory, grammatical-

cohesive devices include reference, conjunction, 

ellipsis, and substitution. In this research, the 

researchers found two grammatical-cohesive 

lines. They were reference (29,54%) and 

conjunction (69,31%). 

 

 

Figure 2. Grammatical Cohesive Devices 

 

The researcher found a high rate of 

conjunction uses. Graphic 2 shows the 

conjunctions are connective words, phrases, and 

clauses. Halliday and Hasan (1976) categorize 

the conjunctions into additive, adversative, 

causal, and temporal. Additive conjunction 

coordinates the ideas while adversative 

conjunction reverses the outlook. The clausal 

conjunction deals with the realized reasons, 

results, and purposes connected in clauses. In this 

case, participant 3 had a high rate of conjunction 

uses 24 times. 



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101 

 

"But for me, if I had a chance to look for another 

job, I would do it. The environment sometimes working 

not support us because there is inequality based on 

subjectivity which sometimes feels unjust".  

“but” and “because” words reflect the 

adversative and clausal conjunction. 

The researcher found the use of reference 

dominantly in terms of grammatical cohesion. It 

has the function to correlate the text, human, and 

object. Generally, reference has three manners: 

personal, demonstrative, and comparative. 

Personal reference deals with individual ways, 

such as personal, process, and adjective pronoun. 

In this research, the researcher found participant 

3 mostly used reference. 

 "…I can say I proud I had ever worked in here 

an to be a part of the success of this company and I hope 

I can give my best contribute to support this company". 

The references are observable in the words 

of here, this company, and my best. The words here 

refer to the company. The word this company is a 

demonstrative reference, while the word my best 

is a comparative reference/ 

Halliday and Hasan explain that 

grammatical cohesion holds significant writing 

quality over lexical cohesion. Rahman (2013) 

also suggested that cohesive devices may include 

various items.  

 

 

Figure 3. The Correctness of the Applied 

Cohesive Devices  

 

The researchers derived the following data 

as the participants' cohesive devices. Their 

cohesion quality in descriptive text obtains a 

percentage of 39.65%. Hongwei & Liqin (2013) 

found the indices of word numbers with Flesch 

Reading Ease Scores from 0-100. The word 

frequency, logarithm, mean of the content word 

were 0-6, based on Coh-Metrix 2.1 with an 

overall percentage of 25.6%. The percentage 

indicated the writing proficiency evaluation of 

the teacher. 

The researchers computed the analyzed 

data by adopting the Spearman correlation 

formula technique. The researcher looked for the 

writing skills through Brown’s theory before 

enumerating the correlation statistics, 

 

Figure 4. Writing Skills Adopted by Brown 

(2007)  

 

The graphic shows the mean of writing 

skills is 6.9, with the lowest score 5 and the 

highest score 10. The researchers put the data into 

a correlation statistics wording. The researchers 

also used the Spearman correlation statistics 

formula to quantify the level of the correlation 

between both variables. In this case, the variables 

were in ordinal data form.  

 

Table 2. the Index Correlation between The Use 

of Cohesive Devices and Writing Skills in 

Descriptive Texts Written by English Training 

Participants at Pura Smart Technology (PST) 

 

 

 

The researchers calculated the data and 

then fitted it in the table of index correlation 



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102 

 

based on the applied theory in this study. In this 

study, the researchers found a range of 

correlation (rs) of 0,95. Thus, both variables had 

a strong and significant correlation with the 

number (t) 10,16, and extensive influence with 

the figure (KD) 91%. 

 

CONCLUSIONS 

 

The researchers concluded seven 

implicated items in using cohesive devices, 

grouped into two enormous cohesions: lexical 

and grammatical cohesion. The seven cohesive 

bonds were repetition, synonym, meronym, 

hyponym, collocation, conjunction, and 

reference. In this research, the researchers did not 

investigate the grammatical-cohesive. 

The researchers found that the English 

training participants had low mastery of cohesive 

device use quality. The researchers could infer 

that the participants' cohesive devices and writing 

skills had a strong, significant, and immense 

correlation. 

From the results, the researchers suggest 

that future researchers upgrade the study's object 

and involve participants from different and 

complex backgrounds. From the pedagogical 

perspective, cohesive device uses are important to 

create a good image and judge an excellent 

educational background between the writer and 

the reader while understanding the meaning. 

Thus, writers can produce texts without any hoax 

information nowadays. Practically, these results 

help people use text appropriately in formal and 

non-formal settings. 

 The researchers expect the graduates of 

Universitas Negeri Semarang to work out this 

descriptive text in daily conversation or another 

purpose.  

 

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