AN ASSESSMENT OF COHESION AND COHERENCE IN STUDENTS’ ESSAYS: THE CASE OF SODO PREPARATORY SCHOOL GRADE ELEVEN STUDENTS

Abstract

This study is aimed to assess the students’ use of cohesion and coherence in their essays. It was conducted at Sodo preparatory school on grade 11 students. The study employed the descriptive research design. In this study, 30 grade eleven students were selected as participants through simple random sampling technique. Document analysis was used to collect data from the sample students. The data collected through document analysis were analyzed qualitatively based on the analysis parameters of cohesive (substitution, ellipsis, reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion) and coherence (transitional markers, repetition of key expressions and organization patterns). The findings revealed that students’ used a variety of cohesive devices in each genre of writing except ellipsis and they employed all sub categories of coherence signals in their (descriptive, narrative, expository and argumentative) essays. However, among the frequently used cohesive and coherence devices, the largest number of connectors were inappropriately instanced regarding the total use of those devices. The students’ inappropriate use of cohesive devices mainly appeared with conjunction, followed by reference, lexical cohesion, and substitution signals. Moreover, the students also applied the coherence sub categories in their essays without consideration of their appropriateness. As a result, the essays lacked consistent key expressions, clear purpose of the statement, and the logical shift from one sentence to the other. Based these findings, conclusions and recommendations were made.