Common errors in using cohesive devices encountered in the composition of the second semester students of the English Department

Language is not knowledge, but a set of skills, namely: listening, speaking, reading, writing. By using these four skills, we can communicate with other people. However, when we are writing, we don’t have the chance to face our readers. We cannot communicate with our readers directly. Thus, a writer has to write clearly. One of the ways to make ideas in a piece of writing clear is by using cohesive devices in connecting sentences. Since cohesive devices are very important in writing, students are supposed to be able to make use the cohesive devices correctly. However, in the writer’s observation, common errors in using cohesive devices are still encountered in the composition of the second semester students of the English Department of Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya still happen. For this reason, the writer became interested in finding out the types of errors in using cohesive devices made by respective students. After analyzing, noting, classifying, and counting the encountered errors in using cohesive devices, the writer found out that the types which are mostly misused and ranked them according to their frequencies. The most errors that the students made are in the form of error of omission 180 (63, 82%), addition 54 (19, 15%), selection 42 (14, 89%), ordering 6 (2, 13%). The errors that occur in omission errors are personal reference 5 (1, 77%), demonstrative reference 15 (5, 31%), comparative reference 2 (0, 70%), enumerative conjunction 31 (10, 99%), additive conjunction 67 (23, 75%), contrastive conjunction 14 (4, 96%), logical sequence conjunction 44 (15, 6%), explicative conjunction 2 (0, 70%). The errors that occur in addition errors are personal reference 4 (1, 41%), demonstrative reference 34 (12, 06%), enumerative conjunction 5 (1, 77%), additive conjunction 5 (1, 77%), contrastive conjunction 3 (1, 06%), logical sequence conjunction 3 (1, 06%). The errors that occur in selection errors are personal reference 6 (2, 12%), demonstrative reference 1 (0, 35%), enumerative conjunction 11 (3, 90%), additive conjunction 2 (0, 70%), contrastive conjunction 12 (4, 25%), logical sequence conjunction 9 (3, 19%), explicative conjunction 1 (0, 35%). The errors that occur in the ordering errors are personal reference 1 (0, 35%), demonstrative reference 3 (1, 06%), enumerative conjunction 2 (0, 70%). On the basis of the findings, it can be concluded that most of the second semester students still made many errors and these errors appear because of the Strategies of Second Language Learning in the Interlanguage and interference of mother tongue. The students have false concept in making sentence. They were affected so much by their knowledge of their native language. Thus, it is suggested that the teacher should pay attention to the factors that influence the learning process and also emphasize the important of cohesive devices. This can be done by giving more exercise such combining sentences by using cohesive devices or etc. to the students so they can know clearly how to apply it. The students must read a lot to improve their knowledge. And further studies concerning this topic are hopefully conducted in order to obtain more genera liable and up dated findings