A study on the English conjunctions that join grammatically equal units used by the sixth semester students of the English Department of Widya Mandala University in their compositions

People use a language to communicate with others . Language is very important for people in the world. They use a language both in speaking and writing. Written language is usually expressed through writing. The teaching of English in Widya Mandala University covers four language skills. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Among the four language skills, writing is considered as one of the most difficult language skills. Writing is thinking on paper which is usually in the form of paragraphs. The combination of several paragraphs is called a composition. The clarity in the paragraph and composition can be achieved by using one of the cohesive devices - that is conjunctions. In this study, the writer focuses her attention on the conjunctions used in the students' compositions. Realizing that conjunctions are broad enough, she deals with the use of conjunctions that join grammatically equal words or word groups. What types of conjunctions that join grammatically equal words or word groups are most frequently used by the students in their compositions? Since conjunctions are very important in constructinq unified and meaningful paragraphs, in this thesis the writer would like to find out what types of conjunctions that join grammatically equal words of word groups are most frequently used in the students' compositions. In this study the writer takes the conjunctions that join grammatically equal words or word groups. This conjunction is divided into three types, they are coordinating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, and correlative conjunctions. This is a descriptive study because this study aims to describe the frequency of the use of conjunctions that join grammatically equal words or word groups in the students' compositions. At the end of this study, the writer proves that most of the students who have taken writing "V" frequently use coordinating conjunctions (82,1%) - coordinating conjunction "and" was frequently used (about 464 times). While the second type frequently used was conjunctive adverbs (15, 7%) - "besides" was often used (about 35 times). And the last was correlative conjunctions (2,2%) -"not only .... but(also)" is used 15 times. It shows that the occurrences of those conjunctions are not used equally and they are greatly different in the percentage shown in table 4-4. As a result, there is a monotone in using conjunctions that join grammatically equal words or word groups in their compositions. Realizing that there are many shortcomings in this study, the writer would like to suggest that this study would be continued by using more samples in order to get more sophisticated findings