The analysis of cohesion in english essay writing among the sixth semester students of english education department of state Islamic University of Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung : a case study of sixth semester student of English education department state Islamic University of Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung

Writing plays an important role in the field of education and society. However, writing an English essay constitutes a tough task for the students in which the cohesion in their essay writing is one of the problems. This study is conducted to find out the types of cohesion used by sixth-semester students of English Education Department of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung in their essay writing, the difficulties these students in writing cohesive essay, and the solutions to overcome the difficulties in writing cohesive essay. This study used qualitative method because it would describe detailed data about the cohesion in English essay writing. The respondents of this study are nine students of English Education Department from sixth semester. The data are collected through document analysis, questionnaires, and also interview. The analysis of this study is based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion framework and taxonomy. The findings of this study show that there are 385 data of all major types of cohesive devices found in the analyzed essays. Lexical cohesion has the most occurrences in the essays (137 data or 35.58%), followed by conjunction (128 data or 33.25%), reference (114 data or 29.61%), substitution (5 data or 1.30%) and the least is ellipsis (1 data or 0.26%). Meanwhile, the students still have some difficulties in writing cohesive essay, such as difficulties in vocabulary, consistency and parallelism, conjunction, and grammatical cohesion. The suggested solutions to overcome the difficulties in writing cohesive essay are the students have to create a good planning before they write, the students have to understand and master the topic, the students have to search for various vocabulary which is related to the topic, and the students have to master systematic way of thinking according to academic writing and grammatical rules. Related to the findings of the study, there are some suggestions for the lecturer or teacher and the students. For lecturer or teacher, teaching and familiarizing the students with the use of types of cohesion that are rarely used is important to make the use of cohesive devices in their writing vary. For the students, increasing their mastery in cohesion, especially in the variety of cohesion that the use, vocabulary, consistency, conjunction, grammatical, and structure are important to help them construct their arguments in various ways. In addition, the students also should make a good planning by understanding the topic before they write an essay