Journal of Literature and Education
Vol. 3 No. 2 (2025)

A Study on Cohesive Devices Used in EFL Students’ Descriptive Paragraph: Studi tentang Peranti Kohesif yang Digunakan dalam Paragraf Deskriptif Mahasiswa EFL

Haidari, Sultan Ali (Unknown)
Rasuli, Mohammad Hassan (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
07 Dec 2025

Abstract

This study investigated the degree to which EFL students utilize cohesive devices in their written work. Sixteen undergraduate students (10 female, 6 male) who had completed at least five semesters in the English Department participated in the research. Writing assignments were collected as data using a quantitative approach. Holliday and Hasan’s taxonomy was employed for data analysis. The analysis revealed that third-year English majors were unable to maintain a parallel use of various cohesive devices when writing English paragraphs. While they frequently utilized conjunctions and references, they rarely employed ellipses or substitutions in their descriptive paragraphs. This avoidance of substitution and ellipsis subsequently led them to overuse reference and conjunction adequately. The results also indicated that although the students understand the fundamental purpose of cohesive devices, they occasionally struggled with subtle usage and displayed a limited vocabulary of cohesive devices. Based on correctness and incorrectness, it was found that the majority of students successfully applied cohesive devices in their text; however, they still employed some cohesive devices incorrectly.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jle

Publisher

Subject

Humanities Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media

Description

Journal of Literature and Education accepts research articles or conceptual ideas to be published covering the fields of: (1) Literature Studies; (2) Literature Education ...