An Analysis of Cohesion and Coherence of the Students’ Narrative Writing at the First Grade of SMA Negeri 4 Langsa

This study attempted to describe and explain (a) the cohesion and coherence of English narrative writing produced by the students under study; (b) the problems encountered by the students in creating cohesion and coherence in their English narrative writings. This study was designed as qualitative study. This study was conducted on 20 students of the first grade student of SMA Negeri 4 Langsa. The data were collected through students’ narrative writings, and teachers’ interview. The data were analyzed by using the theory introduced by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The analysis was concerned with: grammatical cohesion (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction), lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation) and aspect of coherence that were found in the students’ writings based on themes and generic structure of narrative text. The results of this study show that (a) The students produced the five types of cohesive devices to serve the coherence of their writings of which reference 48.16% with personal reference as the dominant use. Then, it was followed by conjunction 26.02%, substitution 8.81%, ellipsis 0.20%, lexical cohesion was used 82 items or 16.80%, (b) The students’ produced coherence of the narratives through the development of themes, and the generic structure; (c) The problem in using cohesive devices and coherence. Problem in using cohesive devices included the problems with: reference; (personal reference), problem in conjunction, and limited choice of ellipsis and lexical items. In terms of problem in coherence included the problem in their generic structure.