An Analysis Of Students' Writing Quality And Problems In Constructing Coherence In The Review Of Related Theories Of Thesis Proposal

To write a good review of related theories of thesis proposal, the students have to consider elements in writing such as coherence, cohesion, unity, and so on. It is known that coherence is like a tie that unifies the ideas of sentences in the paragraphs. Related to coherence, this descriptive research has some purposes such as finding out the students’ writing quality, problems, and causes of problems in constructing coherence in the review of related theories of thesis proposal. The document analysis and interview guide were used as the instrumentations of this research in order to answer the purposes of this study. Moreover, the researcher analyzed 24 reviews of related theories of thesis proposals and interviewed 14 students. They were selected by using the purposive sampling technique. The result of the analysis found that: (1) The students’ writing quality in constructing coherence in the review of related theories of thesis proposal was categorized into average level since the mean score was 70; (2) The problems faced by students to construct coherence in their review of related theories of thesis proposal were the unclear idea relationships, the main ideas were not developed, the text was not written in a logical order, the transitional words were not applied well, and grammatical error; and (3) The students’ causes of problems in constructing a coherent review of related theories of thesis proposal were lack of self-identity in English writing, limited English vocabulary, poverty in English grammar, the effect of topic-specific background knowledge, the tendency to use specific writing technique, and overusing of the coordinate sentence. Thus, it could be concluded that the students’ writing quality was categorized into average level, and the students still needed to learn more about coherence since they had some obstacles in constructing coherence in the review of related theories of thesis proposal.