Meriana Bandi Pengarang AGUSTINUS SEMIUN Dosen Pembimbing 1 YANPITHERZON LIUNOKAS Dosen Pembimbing 2 Agustinus Semiun Ketua Penguji Yanpitherzon Liunokas Penguji 1 Hilda M. Nalley Penguji 2

This thesis is entitled: “An Analysis of Cohesive Devices in Undergraduate Students’ Thesis in English Study Program of Nusa Cendana University”. It focuses on (1) what are types of cohesive devices commonly used in the background part of introduction of undergraduate thesis written by English Study Program students of Nusa Cendana University and (2) how is the use of cohesive devices in the background part of introduction of undergraduate thesis written by English Study Program students of Nusa Cendana University. It aims to identify the types of cohesive devices commonly used by undergraduate students in their theses and to describe the use of the cohesive devices used in students’ thesis. Mixed method was applied in this study. This study uses documentation technique. Data are students’ theses that are analyzed by using the categorization of cohesion. The result shows that there are two types of cohesive devices in students’ thesis either grammatical or lexical cohesion. The students commonly use grammatical cohesion since it occurs 1.057 times in students’ backgrounds. This happens because there are so many sub-types of grammatical cohesion than lexical, such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction while lexical cohesion is only reiteration and collocation. The use of grammatical cohesion by students can be seen as reference (54.33% or 698), conjunction (26.93% or 346), ellipsis (0.54% or 7) and substitution (0.47% or 6). The use of lexical cohesion is collocation (12.68% or 163), and reiteration (5.06% or 65). The numbers of cohesive devices used by the students are quite various based on the all percentages. The difference and the length of backgrounds are also affected the total number of cohesive devices. Reference becomes the highest frequency of cohesive devices in students’ backgrounds. It means that the students are familiar to use it in their writing although they are able to use other types as well while the low percentage of substitution and ellipsis proves that those are more used in oral or spoken than in writing. The sub-types of cohesive devices that have the highest total number of used of each type are demonstrative reference, nominal substitution ‘one’, nominal ellipsis, additive conjunction ‘and’, and repetition. Moreover, the use of cohesive devices in students’ backgrounds are interrelated to each other. This happens because the students are able to provide the variation of cohesive ties, then integrate those ties as well as a whole backgrounds. The use of cohesive devices are also constructed by cohesion and coherence so the backgrounds become easily and clear to be understood as good writing even the items are substituted or ommitted. For this reason, the background sections of thesis written by the undergraduate students of English Study Program are coherent and categorised as good writing.