JHSS (Journal of Humanities and Social Studies) Volume 03, Number 02, September 2019, Page 107 - 112 https://journal.unpak.ac.id/index.php/jhss e-ISSN: 2598-120X; p-ISSN: 2598-117X - 107 - JHSS is licensed under MACRO COHERENCE LEVEL ON STUDENTS’ SCIENTIFIC PAPER Leora G. Andovita a*) , Aceng Rahmat b) , Hanif Pujiati b) a) Pakuan University, Bogor, Indonesia b) Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia *) Corresponding Author: leora.andovita@unpak.ac.id Article history: received 19 August 2019; revised 31 August 2019; accepted 16 September2019 Abstract. Purposely contemplating at seventh semester students of English Education Study Progam, it is perceived that students exhibit a lack of skills in use of rhetoric, predominantly making errors in the use of words and phrases, directly translating words from Bahasa Indonesia to English – interlanguage error – and organizing their written text inadequately. Moreover, it is discovered that the viewpoints of the students frequently shift. To address this, this current study aims at investigating students’ macro -level coherence in their academic writing (henceforth; background of the study of a research proposal). A content analysis is applied including documents. Additionally, a descriptive analysis design is used to guide this study. There are six research proposals investigated to gain the data of this study. These proposals are taken purposively sampled from proposals submission from early 2018 intake. There are two main frameworks in this study. Firstly, the academic writing guidance book is used to analyze the rhetoric/organization of the paper. Secondly, the coherence analysis is applied to evaluate students’ coherence level. Analysis of findings shows that students encounter some problems in the coherence of English research proposal writing. Hence, it is argued that close attention should be paid to the refinement and suitable tutoring of coherence in the teaching of academic English writing. Keywords: macro-level coherence; students’ english reasearch proposal writing; content analysis I. INTRODUCTION Writing English-language scientific papers is still considered difficult for 7th semester students of the English Education Study Program at the Faculty of Teacher and Educational Sciences, Pakuan University. One part of the writing of the scientific work is the proposal part that plays an important role in conveying the topic of research problems. However, what happens is that the sentences written do not show a logical relationship and the text structure of the writing of the Background Problem is not appropriate. The idea to be conveyed might have been well thought out but when transforming the idea into writing in English it would not necessarily be as good as the idea you have in mind. Therefore, the interrelationships between the paragraphs in the writing must originate from the same main idea. One of the factors that can affect this obstacle is mothertongue interference. The concept that comes to mind in the form of words in Indonesian, but when writing it must be changed into an English concept that is different from the concept of the Indonesian language. The use of words or phrases as connectors between sentences and paragraphs in writing also experiences errors so that the ideas in the writing become unified. Readability of a text so that it can really be accepted is influenced by cohesion and coherence. The coherence elements in the text serve to show the interrelationship between ideas between paragraphs and paragraphs. With these elements of coherence, it can help the reader understand the statements or opinions written by the author. If in a paper there is a clash of ideas between paragraphs in paragraphs or between paragraphs, then the writing will not be coherent. Although students have started writing simple texts since semester 2, they still experience difficulties when in semester 7 writing scientific papers such as essays and thesis proposals. Since semester 2, they have only been accustomed to writing fiction essays and reading fiction texts. So they are not familiar with the model of writing scientific papers and this makes them experience problems when writing a thesis proposal. Though the activity of writing a thesis proposal must be done as a final project in the Academic Writing course. One part of the thesis proposal is the background writing of the topic to be examined. The ideas that they put in writing have begun to vary, but not yet neatly arranged. This can be caused by their consideration to put any ideas in mind at that time before they forget the material. Therefore, there is overlap or incongruity in the interrelationship relationship between paragraphs and paragraphs. The occurrence of non-integration of student writing can make it difficult for readers to understand the purpose of writing itself. Ideas that have not been coherent cause the writing is incoherent. The integrity of a text is influenced by cohesiveness or coherence between paragraphs and paragraphs that refer to the same idea so that the written text is acceptable. For a paragraph to be coherent, the paragraph must meet two criteria, namely: relevance and logical order (effective order) The problem of the cohesiveness of this text has received much attention from researchers as conducted by Astuti, Suryani, and Kurniati [1] questioning the coherence of the writing background of student thesis research. Coherence is very necessary when writing research background so that the integrity of a text can be achieved.