An Analysis of Temporal Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices in Junior High School Students' Recounts Writing

Abstract

Temporal cohesion is what lets a reader follow the chronological progression of events in personal recount writing. Existing research on time connectives has mostly examined their distribution, frequency, and grammatical accuracy, leaving contextual appropriateness comparatively underexplored. This study looked at both: how time connectives were distributed and how appropriately they were used to build temporal cohesion in personal recount texts written by Indonesian EFL learners. Using a corpus-assisted qualitative discourse analysis, it examined recount texts from 25 ninth-grade students at MTs 2 Nurul Islam Mojokerto, with the appropriateness analysis covering 25 of those texts. Time connectives were classified using Halliday and Hasan's temporal categories and evaluated through an analytical rubric assessing contextual appropriateness at the discourse level. Sequential connectives dominated the corpus, making up 80.74% of the 135 temporal connectives identified, consistent with the chronological demands of recount writing. But only a small share of students used time connectives consistently well; most texts showed contextual, grammatical, or mechanical problems that weakened temporal cohesion. Frequent connective use, in other words, did not translate into effective cohesion. This study extends existing work on temporal cohesion by evaluating time connectives at the level of discourse function, not just occurrence, showing that effective temporal cohesion depends on the semantic relationships connectives establish, not merely how often they appear.