An Analysis of Contrastive Discourse Markers in Students’ Essays

ABSTRACT
The interest of the theoretical status of discourse markers has been increasing within the past two decades. The studies of it are focusing on what they are, what they mean, and how they function in many contexts. In writing, the use of discourse markers is to create the coherence and cohesion in a text which is considered as the requirement of a good text. However, it is found that very few studies concerning discourse markers in English writing were conducted in Indonesian setting especially in Aceh. Aimed to find out how students use contrastive discourse markers (CDM) in English writing, the current study was carried out with two research questions: 1). What are the common types of CDM used by students in writing?; 2). What types of contrastive discourse markers which are misused and overused by students? In order to gather the data, this study used qualitative approach focusing on document analysis. The participants engaged in this study were 26 students at the Department of English Language Education of UIN Ar-Raniry. They were selected as they had accomplished two writing classes, and they were taking writing-III at the current semester. The result of the study showed that students were lack of variations in the use of CDMs. The misuses of CDMs made by students were ranging from incorrect position of certain markers, inappropriate punctuations, and the misunderstanding of the use of markers. The oversuse of CDMs were also in students’ essays. Based on the finding, this study provided implications for students, teachers, and researchers. For students, it provided insight of how the students use CDMs in their writing. It could help teachers understand the problems faced by the students as well as provide the way to overcome it. Other researchers who have interest in the use of discourse markers (DMs) in writing may conduct research regarding the use of other DMs in writing.
Keywords: essay, writing, contrastive discourse markers