The purpose of this study was to examine the problems and difficulties of cohesion and coherence encountered by Iraqi college students in their argumentative writing. Participants' level was categorized as high, intermediate, and low. In this study, cohesion was assessed according to Halliday and Hasan (1976)cohesion theory, consistency was evaluated according to Grice's maxim. The consistency criterion of Hogue (2006) was also used in the analysis. Cohesion analysis showed that three groups tend to use lexical expressions. . In fact intermediate and low level students overused reiteration as a cohesive device more than the high level students. In addition, other lexical measured such as substitution. Also, the ellipsis was rarely used by third-level students. Furthermore, results revealed that language transfer was a main factor which impedes cohesion and coherence especially by intermediate and low level students. The evaluation of coherence showed that high level students achieve higher scored than intermediate and low level students. So, the low level students violated such criteria of achieving coherence as delineated by Grice (1976) and Oshima and Hogue (2006). Throughout examination of cohesion, cohesive devices cannot always lead to achieve coherence. The poor quality of the low and intermediate students' writing caused lack of persuasive, satisfaction and logical connection of ideas.
