Water soluble hydroxyalkyl methycellulose ethers are used in a variety of applications incluing building industry as a supplementary agent used for incresing adhesives, water retention capacity, workability and viscosity modify. Water retention capacity(WRC) is the capability to contain water in the ploymer chain under condition of being mixed with cement. In general, the WRC is affected by the viscosity, the adding amount, the particle size, the rate of dissolving and the amount of substituted chemical in cellulose ethers. In the other words, WRC is increased as higher the viscosity, more adding amount, finer the particle size and longer the dissolving time of cellulose ethers. This thesis investigated each factor that effect the WRC, particularly the relation between degree of substitution(DS), molar of substitution(MS) and WRC. It is observed that WRC is not nearly affected by DS of cellulose ethers, but is changes proportionally as MS increases in the narrow range(0.10~2.25)