Cohesion and coherence

COHERENCE AND COHESION IN WRITING

COHERENCE

• A piece of writing is coherence if it is clearly organised and has a logical sequence of ideas.

COHERENCE

• A text is coherence whe it makes sense.

It makes sense when:

• We can understand what the text is about.
• We can translate it.
• We can paraphrase it.
• We can summarize it.
• We can explain the meaning to someone else.

COHERENCE

Coherence is enhanced if...

the reader can easily discern what the text is about

the text is organized in a way that answers the reader’s questions

the text is organized in a way that is familiar to the reader

Example coherence paragraphs:

The following paragraphs represent weak and strong examples of coherence.

Coherence

• Example of an incoherent text

He worked hard but earned little money and died very poor at the age of 35. Two years later his father took him to play at concerts in the great cities of Europe

Does it make sense?

Coherence

• Another example...

The Austrian composer Mozart was a musical genius. He has got a swimming pool. It actually tingles on your skin to tell you it’s working. Water would then come out of fountains such as the one shown here. And that is why dogs still chase rabbits.

Is it coherent?

A TEXT TO BE COHERENT

MUST REFER TO THE SAME TOPIC

COHESION

COHESION

• A paragraph or section of text is cohesive if the sentences are well structured, well linked together and there is no unnecessary repetition.

COHESION

• Cohesion is the glue that holds a piece of writing together. In other words, if a paper is cohesive, it sticks together from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph.
• Cohesive devices certainly include:

• Reference - Ellipsis
• Substitution - Repetition
• Connectors - Synonymy

COHESION

COHESION

COHESION

• Repetition of Key Words
• We can tie sentences or paragraphs together by repeating certain key words from one sentence to the next or from one paragraph to the next. This repetition of key words also helps to emphasize the main idea of a piece of writing. For example, in the following paragraph, notice how many times the words owned and ownership are repeated:

COHESION

COHESION

• By repeating the words owned and ownership throughout the paragraph, the writer has tied each sentence to each other and has clearly indicated what the main idea of the paragraph is. In this case, the main idea is ownership of something. And what exactly is being (or not being) owned ? By repeating the word land, the author shows us that the entire main idea is ownership of land .