Coherence and Academic Writing: Some Definitions and Suggestions for Teaching

Author(s): Ann M. Johns

Source: TESOL Quarterly , Jun., 1986, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 247-265
Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3586543

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 TESOL QUARTERLY, Vol. 20, No. 2, June 1986

Coherence and Academic Writing:

Some Definitions and
Suggestions for Teaching
ANN M. JOHNS
San Diego State University

Coherence in written text is a complex concept, involving a

multitude of reader- and text-based features. Perhaps because of
this, we writing instructors and the textbooks we use often discuss
coherence in a vague or incomplete manner. This article reviews
current coherence literature, defines coherence in broad terms,
then presents a three-lesson revision unit based on modern
coherence principles. In this unit, ESL students "deconstruct" the
assignment prompt and prepare their own first drafts of an essay
response. Then they examine a fellow student's first draft from the
"top down," evaluating the thesis in relationship to the prompt and
to the assertions within the essay and analyzing the information
structure intended to guide readers through the text. Conclusions
are drawn about the success of this group revision technique and
the necessity for providing sequential exercises to improve
coherence.

A recent survey of college instructors teaching lower-division

general education classes (Johns, 1985), conducted to determine the
tasks which they assign and concerns which they have about ESL
student writing, found that the task types were predictable: Most
required the integration of information from sources (e.g., lecture,
assigned readings, or library sources) into written assignments. In
terms of concerns, a number of those responding commented that
students' academic writing is often "incoherent," a feature which
appears to cover a large number of perceived weaknesses.
Although all of us may believe we have a sense of what the term
incoherent means, we often find ourselves discussing incoherence-
and coherence-in vague terms with students. Sometimes we do not
get past comments such as those cited in Jacobs (1982):
A piece of writing is coherent when it elicits the response: "I follow you.

247

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 I see what you mean." It is incoherent when it elicits the response: "I see
what you're saying here, but what has it got to do with the topic at hand
or with what you just told me above?" (p. 1)
These remarks, though true to the recent discussion of coherence as
a phenomenon involving the interaction of reader with text (Carrell,
1982; Rumelhart, 1977) and as primarily a function of topic
development (Grabe, 1984), are not of much help to our students,
who need more specific definitions and sequential, task-dependent
exercises to produce prose judged to be coherent by experienced
graders.
To refine my understanding of coherence and methods for
teaching coherent writing, I reviewed the literature on coherence
and prepared a series of questions to guide group editing. These
questions have proved much more useful to my students and me
than my previous general comments and fragmented activities. The
purpose of this article is to share what I have discovered-how
coherence is variously defined in the recent literature and how I
assist my ESL students in revising their papers to improve
coherence.

TWO DEFINITIONS OF COHERENCE:

AS TEXT BASED AND READER BASED

Text-Based Coherence

Coherence is defined by some as a feature internal to text. In

traditional handbooks (see, e.g., Hodges & Whitten, 1972), this
feature is divided into two constructs: cohesion (i.e., the linking of
sentences) and unity (i.e., sticking to the point). Often, these
constructs are introduced separately, as if, in fact, they could be
separated in written text (see, e.g., Bander, 1978; Martin, 1974).
The appearance of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English
(1976) has had a major impact on the understanding and teaching of
coherence features. These linguists speak of coherent text as having
two characteristics somewhat different from those in the traditiona
definition: cohesion (i.e., ties between sentences) and register (i.e.,
coherence with a context):
A text is a passage of discourse which is coherent in these two regards
it is coherent with respect to the situation, and therefore consistent in
register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive
(p. 23)
Though Halliday is concerned with register appropriateness in
other writings (see, e.g., Halliday, 1978), Cohesion in English

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focuses almost exclusively on cohesion as a text feature. This work
has created more controversy and interest (see, e.g., Carrell, 1982;
Markels, 1983) and spurred more ESL writing research (see, e.g.,
Connor, 1984; Johns, 1980a; Scarcella, 1985; Witte & Faigley, 1981)
than have Halliday's register features. The category types which
appear in Cohesion in English (reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction, and lexical cohesion) have become common subjects
for discussion in well-respected ESL teacher reference textbooks
(e.g., Hughey, Wormuth, Hartfiel, & Jacobs, 1983, p. 129; Raimes,
1983, pp. 53-55).
However, some of the points made in Cohesion in English have
been misinterpreted or misused in the classroom. The literature on
cohesion has warned against clustering cohesive items in semantic
groups, such as teaching all additives (and, in addition, furthermore,
etc.) together (see, e.g., Johns, 1980b; Kantor, 1985); yet some
textbooks continue to list these related items in groups, disregarding
register or semantic variation.
Cohesive items have also been taught prescriptively, in isolated
exercises, without consideration for constructed texts. Witte and
Faigley (1981) warn teachers against using these practices:
Coherence conditions-conditions governed by the writer's purpose, the
audience's knowledge and expectations, and the information to be
conveyed-militate against prescriptive approaches to the teaching of
writing. Indeed, [our] exploration of what cohesion analysis can and
cannot measure in student writing points to the necessity of placing
writing exercises in the context of complete written text. (p. 20)
Whereas Halliday and Hasan speak of coherent text as being
cohesive (i.e., having appropriate ties among sentences), other
modern text analysts have concentrated upon the "sticking to the
point" feature of coherence. More important, they have discussed
the relationship of the points, or propositions, to each other.
Selection of cohesive items and other features of the information
structure are subsumed in their analyses; for them, meaning,
realized in propositional relationships, drives the text.
Some of the most interesting work on sticking to the point comes
from the Prague School (e.g., Lautamatti, 1986), whose members
have investigated how sentence topics combine to lead the reader
through text and to an understanding of the discourse theme or
topic. Witte (1983) and Connor and Farmer (1985) have applied the
topic depth and maintenance models of the Prague School to the
writing of native-speaker and ESL students. They have found,
among other things, that passing essays have fewer topics and more
T-units per topic than do failing essays, thereby demonstrating that

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topic support is one of the most important features of coherent
essays.
Grabe (1985), in a useful review of text linguistics literatur
including the work of the Prague School, speaks of coherence a
generally defined by text analysts as "a theoretical construct in tex
structure [referring] to the underlying relations that hold between
assertions (or propositions) and how they contribute to the overal
discourse theme" (p. 110). Grabe cites various well-known text-
analytical models, which share three interacting features essential t
coherence: (a) a discourse theme (or thesis); (b) a set of relevan
assertions relating logically among themselves by means o
subordination, coordination, and superordination (see, e.g., Nold &
Davis, 1980); and (c) an information structure imposed on the text
to guide the reader in understanding the theme or intent of th
writer. (This last includes cohesion and a number of other feature
see Vande Kopple, 1985.)

Reader-Based Coherence

So far, coherence has been defined principally as a feature of text,

either in terms of the linking of sentences (cohesion) or as the
relationships among propositions in the text (sticking to the point).
However, others claim, on the basis of schema-theoretical models,
that a text cannot be considered separately from the reader and that
coherence requires successful interaction between the reader and
the discourse to be processed (Carrell, 1982; Rumelhart, 1977).
According to this view, the degree to which a reader grasps the
intended meaning and underlying structure from text (and
therefore finds it coherent) depends, to a large extent, upon
whether the reader-selected schemata (or expectations) are
consistent with the text (see, e.g., P. Johnson, 1982; Miller & Kintsch
1980). These expectations are founded in the reader's prior
knowledge, both of the content to be introduced and the form it
takes (Carrell, 1983). As the reader processes the text, these
expectations are modified to establish consistency with tex
structure or content, for reading is a process of continuou
interpretation.
Rumelhart (1977) and others have noted that text processing takes
place on a number of levels, from the bottom up (the processing of
letters, words, and phrases), as well as from the top down (from the
reader's prior knowledge and expectations). However this is done
the important point is that reading is considered an interactive and
interpretive process. Therefore, the writer must continuously keep

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the intended audience in mind (see Johns, in press). Armbruster and
Anderson (1984) speak of discourse which meets reader expecta-
tions and provides guidance through the text as "reader
considerate."
This review of current literature provides a number of principles
to guide instructors in teaching the concept of coherence:
1. Coherence is text based and consists of the ordering and
interlinking of propositions within a text by use of appropriate
information structure (including cohesion).
2. At the same time, coherence is reader based; the audience and
the assignment must be consistently considered as the discourse
is produced and revised.
3. Instructors have an obligation to teach coherence comprehen-
sively, that is, to take into account these two approaches (text
based and reader based), at a minimum.

TEACHING COHERENCE

Many students at every level are unfamiliar with the conve

of English writing which, if well integrated, result in coherent p
Numerous ESL textbooks present sentence-level gramma
discourse context (see, e.g., J. A. Johnson, 1983; Sheehan, 19
teach students to write generalizations (topic sentence and t
and to provide supporting examples and details (see,
Huizenga, Snellings, & Francis, 1982; Rice & Burns, 1
However, none that I am aware of examines or teaches the
multitude of coherence features discussed in recent literature.
Therefore, published textbooks, though they may supplement and
augment the following suggestions, do not provide sufficient
introduction to the depth and variety of coherence features
necessary for proficient writing.
Many of these recent textbooks also make use of the process
approach, which is based on a theory of writing development that
has revolutionized teaching in the past 10 years (see, e.g., Sommers,
1980; Spack, 1984; Zamel, 1983). However, we may be doing our
students a disservice by strictly adhering to all tenets of this
approach, for it must be examined in light of the tasks which
students are required to perform. The classical process approach
requires two conditions for student writing: (a) time to plan (Spack,
1984), draft, and revise (Sommers, 1980) and (b) student-generated
meaning and form.

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 Horowitz (1985) points out that time for revision is not available
for students writing essay responses in timed academic (i.e., other
than English) examinations. For students writing an essay for an
English class, some time may be available, as it is when students
prepare out-of-class assignments for their academic courses.
However, the second condition for the process approach, that of
student-generated meaning and form, is contradictory to the
authentic requirements of most academic classrooms. Horowitz
(1985), Swales (1982), and Johns (1985) have all found that an
academic assignment (or prompt) will generally designate the
content, form, aims, and strategies required for response to the
prompt.
To prepare our students for authentic tasks, then, we must
generate representative prompts requiring expository writing. And,
when teaching and evaluating the writing which results from these
assignments, we must insist upon student adherence to the
requirements of the prompts in order to insure reader-based
coherence.

THE REVISION UNIT

My advanced students have studied grammar and have som

familiarity with the essay model (see Martin, 1974), with to
sentence and thesis development. Yet they seem to be unable
transfer these essay-writing conventions to their own pros
especially in response to a prompt, and most continue to revise th
work at the sentence level only.
Because of these problems, I begin teaching coherence
students by moving from the top down, that is, from more globa
more local considerations. Research shows that good revisers w
develop coherent text begin at the top, rather than at the botto
that they correct spelling, grammar, and mechanics last (see Kr
1983; Sommers, 1980). In successive task-dependent activities,
class is asked to consider coherence systematically in terms
prompt requirements, thesis development, the relationships amo
assertions and to the thesis, and the adequacy of the informatio
structure. Only in the final stages do students edit for sentence-l
errors.

The unit consists of a minimum of three lessons, eac

has multiple goals, drawn from both task- and r
coherence literature. Understanding the prompt and d
discourse theme (or thesis) in response to it are the goal

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lesson, which draws principally from reader-based considerations.
This lesson results in the production of first drafts of an essay.
Goals of the second lesson, which is principally text based, are to
analyze a thesis statement and the relationships between
propositions in an essay. The first draft of one student's essay is
examined during this lesson. After the second lesson, all students
revise their essays, using the same techniques that they applied to
the sample student essay.
The third lesson again focuses on the work of a single student, this
time on the student's second draft. This lesson concentrates on
reader-based considerations in the information structure. After the
lesson, the students again take their own papers home and revise
them, asking the questions posed in the class. Finally, they edit for
sentence-level errors before handing the papers in to me.
Before the in-class instruction began for the class discussed here,
students were asked to read a short essay by Mead and Metraux
(1984) entitled "The Gift of Autonomy." We discussed main ideas
and vocabulary together, with students making marginal notes, until
I was satisfied that they understood the reading and could respond
to the content of the essay. They were then given the following
prompt, requiring the integration of information from the Mead
and Metraux essay into their writing:

According to Mead and Metraux, parents show their hopes for their
children through gift-giving. Using examples from this article and from
your own life, discuss how parents show their hopes through the gifts
they give.

Lesson 1: Deconstructing the Prompt and Preparing a Thesis

Most writing for academic classes is in response to a specific
assignment or prompt (Horowitz, 1985; Johns, 1985). One of the
most important-and perhaps the most difficult-tasks for the
academic writer is to understand what the prompt writer wants. For
this reason, my class began by "deconstructing" the prompt
(Carlson, 1985) in order to analyze better the directions and
limitations of their assigned task.
Academic prompts often have a number of instructions and key
task-related terms, such as list and describe (Swales, 1982), and they
often indicate the form, content, and strategies of the assignment
(Horowitz, 1986). Therefore, it is wise to give students a number of
prompt types so that they can develop strategies for successfully
deconstructing a variety of task instructions (Flower, 1985).
Because they had had little experience with deconstructing

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prompts, I assisted the students in answering the following
questions:
1. What is the function of the first sentence in the prompt? What is
the prompt writer asking you to do, if anything?
The students decided that the first sentence was just a statement
of the thesis of the Mead and Metraux essay, creating a context for
the instructions which were to follow.

2. What does the second sentence tell you about your writing task?
What does it tell you about the required aims or strategies for
writing?
The students decided that the writer of the prompt told them to
discuss, using examples from their own lives and from the reading.
They decided that discuss was a general word which did not tell
them much about structuring their argument. However, they had
specific instructions about aims and strategies: They were to
support their argument by using examples from this article and their
own lives.

3. What does the prompt tell you about the focus of the content?
The students decided that hopes was the central term and that it
must appear or be implied in their thesis sentences and be the
central topic of the essays they were to produce.
Once the prompt had been deconstructed and students
understood the directions of the writer of the prompt regarding
aims, strategies, and content, we went on to develop the discourse
theme, generally called the thesis in writing textbooks. In the prose
of experienced writers, the thesis can be either explicit or implicit
(see Lautamatti, 1986; Witte, 1983). However, requiring an explicit
thesis is useful for inexperienced writers because it provides
guidance as they organize and redraft their essays.
To make the theses their own, not just a repetition of the thesis
from the article, the students were asked to do some divergent
thinking through the use of invention strategies (Daubney-Davis,
1982; Spack, 1984), such as clustering and listing, all based upon the
central idea of parents showing hopes through gift giving. One
possibility for approaching thesis building was to think of the gifts
which parents might give (both mentioned in the article and
occurring in their own lives), then decide what hopes these gifts
represent. Another, of course, was to think of a possible thesis, then
come up with examples appropriate to it. Still another was to think
about the hopes of parents, then to discover gifts which express

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these hopes. Though I provided examples of theses and made
suggestions for how students might go about planning their own,
thesis development became an individual, divergent-thinking
activity, for students solve problems of thesis formation in a number
of different ways (Flower, 1985; Williams, 1985).
When the students had developed some tentative theses, by
whatever method, they were asked to test the theses against the
requirements of the prompt, then prepare essays based upon these
theses for the next class.

Lesson 2: Examining a Thesis and the Relationships

Among Assertions in an Essay
On the second day, one student essay was examined by the entire
class, acting as readers and text analysts. The essay examined, by a
student whom I will call "Yoko," was chosen because it was
considered typical of the essays which had been written for our
classes, in terms of response to prompts and topic development.
The students were assigned to permanent groups of four which
assembled each time an essay was examined in this manner. These
groups were organized according to diverse linguistic backgrounds
and proficiency levels, so that each group would, by necessity,
speak English and would have at least one highly proficient
member to lead discussions. The sample essay (see Appendix A)
and the questions for analysis, given below, were distributed and
discussed by the groups.
1. Is the thesis in the paper appropriate for the prompt provided?
The students had decided that the central proposition of the
prompt was how parents showed their hopes through gift giving.
Therefore, the thesis was considered appropriate, since Yoko
planned to show that "the gifts are different from each other." (The
students assumed that these differences are based on hopes.)
2. What does the thesis pre-reveal to the reader? Does it reveal the
writer's argument and the organization which the argument will
follow?

Perhaps because this prompt does not require a particular

organizational framework, Yoko did not indicate how her essay
would be organized. She did pre-reveal content and argument,
however, when she said that "the gifts are different from each
other." Thus, the students decided that the thesis was present,
complete, and adequate to the prompt and that it revealed the

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content of the student paper but not the form in which the content
would be organized.
Once they had considered Yoko's thesis, the students turned to
the development of topics within her essay. Coherence, the students
were reminded, depends not only on the introduction of a clear
thesis, but on topic hierarchies and relationships, all of which relate
back to the thesis itself (see, e.g., Lautamatti, 1986; Witte, 1983).
This discussion led to the next question:
3. What are the relationships among the assertions?
In their groups, students were asked to determine the gist of
Yoko's paper and the relationship among assertions, by writing a
single sentence summary of each paragraph in the essay. Here is an
example of a summary from one group of students:
Thesis: And according to its hope the gifts are different from each other.
Para 2: Different gifts for different people have different meanings.
(implied)
Para 3: The most difficult thing is what kind of thing or how to give
rather than what to give. (stated)
Para 4: An example of hopes for giving is my father's book buying.
(implied)
The students were then asked questions which explored the topic
relationships and the relationship breakdowns in the text: Which
paragraphs were most difficult to summarize? Why? Did you have
difficulty understanding the relationships among topics in the
paragraphs? How could the author make these paragraphs easier to
summarize, for example, by showing the relationship with the thesis
or by providing topic sentences?
The students made a number of comments about the summariz-
ing process which demonstrated their sensitivity to the relationships
among the topics within the paragraphs and to the thesis. They
mentioned, for example, that in Paragraph 2 the author might
demonstrate a closer relationship with the thesis if she were to
provide a topic sentence which repeated the key word different and
showed explicitly how these gifts were examples of different hopes.
They suggested that this paragraph begin with a topic sentence such
as, "Different gifts may mean different things."
They had more trouble with Paragraph 3 because they could not
understand how the "difficult thing" had anything to do with
"differences among gifts," which was the key phrase in the thesis.
They suggested that this paragraph, too, should be devoted to
differences among gifts. They asked the writer to show how the

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examples in this paragraph were somehow distinct from those
found in Paragraph 2.
Further problems arose when they considered Paragraph 4. The
example in this paragraph, unlike those which had been taken
directly from the Mead and Metraux essay, was personal. But was it
an example of differences? Some students suggested that a possible
topic sentence for both Paragraphs 3 and 4 might be, "Even when
the same kind of gift is given, it may have various meanings." They
also suggested the addition of a conclusion to restate the thesis and
comment upon the points made in the internal paragraphs. After
discussing topic relationships and topic breakdowns, the students
turned to a reader-based consideration.

4. How do you think the ideas presented in Yoko's essay would

affect the reader, a native-speaker teacher?
Noting that a number of details from Mead and Metraux were
included in Yoko's paper, the students concluded that the ESL
teacher, who already was familiar with the assigned essay, would be
much more interested in details from Yoko's own life. They
suggested lengthening the personal experience section or
integrating it with information from Mead and Metraux. Each
paragraph should be longer, they pointed out, with more details
about each example. These comments are consistent with Witte's
(1983) findings that passing essays have fewer topics and more topic
support.
After these two lessons were completed, all members of the class
took their first drafts home and revised them, using as a guide the
questions which had been posed for Yoko's essay in class.

Lesson 3: Examining the Information Structure

In Lesson 3, Yoko's paper was again employed for class
discussion, this time in second draft form (see Appendix B). In this
lesson, students were to discuss the information structure, consisting
of cohesion and other features which lead the reader through the
text (i.e., meta-discourse).
Most information structure is reader based; however, some
features, such as the cohesive ties discussed in Halliday and Hasan
(1976), are considered to be text based. To develop an understand-
ing of these text-based features, students were asked to take a look
at the cohesive ties in Yoko's essay. They were asked the following
questions:

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1. Did the author link sentences through use of vocabulary? Are
there related words which appear throughout the paragraph?
How are these words related (by synonymy, as superordinates/
subordinates, etc.)? Is the linking of vocabulary successful, or are
there words which do not fit?
2. What reference items are used? Does the writer use this, the, or
it to provide a tie with earlier sentences? Are the reference items
appropriately used? Do they lead you through the text?
3. What types of conjunctions are there?
A group of students was assigned to each set of questions. One
group was assigned to go through Yoko's essay to find related
words, to suggest other words which might be used as synonyms,
and to see that word relationships were carried through the text. A
second group of students went through the paper to identify the ties
between the pronouns of reference and the words to which they
referred. They were warned that indefinite reference is a problem
for many students (see Johns, 1980b). The third group of students
went through the paper to find and evaluate connectives
introducing independent and dependent clauses.
Once students had examined and commented on cohesive items,
they turned to features which are reader based, that is, the meta-
discourse items discussing information in the text. Vande Kopple
(1985), who has an excellent taxonomy of meta-discourse items,
quotes Williams's definition of meta-discourse as "writing about
writing, whatever does not refer to the subject matter being
addressed" (p. 84). The Vande Kopple taxonomy includes narrators
(e.g., according to Mead and Metraux), validity markers (e.g.,
may), topicalizers (e.g., for example), and reminders about what is
discussed earlier and later in the text.
After being given a list of meta-discourse items and examples, the
students were asked to evaluate the essay for these features. They
were given the following questions:
4a. What meta-discourse items appear in this essay? Are they
effectively used?
The students found topicalizers ("as for hopes"), validity markers
("might" and "can"), and an illocation marker ("for example"). Most
decided that the meta-discourse items were effectively but
sparingly used.
b. What other items might be necessary, considering the prompt
and the information in the essay?

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 The students decided that the major problem with this draft of
the essay was that there was little indication of which examples or
quotations came directly from the Mead and Metraux essay and
which were Yoko's own examples. They recommended narrators
(e.g., "according to Mead and Metraux") when examples from the
essay appeared.
After the students had completed exercises covering this unit, in
which reader-based and text-based questions were asked about the
prompt, the thesis, the relationships among the topics, and the
information structure, they revised their own papers in the same
manner, edited them, and turned them in for a grade.

CONCLUSION

At first, students have some difficulty with this unit, sinc

have had little experience with deconstructing promp
evaluating their own writing. Therefore, I carefully take
through the entire process, explaining the questions and sugg
answers. As the semester progresses, the students are exp
additional student essays and become more adept at the g
editing process. Clearly, this is not a unit which can be done
and forgotten; it must be repeated with a variety of prompts
number of student essays. It then becomes the organiza
structure for a writing course with the goal of improving coh
in essays.
If consistently employed, this approach using revision to improve
coherence is successful for several reasons.

1. The approach considers coherence to be both reader based and

text based. Traditionally, coherence (generally cohesion) was
thought to be text based; revisions were based upon incongruities
and errors in the written text (Hodges & Whitten, 1972).
Recently, the emphasis has been placed on reader-based
coherence (Carrell, 1982). Yet an approach to teaching need not
be one or the other; it should, in fact, include both reader- and
text-based considerations.

2. The exercises integrate a number of important features of

coherence. For example, whereas many writing textbooks still
consider cohesion, as defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976), as
central to text-based coherence, meta-discourse is introduced
here as also necessary for leading the reader through the text.
3. One of the emphases in the process approach to writing has been

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 on asking students to be concerned with meaning before
imposing form upon their written work. Zamel (1984) notes:
As students continue to develop their ideas in writing, considerations of
organization and logical development come into play. The question,
then, is not of choosing to attend to organization or not, but of when and
how to do so. (p. 154)

In the approach to academic writing discussed in this article,

form, content, aims, and strategies are often integral to the
prompt. Therefore, students must be able to deconstruct the
prompt before planning their writing. This restricts their
creativity, of course, but results in a product which is more
acceptable to the grader who wrote the prompt and is therefore
more realistic for the academic milieu. In fact, since we usually
write for an audience, this approach may be appropriate for any
writing task.
4. This unit provides sequenced questions and activities which go
from the top down. The students must answer the first set of
questions before they can go on to the next lesson. They cannot
be poor revisers (i.e., edit on the sentence level only) if they
answer the questions and revise their essays as suggested.
5. And last but not least, when using this approach, the teacher does
not see the students' papers until they have redrafted them and
edited them at least twice. Rather than relying on teacher
correction, the students devote more time to monitoring their
own work and to providing an audience for their peers. The
teacher sees a more finished product, which cuts down
considerably on grading time.
Defining and teaching coherence are difficult tasks. However,
my students and I have found that if we break the tasks into
manageable, task-dependent parts, we can achieve more success in
the writing classroom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Ulla Connor, Bill Grabe, Dan Horowitz, and tw
anonymous TESOL Quarterly reviewers for their useful comments on ear
versions of this article.

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THE AUTHOR

Ann M. Johns is Associate Professor of Academic Skills and Linguistics

Diego State University. She is the co-editor of the ESP Journal and has p
in CATESOL Occasional Papers, Language Learning, The Journal of
Writing, and elsewhere.

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APPENDIX A

The First Draft of "Yoko"

(Lesson 2)
Every gifts from parents to their children carries with it love, hope and
expectation for children. As for the hopes, there are various kinds of hopes:
to be autonomous, to become like studying, to grow up favorably, to be an

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honest child and so on. And according to its hopes the gifts are different
from each other.
For example, to give a girl a diary with key might mean that the parents
hope her to grow her sense of identity and independence. And giving a
boy a desk may mean that they hope him to foster his sense of personal
privacy. To give money to go to college is to give opportunity to be come
educated.
More difficult thing as to gift-giving is this: what kind of thing or how to
give rather than what to give. As for to giving a doll to a girl, there are
many kinds of dolls and according to how extend of autonomy parents
expect to the child the choice will be different. And as for to giving money,
there are also some choices. For example, only to give money saying
nothing or to give it with telling him to buy a thing, etc.
When I was a child, my father used to take me to a used book store. He
recommended me several books and bought me some books I chose. I
learned by doing so pleasure of reading and to use everything with care
not only books. And I believe he wanted me to learn such things. I think it's
a good idea to go and choose something with children. It shows that you
love them and worry about them. It is easy way to show children hopes of
the parents.

APPENDIX B

The Second Draft of "Yoko"

(Lesson 3)
Every gifts from parents to their children carries with it love, hope an
expectation for children. As for hopes, there are various kinds: to
autonomous, to become like studying, to grow up favorably, to be
honest child and so on. And according to its hope the gifts are differe
from each other.
Different gifts may mean different things in terms of the parents' wishes
For example, to give a girl a diary with a key might mean that the paren
hope she will grow in a sense of identity and independence. And giving
boy a desk may mean that they hope him to foster his sense of person
privacy. To give money to go to college is to give opportunity to becom
educated. I was given money to go to college; my parents hope that I w
become very smart and wise and be able to think for myself.
The same kind of gift may have various meanings for the parents and t
children. There are many kinds of dolls you can give, for examp
Choosing a doll for a little girl, do I buy her a perishable costume doll f
which she will make dresses out of the materials I also give her? T
costume doll can perhaps be dressed and undressed, but that is all.
sturdy doll with a ready-made wardrobe places choice in the child's ow
hands. She herself can dress and undress it, bathe it safely and dec
whether the little girl will wear pink or blue, plaid or plain. Giving mon

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can also have many meanings. Parents can give money and say "this is
yours," or they can give money for specific things to buy or to be saved.
My father gave me books for many reasons. When I was a child, my
father used to take me to a used book store. He recommended me several
books and bought me some books I chose. I learned by doing so pleasure
of reading, use of reading for study and how to take care of books. He
hoped that I would love books, take care of them and use them for my
study.
So parents show hopes for their children by giving them different kinds
of gifts or the same types of gifts but with different meanings. When I
become a parent, I will probably do the same thing, because I will have
many hopes for my children, just like my parents.

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