A.

COHESSION

Cohesion or coherence, is the intangible glue that holds paragraph together. Having

good coherence in a writing project means that your ideas stick together and flow smoothly

from one sentence to the next, so that readers of you work can easlily understand where you

are taking them. Without cohesion, a written work can seem chopy and may not flow well; a

lack of coherence challenges the reader and can hurt comprehension, thus rendering your

attempt at communication ineffective at best.

We will look at cohesion within paragraph, but the basic below, along with

organizational device like headings, help to lirik sentence, paragraphs and section coherently

in longer, complex writing projecets.

Here four main component of cohesion :

 Relevance

 Order

 Linking words

 Repetition of key words

1. RELEVANCE

A simple way to build cohesion or flow between sentence is to look at the

meaning of a sentence and compare it to the point of the next sentence. They

should be related yet not the same. If the two sentence are not closely related, you

will lose the readers’ attention, because they will have to guess whwrw you are

going. If the two sentence are identical, you are not adding any new information to

your work, and the reader will be annoyed.

 Example - to different: relevance not clear

Antigone’s motivation is family duty, even is it means death. She must rebel
which will couse an uproar – to consequences dont matter to her. This would also
eplain why she rejects ismene’s support later in the play. They both have different
motivations – ismene ha nothing left has nothing left to lose and wants to go out
with a glorious bang.

In this paragraph, two sentence are far too separate. The first two sentence talk about

antogone’s motivations and how far they will driver her. The focus is then redirected

to Ismene, and the paragraph focus is not clear. It lacks cohesion.

When a sentence relates the Ismene information back to antigone, we have cohesion:

Antigone’s motivation is family duty, even if it means death. She wants to

rebel which will cause an uproar – the consequences dont matter to her. In contrast,

her sister, ismene, has completely different motivations for her actions and wants

glory, which explains why antigone rejects her support later in the play.

Example – too similar

2. ORDER

Every paragraph should have a main idea (typically stated in a topic sentence).

To maintain cohesion, all sentences within a paragraph should related to this main

idea. For example if you are writting a paragraph on why nuclear power plants are

an efficient, clean way of generating energy, it may seem out of place to then

reflect on why a duck’s quack does not echo and the resulting society

implications. More often than not, these sentences are important to your paper, but

need to be moved elsewhere: in a sparate paragraph or just relocated within the

same paragraph so the sentences order is logica;.

 Common ways to order sentences

 Chronological

 Cause and effect

 Clarification

 Compare/contrast

Example – chronology is unclear

Then there was another meeting with satan, who said if Job’s body was

tested Job would against God. The three friends eliphaz of terman,

zophar of nammah , and bildad the shuah came try and console Job.

The tree saw that job was strickern with disease and his suffering was

very great.

Chronological oerder and time signal improve cohesiveness

There was another meeting with satan, who said job’s body was tested

job would then sin against God. When Job was later stricken with

disease and suffering greatly, his theree friends, Eliphaz of terman,

zophar of nammah and blidad the shuah, tried to console him.

3. LINKING/TRANSATION WORD

Transation words can help a paragraph flow more smoothly. The following

two sentence are far apart. In fact, opposite in content and unconnecteable in

time
B. COHESIVE DEVICE

A variety of useful Englsh conjuction eist, which complete this list of the most used

coherence device. Together, the can help to express a cohesive view and easy

understandble and readble text. Word that link two parts of a sentence are alled

conjuction. Yhe most common ones are ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘but’. There are three basic

types of conjuctions:

Coordinating conjuction

Subordinating conjuction

Corelative c Cohesive devices, sometimes called linking words, linkers,

connectors, discourse markers or transitional words, are one of the most

misunderstood and misused parts of IELTS Writing.

Cohesive devices are words like ‘For example‘, ‘In conclusion‘, ‘however‘ and

‘moreover‘. Together with coherence, cohesion provides 25% of your marks in both

parts of the Writing test. However, most students have not been taught how to use

them effectively.

This post will look at how and, more importantly, when we should use them.What

are cohesive devices?

Cohesive devices tell the reader what we are doing in a sentence and help to guide

them through our writing. They signal to the reader what the relationships are between

the different clauses, sentences and paragraphs.

Let’s look at two examples below.

The public transport in this city is unreliable and it’s cheap.

 The public transport in this city is unreliable but it’s cheap.

There are two cohesive devices in the sentences above: ‘and’ and ‘but’. Both give

the reader different signals and change the meaning of the sentence.

The first sentence tells the reader that ‘it’s cheap’ is simply being added to the

previous information, however, the second sentence tells the reader that they are

giving a contrasting opinion to the first part of the sentence by using the word ‘but’.

In other words, the second sentence is saying ‘it’s unreliable (which is bad) but the

good thing about it is it’s cheap, so I don’t mind using it.’ Simply using the word ‘but’

conveys that whole message without needing to literally say it.

This makes our message more succinct and our writing easier to read. But, does

that mean we should use as many cohesive devices as possible?

Overusing Cohesive Devices

The biggest mistakes many students make is to use cohesive devices in nearly

every sentence.

If you look at the IELTS Writing Marking Criteria it states that a Band 7 ‘uses a

range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under-/over-use‘.

This is typical of a student who knows the meaning and how to use cohesive devices,

but thinks that using them as much as possible will get them a high mark.

However, using them too much often leads to students using them incorrectly. It is

stated for Band 5 that ‘makes inadequate, inaccurate or over use of cohesive devices‘.

In my experience, most students get a Band 5 in this category for this reason. They
think that using them as much as possible will get them a high mark, but don’t

consider the meaning and how each of them should be used in a sentence.

Band 8 and 9 students tend to only use cohesive devices when necessary and they

use them appropriately and effectively i.e. correct meaning and grammar. In fact,

many students have criticised Band 9 answers because ‘they don’t have enough

discourse markers’. Take a look at the extract below from an academic journal (The

Power of Human Rights by Stephen C. Ropp).

This extract is about 200 words long. How many cohesive devices can you see?

Cohesive Devices

Most IELTS students will not be able to produce writing to this very high standard,

but you should remember that you don’t get extra marks for lots of cohesive devices,

the most important thing is using them accurately (grammar) and appropriately

(meaning).

Meaning and Grammar

The next problem students have is learning long lists of cohesive devices and not

learning the meaning of each word or how it should be used in a sentence. If you use

the wrong word it confuses the reader and this lowers your mark for both coherence

and grammar. It is better to use no word than use a word incorrectly.

My advice is to not learn long lists of words. The list below is more than you will

ever need and learning more than this will probably just confuse you or take up time

that could be used to learn something else. In a 250 word essay you might give 2-3

examples at the most, so why would you learn 10 different ways to give an example?
You only have one conclusion, so it seems like a waste of time to learn 5 different

ways to do this.

Learn just the words you need and learn them 100%. By 100% I mean that you

know exactly what that word means, when it should be used in a sentence and how it

should be used in a sentence. Until you know all of this 100%, don’t use it.

Finally, don’t try to use very complicated words and expressions, if you are not

already comfortable with the simple terms. Being able to use ‘and‘ or ‘but‘ effectively

is much better than trying to use more complicated words incorrectly. Again, look at

some academic texts or good IELTS sample answers; simple words are used more

often than not.

How to Improve

You can’t simply learn a long list of words and then hope you can use these

correctly in an essay. That would be like Ronaldo telling you how he scores so many

goals and thinking you can do the same thing by just listening to him.

Also, you can’t look at just one example sentence and hope to learn everything you

need to know about that word.

If you want to improve do the following:

Reading is the number one way to learn new words. Good writers read a lot, it’s

that simple. Pick a topic you are interested in and read a little every day. 20 minutes is

enough. Note down any cohesive devices and how they are used in each sentence.

Check the meaning and grammar of each word on sites like the British Council or

BBC. You will find lots of explanations there and example sentences.
 Practice using these and then have your writing checked by an experienced IELTS

teacher.

If you do the following, you will slowly learn how to use cohesive devices

effectively. I wish there was a faster way, but like most things in life, hard work and

practice is the best and only solution.

C. COHERENCE

Coherence (from Lat. “cohaerere” – to stick together) can be understood in a wide

sense and in a narrow sense. In a wide sense, coherence is the semantic structure

which helps to unite several sentences into a holistic text. In a narrow sense,

coherence is the connection brought about by reader’s/listener’s knowledge that helps

him/her to understand any given discourse (e.g. through the knowledge of the context

in which the discourse is unfolding). Coherence has to do with mental processes and

cultural knowledge rather than any explicit discourse markers such as deictic words or

linking words (Bussmann, 1998).

Example 1:

Tom: May I have some more?

Helen: Yes, of course, any time you want more, just go ahead.

In this example, Tom does not mention what exactly he wants, but through the

context of the situation Helen knows that he is speaking about perogies (Tom has just

finished a plate of perogies). Thus, despite the fact that Tom is not mentioning
explicitly what he wants, his discourse is coherent as is Helen’s (who is not

mentioning perogies either).

Example 2:

[A newspaper article headline and a lead to it] A NEW AMAZING RECORD

SET. Solomon University students have cooked the biggest perogi. A whole weekend

has been spent in hard work.

Similarly, in example 2, there are no textual indicators pointing at the relationships

between the sentences. However, it is still easy to understand the text based on the

semantics and logical order in which the sentences are organized. Therefore, this text

is coherent.

Cohesion “is the connection that results when the interpretation of a textual

element is dependent on another element in the text. […] Cohesion refers to the

connection that exists between elements in the text” (Renkema, 2004, p. 49).

“Cohesion is produced by (a) the repetition of elements of the text, e.g. recurrence,

textphoric, paraphrase, parallelism; (b) the compacting of text through the use of

devices such as ellipsis; (c) the use of morphological and syntactic devices to express

different kinds of relationships such as connection, tense, aspect, deixis,or theme-

rheme relationships” (Bussmann, 1998, p. 199).

 Example 3:

James likes yellow apples. He eats them every day.

In example 3, the interpretation of “he” depends on another element in the text (i.e.

“James”). Similarly, the interpretation of “them” depends on “yellow apples”. In this

case, cohesion is achieved by the use of personal pronouns “he” and “them”.

Example 4:

Ann is not going to Ukraine soon. Ann has just returned from there.

In example 4, cohesion is achieved through the use of the deictic word “there”

which relies on another element of the text, the noun “Ukraine”.

The important difference between coherence and cohesion is that coherence relies

on semantics of a given text as well as cultural knowledge and the overall context in

which discourse is unfolding. There is no explicit manifestation of textual coherence

in a text itself. Coherence is rather deduced from a text.

Cohesion, in turn, starts with concrete textual elements which are then built upon to

produce the effect of cohesion. Cohesion is often manifested through the use of such

“devices” as pronouns (e.g. I, he, she, it) and deictic words (e.g. here, there, then).
 I hope that these definitions and the examples will help to understand better the

notions of coherence and cohesion.