Coherence within Paragraphs

6 Key excerpts on "Coherence within Paragraphs"

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  eBook - ePub

  Cohesion in English

  • M.A.K. Halliday, Ruqaiya Hasan(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Bees on the Boat Deck (The Plays of J. B. Priestley, Vol 2), Heinemann.

  Cohesive ties, especially those with the immediately preceding text, are only one source for the information that the reader or listener requires. Both situational and more remote textual information are necessary components. But it is surprising how much can often be recovered simply from the presuppositions carried by the cohesive elements. The ongoing continuity of discourse is a primary factor in its intelligibility.

  This illustrates the meaning of cohesion as a whole. It provides, for the text, which is a semantic unit, the sort of continuity which is achieved in units at the grammatical level – the sentence, the clause and so on – by grammatical structure. Like everything else in the semantic system, cohesive relations are realized through the lexicogrammar, by the selection of structures, and of lexical items in structural roles. Our intention in this book has been to survey the lexicogrammatical resources in question, and show their place in the linguistic system. But the cohesive relations themselves are relations in meaning, and the continuity which they bring about is a semantic continuity. This is what makes it possible for cohesive patterns to play the part they do in the processing of text by a listener or a reader, not merely signalling the presence and extent of text but actually enabling him to interpret it and determining how he does so.

  7.3 The meaning of different kinds of cohesion

  We have discussed cohesion under the five headings of reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. The classification is based on linguistic form; these are the categories of cohesion that can be recognized in the lexicogrammatical system. In terms of the resources which are brought into play, they are all lexicogrammatical phenomena of one kind or another.

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  A Guide to Supervising Non-native English Writers of Theses and Dissertations

  Focusing on the Writing Process

  • John Bitchener(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Box 6.7 illustrates how this may be achieved.

  Box 6.7

  Example 8

  While this section has shown that there are a number of stages in the cognitive processing of new linguistic knowledge, the extent to which the second language proficiency level of a learner may moderate the effectiveness of this cognitive processing from stage to stage needs to now be considered.

  It can be seen that this concluding sentence operates as a transition between what has just been discussed (the fact that there are different stages of cognitive processing) and what is to be discussed next (the extent to which language learners’ proficiency in using the target language may influence their processing, from one stage to another).

  Coherence within a Paragraph

  Many students need feedback on the coherence of the argument presented within a paragraph. If each paragraph signals clearly its central focus early in the paragraph (and this can be achieved if the approaches just described are followed) and all sentences that follow describe, explain or illustrate the central idea of the paragraph, there is a greater likelihood of the paragraph achieving coherence than if it doesn’t. The paragraph in Example 9 of Box 6.8 illustrates how this may be done.

  Box 6.8

  Example 9

  Truscott (1996) argued that there was no evidence from the published research available at the time he was writing to support the view that written corrective feedback has the potential to facilitate second language development. However, his claims in relation to each of the four studies he cited as evidence (Kepner, 1991; Robb et al., 1986; Semke, 1984; Sheppard, 1992) have been critiqued on the grounds that each study contained sufficient research design flaws to mean that the findings and the claims may be invalid and/or unreliable. In all four studies, it has been noted that there was an absence of a control group and that the accuracy performance of the participants could therefore not be measured against that of learners who received written corrective feedback. However, some have argued that learners who received content-related comments can be compared with learners who received written corrective feedback because the content comments may not have included any reference to accuracy or form. Nevertheless, those who maintain that a control group must not receive any type of feedback (content comments included) caution against the conclusions drawn by the researchers and by Truscott. Other flaws or shortcomings in these studies have been identified and are discussed in the following paragraphs.

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  Conversations aboutext 1

  Teaching grammar using literary texts

  • Joanne Rossbridge, Kathy Rushton(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA)

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Eight Grammatical Knowledge to Respond to Whole Texts – Cohesion How can we help students to use grammatical knowledge to respond to text?

  In previous chapters we have shown how grammatical features can be taught in context to support students' understanding of text and this sometimes takes place at the level of the clause, sentence or paragraph. However it is at the level of text that cohesion must be taught. Cohesive devices are ways of making a text fluent and readable; they are the tools good writers use for linking their ideas into a coherent whole. In this sense even though noun groups, verbal groups, adverbials and single words may constitute cohesive devices it is their use across the text; the 'pattern across a text', which makes the particular groups or words cohesive. Skilled writers also use Theme of clause to develop themes and support the reader across the stages of a text from the level of the clause through to the whole text level. It is here that nominalisation and the ability to condense ideas in an extended noun group or complex sentence is so important, as these are the tools which allow a writer to focus the reader's attention on particular information by placing it in the Theme position.

  What else do you need to know about cohesion?

  One of the things that a fluent reader does is to carry meaning across chunks of text. Less fluent readers tend not to do this, but to focus instead on much smaller units of meaning, such as individual words. Being able to carry an idea right through a text is dependent on being able to process the cohesive links between sentences.

  A native speaker has an intuitive understanding of how cohesion operates, but second language learners may not have developed this understanding fully. Helping readers to be aware of cohesive links will help them to see the wholeness of a text and so understand it more easily. (Gibbons, 1991:83)

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  Psychology of Language (PLE: Psycholinguistics)

  An Introduction to Sentence and Discourse Processes

  • Murray Singer(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  5 Understanding Coherent Discourse

  Language messages consist of units of many levels of complexity, including words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. However, people seldom need to make judgments about isolated linguistic units. Rather, they typically manipulate spoken or written discourses that convey sensible meanings in appropriate contexts. Later, they need to retrieve the discourse to report it to others, to answer questions, and to make judgments of accuracy.

  Consider the following brief excerpt from the beginning of a chapter in a novel:

  (1) “Flight 108 to Paris. Air France. This way please.” (2) The persons in the lounge at Heath Row Airport rose to their feet.

  (3) Hilary Craven picked up her small lizard-skin travelling case and moved in the wake of the others, out on to the tarmac. (4) The wind blew sharply cold after the heated air of the lounge. (5) Hilary shivered and drew her furs a little closer round her. (Christie, 1967, pp. 24–25)

  This passage appears clear and sensible, and few would object to its appearance in a mystery novel. A central feature of this paragraph is that it is coherent. This means that the parts of the message are related or connected to one another. Because the reader can identify these connections, the message can be understood.

  What are these connections, and how does the understander identify them? Many of them are straightforward and easy to pick out. The repetition of the term lounge in sentence (4) obviously refers to the Heath Row lounge introduced in sentence (2). Likewise, the possessive pronoun her in sentence (3) refers to Hilary Craven, and others is a shorthand phrase referring to the other persons.

  Consistent with the ideas of chapter 4 , other connections in the passage depend on the reader’s knowledge of the usual relations among its concepts. This is readily illustrated by making a few substitutions in the passage:

  (1’) “Flight 108 to Paris. British Rail

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  Introductory Linguistics for Speech and Language Therapy Practice

  • Jan McAllister, James E. Miller(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Coherence is a major and essential property of well-constructed narratives and dialogues. Without it, a text can either not be interpreted at all or only with difficulty. To achieve a coherent text narrators have to keep to the topic, keep to a central set of participants and relate events in order. Participants in dialogues likewise have to keep to the topic, announce any changes in topic, relate their contributions to what other participants have said, respond to questions and so on.

  In more general terms, coherence derives from a good relationship between text and context. All language activity takes place in a context, or perhaps we should say ‘contexts’. There is the immediate context in which a particular instance of language activity occurs: the setting (domestic, institutional, workplace), the participants (child and parents, work colleagues, teacher and students, narrator and audience), the purpose of the activity (telling a bedtime story, describing symptoms to a doctor or nurse, explaining how to play a game). There is also a wider context: the background culture of the participants and their knowledge of it, their general knowledge of the world, their shared knowledge of previous events. All these factors play a part in determining whether a text is coherent.

  An important ingredient of coherence is topic, which is what a piece of text is about. Consider the following two texts:

  7. There are splendid examples of eighteenth- and nineteenth century architecture in Britain. Edinburgh has wonderful buildings from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries.

  8. Perhaps the best-known city in Scotland is Edinburgh. Edinburgh has wonderful buildings from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries.

  Both texts contain the same second sentence Edinburgh has wonderful buildings from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries . The topic of the text in (7) is ‘splendid examples of eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture in Britain’. In the second sentence the phrase that picks up this topic is wonderful buildings from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries . But this phrase is at the end of the sentence, which begins with Edinburgh . The two sentences in (7) do not make up a text with coherence because it is not clear what the topic of the text might be. In contrast, the topic of the text in (8) is ‘Edinburgh’ and in the second sentence the first phrase is indeed Edinburgh

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  Grammar Survival for Primary Teachers

  A Practical Toolkit

  • Jo Shackleton(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  p.52 Cohesion: making connections within and across a text KNOWLEDGE What you need to know about cohesion

  Cohesion relates to the way a text is woven together. Writers use cohesive devices that act as threads, binding words, phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to make a text coherent. These devices operate as signposts for the reader, signalling how different parts of a text relate to each other. If phrases and clauses are the building blocks of sentences, then cohesion is what pulls all these different elements together to form a whole, coherent text.

  Typical cohesive devices (and we’ve met most of these already) include the following: p.53 APPLICATION

  Teaching about cohesion

  There’s very little new grammatical content that you need to teach for cohesion, so you’ll need to focus more on teaching pupils how to deploy the grammar they’ve already been taught to make their writing cohesive.

  The most obvious way to do this is by sharing examples of different texts and exploring the features that make them cohesive. It’s important that pupils are able to explore complete texts and longer pieces of writing rather than short extracts, since they need to see how cohesion works across several paragraphs or a whole text. Simple devices, such as linking the ending back to the opening, and making sure that paragraphs – especially in non-narrative writing – have clear topic sentences, contribute to cohesion.

  You could take a page from a novel or non-fiction text and display it on a visualiser or whiteboard. Annotate the cohesive devices, perhaps using a different colour to signal each type of device (pronouns, adverbials etc.).

  Alternatively, remove some of the cohesive devices and ask pupils to help you edit the text to improve cohesion, perhaps by using a simple checklist of cohesive ‘tools’ based on the grid on the opposite page. Once edited, compare your version to the original. (You could use a similar approach in a guided reading session by annotating a shared text or by asking pupils to identify cohesive devices and discussing the way they signpost the reader.)

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