WEBVTT 00:00.770 --> 00:01.500 OK. 00:01.650 --> 00:07.960 Let's have a good conversation about coherence and what exactly coherent writing is. 00:08.100 --> 00:14.100 One of the biggest issues that I see when I take a look at student essays on any exam that they take 00:14.640 --> 00:21.720 is that there is a lack of coherence and coherent writing is something that really really impresses 00:21.720 --> 00:23.130 graders. 00:23.130 --> 00:30.870 And I think that most students hear the word coherent but they really don't understand what coherent 00:30.870 --> 00:32.440 writing looks like. 00:32.880 --> 00:34.280 And they don't know understand. 00:34.310 --> 00:40.790 They don't truly understand the the the skills required to produce coherent writing. 00:40.800 --> 00:46.440 So in this lecture we're just going to touch on some of those skills to kind of build your awareness 00:46.530 --> 00:49.250 of coherent writing. 00:49.290 --> 00:52.570 You can't just look at a video and think that you got it. 00:52.590 --> 00:59.580 You have to actually practice these these skills and these techniques in order to get better at your 00:59.670 --> 01:00.770 coherence. 01:00.930 --> 01:05.810 But if you want to if you want to impress a greater This is what you need to do and work on 01:10.910 --> 01:14.660 so the basic definition of coherence. 01:14.660 --> 01:15.650 Right. 01:15.680 --> 01:22.280 It deals with the connection of your ideas at the idea level right in the connection of your ideas at 01:22.280 --> 01:24.040 the sentence level. 01:24.200 --> 01:24.590 Right. 01:24.710 --> 01:33.170 So coherence is referring to the certain aspects certain rhetorical aspects of your paragraphs of your 01:33.170 --> 01:40.950 sentences that deal with developing your argument or another way of saying that development your thesis 01:40.950 --> 01:49.380 statement OK it dealing with the synthesizing and the integrating of your sentences together to produce 01:49.470 --> 01:54.490 an answer that actually addresses the thesis statement. 01:54.780 --> 02:04.290 Coherence is different than cohesion cohesion more focus on the grammatical aspects of writing and there 02:04.290 --> 02:11.440 will be another lecture that talks about cohesion but cohesion and coherence go hand-in-hand together. 02:11.580 --> 02:14.500 And very often people are confused by what they mean. 02:14.880 --> 02:20.140 But cohesion deals with the grammatical aspects of writing to help create coherence. 02:20.170 --> 02:26.670 OK so coherence relates to the quality of unity in a text. 02:26.670 --> 02:29.540 How unified is your text right. 02:29.740 --> 02:37.600 Well so when they say on rubrics where they say they want you to have clear progression you're talking 02:37.600 --> 02:39.160 about unity. 02:39.160 --> 02:39.550 Right. 02:39.640 --> 02:47.350 Secondly as I've as I've said before the thesis statement the thesis statement is the most important 02:47.350 --> 02:54.600 sentence in the entire essay is the most important sentence in the entire essay. 02:54.710 --> 03:02.030 And so when you have good coherence all the elements in the essay relate to the thesis statement and 03:02.030 --> 03:04.410 answer that thesis statement. 03:04.670 --> 03:09.380 And again all points flowed together in a logical organized manner. 03:09.380 --> 03:20.110 Right is the flow a very a very a very well written essay a very well written essay is is like water 03:21.040 --> 03:24.860 right is like water flows down the stream right. 03:24.890 --> 03:33.490 Is effortless it's it's it's something that just has really good flow but when you have a situation 03:33.490 --> 03:39.820 where there's a lack of coherence it's like it's it's choppy water is very very difficult to read it 03:42.980 --> 03:49.670 so some of the steps to really creating really good coherence having a precise fully developed thesis 03:49.670 --> 03:56.990 statement and if you watch the earlier lectures or actually the later lectures not earlier lectures 03:57.440 --> 04:04.250 if you look at the later lectures you're going to have a specific discussion on thesis statements a 04:04.250 --> 04:11.750 logical outline is very important for creating coherent clear explanation of all relationships one of 04:11.750 --> 04:19.160 the biggest things that most students do is they just they just state the relationship right it is state 04:19.160 --> 04:24.440 the detail they don't have really good explain it they didn't have really good ways of explaining it 04:24.860 --> 04:32.840 and then using the elements of coherence and again that deals with cohesion all also coherence is extremely 04:32.840 --> 04:38.880 important when it comes to English level assessment is one of the main things that graders really look 04:38.880 --> 04:39.210 at. 04:40.080 --> 04:46.590 Because it gives extremely clear focus and it makes sure that everything is logically linked together 04:47.250 --> 04:54.450 so coherent writing is extremely impressive to a greater extremely impressive to a greater. 04:54.450 --> 05:02.490 There are three types of coherence coherence between words sentences and paragraphs and you're expected 05:02.490 --> 05:12.440 to be able to perform at all three levels in terms of words sentences and paragraphs now your coherence 05:12.440 --> 05:13.740 is going to be enhanced. 05:13.940 --> 05:19.970 If when I read your essay I can very easily understand it because it's organized and it answers the 05:19.970 --> 05:21.440 question. 05:21.440 --> 05:26.650 If that's happening then we have coherence when they are breakdowns of that. 05:26.780 --> 05:31.910 Very often I'm looking at a student's essay I'm like well you're writing really good sentences but none 05:31.910 --> 05:34.240 of this is answering the question. 05:34.370 --> 05:39.190 None of this is addressing the question you're outside of the box right. 05:39.200 --> 05:42.830 And so when I say you're outside of the box I'm talking about your coherence 05:45.840 --> 05:46.310 right. 05:46.360 --> 05:53.810 So some great ways the coherence is very helpful is it helps you to see how your ideas are organized. 05:53.830 --> 05:59.380 You have your have sometimes you have headings and subheadings paragraph breaks punctuation presentation 05:59.440 --> 06:03.350 on devices there are different things to be able to help in terms of coherence. 06:03.360 --> 06:10.990 Now some of this I'm talking about this coherence in general everybody I'm not talking about coherence 06:10.990 --> 06:16.900 in terms of all of this applies to to what you do on examination some of these you will use on examination 06:16.900 --> 06:19.830 some of these you will not use on examinations. 06:20.050 --> 06:26.650 The main point I'm making here is coherent is really about the organization of your ideas and helping 06:26.650 --> 06:28.840 to see how your ideas are organized 06:36.660 --> 06:37.060 right. 06:37.540 --> 06:45.050 So you know we're talking about how the page breaks it overview punctuation. 06:45.430 --> 06:51.580 Drawing attention to certain sections that make meaning more clear right lay the note in understanding 06:51.580 --> 06:55.600 the different question types and how they should be laid out. 06:55.900 --> 06:58.720 Opinions cause effect advantage disadvantage 07:03.690 --> 07:07.550 plan your writing in advance on a skeleton framework. 07:07.720 --> 07:09.790 It really really helps to outline. 07:10.180 --> 07:20.100 I know you've heard me preach that many many times but it really does help. 07:20.120 --> 07:22.790 So these are just some ideas about peer graphing. 07:24.040 --> 07:24.870 OK. 07:25.700 --> 07:30.740 And if you need to go ahead and stop and read through some of these ideas on page graphing incoherence 07:33.590 --> 07:36.640 so one great thing that you have to do. 07:36.650 --> 07:43.430 One important thing you have to do is you have to be able to eliminate vagueness and fragments. 07:43.430 --> 07:44.200 OK. 07:44.450 --> 07:48.240 So for example the sentences in Oregon they have. 07:48.290 --> 07:54.090 They have passed a law which encourages the recycling of waste materials in the instruction manual. 07:54.100 --> 07:58.620 It explains right inflation is within. 07:58.870 --> 08:01.600 These are all fragments right. 08:01.660 --> 08:02.610 We are vague. 08:02.620 --> 08:05.060 We have vague writing in fragments. 08:05.180 --> 08:10.990 And when you have these kind of fragments it creates incoherence because I have no idea what you're 08:10.990 --> 08:15.070 talking about sometimes right. 08:15.080 --> 08:17.750 So it should be organized passed a law which 08:20.620 --> 08:29.850 the instruction manual explains how inflation occurs we end so a lot of times I see this kind of writing 08:30.120 --> 08:37.620 I really see this kind of writing and students want really really high scores. 08:37.980 --> 08:45.360 But if you're writing this kind of way vague with fragments it destroys coherence and then you're going 08:45.360 --> 08:46.800 to have a problem with your score 08:50.650 --> 08:51.200 right. 08:51.270 --> 08:57.150 So on this one I'm not going to read through this in detail but what I want you to do is look at this 08:57.150 --> 09:05.190 paragraph read this paragraph and then read through the explanation at the bottom as to why it's coherent 09:06.960 --> 09:07.800 right. 09:07.860 --> 09:15.810 Take some time stop the video read the paragraph read the paragraph and then read the part of the bottom 09:16.350 --> 09:19.260 and understand why it's coherent. 09:19.260 --> 09:27.130 Same thing here read the paragraph read was below the paragraph and read why it's coherent. 09:27.450 --> 09:27.760 Right. 09:27.810 --> 09:33.120 So very often students are not getting explained to them why something is coherent they just talk to 09:33.120 --> 09:36.980 you and tell you this is what coherence is right. 09:36.990 --> 09:43.470 Or they tell you be coherent but I'm trying to show you here why this is coherent and if you understand 09:43.470 --> 09:49.270 why this is coherent you'll understand how to produce it yourself. 09:49.530 --> 09:49.900 All right. 09:49.920 --> 09:51.640 So thank you very much. 09:51.870 --> 09:55.230 And I hope that you've enjoyed this video on coherence.