OK.
Let's have a good conversation about coherence and what exactly coherent writing is.
One of the biggest issues that I see when I take a look at student essays on any exam that they take
is that there is a lack of coherence and coherent writing is something that really really impresses
graders.
And I think that most students hear the word coherent but they really don't understand what coherent
writing looks like.
And they don't know understand.
They don't truly understand the the the skills required to produce coherent writing.
So in this lecture we're just going to touch on some of those skills to kind of build your awareness
of coherent writing.
You can't just look at a video and think that you got it.
You have to actually practice these these skills and these techniques in order to get better at your
coherence.
But if you want to if you want to impress a greater This is what you need to do and work on
so the basic definition of coherence.
Right.
It deals with the connection of your ideas at the idea level right in the connection of your ideas at
the sentence level.
Right.
So coherence is referring to the certain aspects certain rhetorical aspects of your paragraphs of your
sentences that deal with developing your argument or another way of saying that development your thesis
statement OK it dealing with the synthesizing and the integrating of your sentences together to produce
an answer that actually addresses the thesis statement.
Coherence is different than cohesion cohesion more focus on the grammatical aspects of writing and there
will be another lecture that talks about cohesion but cohesion and coherence go hand-in-hand together.
And very often people are confused by what they mean.
But cohesion deals with the grammatical aspects of writing to help create coherence.
OK so coherence relates to the quality of unity in a text.
How unified is your text right.
Well so when they say on rubrics where they say they want you to have clear progression you're talking
about unity.
Right.
Secondly as I've as I've said before the thesis statement the thesis statement is the most important
sentence in the entire essay is the most important sentence in the entire essay.
And so when you have good coherence all the elements in the essay relate to the thesis statement and
answer that thesis statement.
And again all points flowed together in a logical organized manner.
Right is the flow a very a very a very well written essay a very well written essay is is like water
right is like water flows down the stream right.
Is effortless it's it's it's something that just has really good flow but when you have a situation
where there's a lack of coherence it's like it's it's choppy water is very very difficult to read it
so some of the steps to really creating really good coherence having a precise fully developed thesis
statement and if you watch the earlier lectures or actually the later lectures not earlier lectures
if you look at the later lectures you're going to have a specific discussion on thesis statements a
logical outline is very important for creating coherent clear explanation of all relationships one of
the biggest things that most students do is they just they just state the relationship right it is state
the detail they don't have really good explain it they didn't have really good ways of explaining it
and then using the elements of coherence and again that deals with cohesion all also coherence is extremely
important when it comes to English level assessment is one of the main things that graders really look
at.
Because it gives extremely clear focus and it makes sure that everything is logically linked together
so coherent writing is extremely impressive to a greater extremely impressive to a greater.
There are three types of coherence coherence between words sentences and paragraphs and you're expected
to be able to perform at all three levels in terms of words sentences and paragraphs now your coherence
is going to be enhanced.
If when I read your essay I can very easily understand it because it's organized and it answers the
question.
If that's happening then we have coherence when they are breakdowns of that.
Very often I'm looking at a student's essay I'm like well you're writing really good sentences but none
of this is answering the question.
None of this is addressing the question you're outside of the box right.
And so when I say you're outside of the box I'm talking about your coherence
right.
So some great ways the coherence is very helpful is it helps you to see how your ideas are organized.
You have your have sometimes you have headings and subheadings paragraph breaks punctuation presentation
on devices there are different things to be able to help in terms of coherence.
Now some of this I'm talking about this coherence in general everybody I'm not talking about coherence
in terms of all of this applies to to what you do on examination some of these you will use on examination
some of these you will not use on examinations.
The main point I'm making here is coherent is really about the organization of your ideas and helping
to see how your ideas are organized
right.
So you know we're talking about how the page breaks it overview punctuation.
Drawing attention to certain sections that make meaning more clear right lay the note in understanding
the different question types and how they should be laid out.
Opinions cause effect advantage disadvantage
plan your writing in advance on a skeleton framework.
It really really helps to outline.
I know you've heard me preach that many many times but it really does help.
So these are just some ideas about peer graphing.
OK.
And if you need to go ahead and stop and read through some of these ideas on page graphing incoherence
so one great thing that you have to do.
One important thing you have to do is you have to be able to eliminate vagueness and fragments.
OK.
So for example the sentences in Oregon they have.
They have passed a law which encourages the recycling of waste materials in the instruction manual.
It explains right inflation is within.
These are all fragments right.
We are vague.
We have vague writing in fragments.
And when you have these kind of fragments it creates incoherence because I have no idea what you're
talking about sometimes right.
So it should be organized passed a law which
the instruction manual explains how inflation occurs we end so a lot of times I see this kind of writing
I really see this kind of writing and students want really really high scores.
But if you're writing this kind of way vague with fragments it destroys coherence and then you're going
to have a problem with your score
right.
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
paragraph read this paragraph and then read through the explanation at the bottom as to why it's coherent
right.
Take some time stop the video read the paragraph read the paragraph and then read the part of the bottom
and understand why it's coherent.
Same thing here read the paragraph read was below the paragraph and read why it's coherent.
Right.
So very often students are not getting explained to them why something is coherent they just talk to
you and tell you this is what coherence is right.
Or they tell you be coherent but I'm trying to show you here why this is coherent and if you understand
why this is coherent you'll understand how to produce it yourself.
All right.
So thank you very much.
And I hope that you've enjoyed this video on coherence.