Thirty-Sixth Lesson

Techniques for working on your writing

Today we discuses about the fourth key concept of language studies that is called coherence.

Coherence

Coherence is really concerned with the overall sense of your written text. Having read aloud and checked the sense of individual words and sentences as you go, you need to find out if the whole assignment is coherent and has a clear structure which your reader will be able to recognize as they read through your work. 

Probably if you are not sure what to put in and what to leave out it is the best to err on the safe side and and put in the information that you feel is necessary to make the text coherent. Cohesion and reference are both elements of creating a coherent text. 

In general, as you move on to a complete new topic or new theme of a topic you will start a new paragraph. Paragraphs which are very short can be rather disjointed the read. Those which are very long can lose the reader in a sea of different ideas. Paragraph are there to break up the text into meaning chunks for both reader and writer. 

You may find that heading help as signposts for both you and the reader and can help to make the text coherent. You can check with your tutor if she or he likes the use of heading in written assignment. Again, our advice is to pay attention to the things that you are reading as their use varies from subject to subject.

Activity Twenty: Working on your finished assignment

Take you own finished assignment. Read it through aloud, paying attention to the issues that we have covered in this section; cohesion, reference; coherence.

• Does the finish piece of writing make sense?
• Are there any parts that you feel unsure about?
• Do you need to do any rewriting or final editing before handing in the finished piece?   

Thirty-Fifth Lesson

Techniques for working on your writing

Today we discuses about the third key concept of language studies that is called reference.

Reference

Reference is the connected with the ways in which different parts of the text refer to one another. When we are writing we often substitute different words and phrases when we talk about the same subject or topic again. 

This is how we create a sense of reference in the text. One of the more common ways of doing this is to substitute pronouns such as 'she', 'he', 'it' for the person or thing previously mentioned by name. 

Example  

'Pat is coming but she will be late'.

The concept of reference is, in a sense, what makes written texts more interesting. Instead of saying the same things again and again and adding to it, we use many different forms of reference to talk about and extend the topics that have already been mentioned. 

The following is the list of words that are commonly used to make reference to other parts of the text:

Its                                   His                                  Her 

He                                  She                                 They 

Their                              This                                That

Those                             These                                It

     

Thirty-Fourth Lesson

Techniques for working on your writing

Today we discuses about the second key concept of language studies that is called punctuation.

Punctuation

When we speak we can help the listener to understand through the use of gestures, facial expression and body language. We can also use pauses, hesitations and repetitions to add to the force of what we are saying and to make sure that the listener has understood what we are trying to communicate.

When we are writing we have to use different mechanisms to do the same work. This is where punctuation comes in. It allows us to divide up our ideas into manageable chunks so that the reader understands what we are trying to say.

The most commonly used punctuation marks which students have difficulties with are full stop, commas, colons, semicolons, and apostrophes. Last time we discuss only two of them such as full stop and commas and today we discuss remaining punctuation.

Semicolons:

Semicolons have two common uses. First, they are used to separate items in a list after a colon. Second, they can indicate a particular kind of relationship and connection between two parts of a sentence. They are useful to use when the second part of the sentence is still integrally related to the first; in such as case the use of a full stop would appear too final. At the same time, if you use a semicolon you are indicating a more important break within a sentence than you would if you just used a comma. A semicolon can also be used instead of 'and' when you are connecting two parts of sentence.

Colons:

Traditionally, the colon is used within sentence when the second part of the sentence expands upon the first. Another use of the colon is to introduce a list and the items in the list are then separated by semicolons. Colons are used to introduce a separate part of s text such as a short quote.

Apostrophe:

One of the most common confusions that students experience with apostrophes is the distinction between "its" and "it's". This causes a lot of difficulties for the students because the two forms look so similar but actually have completely different meanings. It's is a contraction of 'it is'. Instead pf writing 'it is' in full the 'i' of is omitted and and apostrophe used in its place. Contraction are common in English and replace parts of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' which have been omitted.        

Thirty-Third Lesson

Techniques for working on your writing

Today we discuses about the second key concept of language studies that is called punctuation.

Punctuation

When we speak we can help the listener to understand through the use of gestures, facial expression and body language. We can also use pauses, hesitations and repetitions to add to the force of what we are saying and to make sure that the listener has understood what we are trying to communicate.

When we are writing we have to use different mechanisms to do the same work. This is where punctuation comes in. It allows us to divide up our ideas into manageable chunks so that the reader understands what we are trying to say.

The most commonly used punctuation marks which students have difficulties with are full stop, commas, colons, semicolons, and apostrophes. Today we discuss only two of them such as full stop and commas.

Full Stop

Full stops signal the end of a sentence. They indicate that the writer has completed one complete thought or idea. A full stop can come at the end of a simple or a complex sentence.

Example:

She did not want to begin the piece of work until she had finished reading her book. 

Commas

Using commas effectively can be quite difficult. Students often feel confused about where to put commas in their writing. One of the reason for this is that conventions for their use very depending on the writer and the context. If you are beginning to write for a new subject you may find it easier if you use shorter sentence to begin with. This can make it easier to order your ideas and therefore to use commas more effectively.

Example:

The strange, distributing, eerie silence was interrupted by a ghostly scream. 

Thirty-Second Lesson

Techniques for working on your writing

We are going to concentrate on examining four key concepts for language studies to help you work on your own writing: cohesion, punctuation, reference and coherence. Note that reference in this context is not the same as reference sources. Today we discuss only one concept that is cohesion. 

Cohesion

Cohesion is concerned with the way in which parts of written texts fit together to make a whole rather than a series of disconnected bits. This is particularly important when you are writing an assignment, and you need to pay attention to the connecting devices that you use. These devices connect the ideas in one sentence to the previous sentence and to the following sentence. 

They also connect the smaller parts of the sentence together, the phrases and clauses. In the same way, they connect paragraphs to each other. The connecting devise help to carry your argument along and lend structure to your writing, so that the reader finds it easier to understand. 

You can think about cohesion in your writing at different levels, in terms of connections between topics; themes; words and phrases, as in the example below regarding connecting words and phrases:

Connecting words and phrases

Then                                                                              Firstly, Secondly

However                                                                        In contrast

Despite                                                                          In addition

Consequently                                                                An example of

Nevertheless                                                                 Similarly

Therefore                                                                      Clearly

Yet                                                                                 But

Although                                                                       And

Because                                                                        As a result

Since

Activity Nineteen: Checking for cohesion  

Take a piece of your own written work. Read the text aloud. Pause at the end of each sentence. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the sentence make complete sense?
• Does it relate to the sentence which went before? How?
• Does it relates to the sentence which follows? How?
• Are too many ideas embedded in one sentence?
• How are the paragraphs related to each other?
• Does each paragraph introduce a new theme?
• How are new ideas introduced?
• Do they relate to the other parts of the text?
• Look out for the connecting devices.  

    

Thirty-First Lesson

Grammar and Punctuation

Until now we have not made a specific point of talking about grammar and punctuation in your written work. In our experience academic staff some-times focus too much on these particular concepts when they are talking about problems with writing, and students themselves often panic about their own feelings of insecurity in this area and lack confidence writing in formal written English style. 

Consequently, we have waited until later in the book to start talking about checking your work for grammatical difficulties and misleading punctuation. We hope that, if you have worked through the book, by this stage you will feel more confident about yourself as a university writer and are less likely to see that the problems you have with writing are primarily connected with grammar and punctuation. 

Although you may think that you do not know about the rules of grammar, everybody who speaks or writes a language intuitively knows the rules of grammar of that language. You may, in fact, speak a number of different languages or dialects in addition to the formal English styles that you are most likely to use for your writing for university. 

In this case, you will be a competent user of a number of different grammars. What you may not know is how to describe the rules of these grammars explicitly, using the specific words that linguists and others use to describe the constituent parts of a sentence. What we hope to do in this section is to draw on your intuitive grammatical knowledge to help you to check your own work.         

Thirtieth Lesson

Editing your work as an outsider

When you are going to edit your work you can look the answers of following list of questions while editing your work. 

• Does the editing in particular, as well as the piece as a whole, answer the question that has been set?

• Is there a sense of a satisfy editing?

• Does the introduction seem helpful as a signpost to the whole piece?

• Can you understand what you written? If not, can you see why? Does the use of subject terminology seem clear and confident? 

• Why is the particular bit of information in the piece? What work is it doing for expressing the ideas of the assignment? 

• Does the whole piece hang together? 

• Do points --- both within and beyond paragraphs --- seem to follow logically?  

• Is there a sense of an argument developing?

• Does the piece of work raise any questions that it does not answer?

• Does the piece of work have a central idea? Is this idea apparent for the reader or do you have to search for it? Is it clear enough for you for restate in a different way?