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.
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