Coherence and Cohesion in Academic Writing transcript

This tutorial is brought to you by EAPFoundation.com THE website for all your academic English needs. So in this video we'll be looking at coherence and cohesion. And I'll be focusing on four different things. I'll begin with a brief definition of those terms so that we can understand what they are, then look in detail at ways to achieve good cohesion, ways to improve your coherence, and finally look at how the IELTS and TOEFL exams grade students' writing for coherence and cohesion.

So let's begin with some definitions. Cohesion relates to the micro-level of the text that is the words and sentences and how they join or link together. The related adjective is cohesive, which means united and working together or fitting well together. You can think of cohesion as like pieces of a jigsaw which need to fit together perfectly. Coherence, in contrast, relates to the macro level features of a text which help it to may sense as a whole.

The related adjective is coherent which means logically ordered and connected, clear and consistent, and understandable. And you can think of coherence as like the whole jigsaw puzzle which will have a clear overall picture when all of the pieces are put together Now let's look at cohesion in more detail. Good cohesion is achieved through the following five main methods: reference words, repeated words or ideas, transition signals, substitution and ellipsis.

Let's now look at each of these in turn, beginning with reference words. What are reference words? Well these are words which don't make sense on their own because they refer to something else in the text. Examples of reference words are this, these, that, those, it, they, them, he, she and which. Let's look at a short example text to help us understand reference words. I'll use the same text later on to help us understand the other ways to achieve good cohesion.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or sticks together, which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. A second key feature is reference words. A third one is transition signals. A fourth is substitution.

The final important aspect is ellipsis. So those are three examples of reference words. Let's now consider repeated words or ideas. So this is the same text as before, but tidied it up a little bit. And there are several examples of repeated words or ideas which I'll highlight now. So we have the noun 'cohesion', which is used twice, along with the verb form 'coheres'. The word 'writing' is used twice, as well as the phrase 'essay or report', which represents the idea of writing it's a synonym.

And we have the phrase 'important features', and 'key feature' - key is a synonym of important so it's the same idea - and 'important aspect' - aspect again is a synonym of feature so it's the same idea: important features, key feature, important aspect. So thirdly let's consider transition signals. What are transition signals? These are words or phrases which signal the relationships between ideas. They are also called linking phrases, or signpost phrases, or cohesive devices.

Let's look at some examples. So Cause transitions: 'for this reason', 'because of'. Effect transitions: 'as a result', 'consequently'. Comparison transitions: 'similarly', 'just like'. Contrast transitions: 'however', 'whereas'. And there are many more examples for each of these four types, and there are also many other transition types: there are transitions to show examples, transitions to show order of importance, to show chronological order, to give a list, to show addition or to give alternatives.

Let's again look at this text to highlight the transition signals. So here the transition signals are all related to giving a list of the five important features that help give good cohesion. So we have first, second, third, fourth and final. Next let's consider substitution. What is substitution? This is when we substitute - in other words replace - an earlier word or words with another word or words and in some ways it's similar to reference words.

So here's a couple of examples. The graph on the left shows average calorie intake by age, while the one on the right shows daily exercise levels. Here the word 'one' is an example of substitution because it substitutes for the word 'graph'. Here’s another example. Drinking alcohol before driving is banned in many countries since doing so can seriously impair one's ability to drive safely. So here 'doing so' is an example of substitution because it substitutes for the phrase 'drinking alcohol before driving'.

And there was one example of substitution in the text we just saw: 'A third one', which means a third important feature. So finally let's look at ellipsis. What is ellipsis? Well this is when we leave out words because the meaning is clear. So here's an example sentence which has far too many words because we can leave many of these out and the meaning will still be clear. The first graph shows a high calorie intake for 20 to 25-year olds, a lower intake for 25 to 30 year-olds, and a very low intake for those over 30.

And the example passage we just saw also has an example of ellipsis: 'A fourth is substitution'. So this means a fourth important feature is substitution and the words 'important feature' have been left out. So let's now consider coherence. So we saw a definition earlier. First of all let's remind ourselves of what coherence is. So coherence relates to the organisation and the progression of ideas in a text. It also relates to how clear and easy the ideas are to understand.

In many ways it's much more difficult to learn how to achieve good coherence than to achieve good cohesion. The problem with coherence is there are so many ways that we can organise ideas, so many ideas that we can use in the first place. And ideas that might seem perfectly clear to you, the writer, can be very confusing to the reader. How then can we improve coherence? Well since it relates to the organisation and progression of ideas, we need to make sure our ideas are well organised.

And as it also relates to how easy the ideas are to understand, we need to make sure ideas can be understood by the reader. One way to help with the organisation of ideas is to create an outline before writing. So an outline will normally include the thesis statement, topic sentences, supporting ideas, supporting details - reasons, examples, facts, statistics and so on. Many students don't like to use an outline, especially for short timed writing, but even if you just spend one or two minutes organising your ideas, the end product can be much more coherent.

So an outline is used before writing. Some writers like to create a reverse outline after writing. So this is the same as an outline, but it's written when the writing has finished. And doing this allows you to see whether your ideas are well organised or not. Make sure that you have a clear thesis statement, topic sentences and summary, if it's an essay. Remember I said before that coherence is about the macro level features.

So a topic sentence will help a paragraph to make sense, and a thesis statement and the summary in the conclusion will make the whole essay make sense. And if it's a report or something more structured rather than an essay, then the aims and headings will serve the same purpose. You should also check that all ideas in a paragraph relate to the topic sentence, and you can do this when the writing is finished or using the outline.

Another word for this is 'unity'. And you can also check that all of the topic sentences relate to the thesis statement. So how can we make sure the ideas can be understood by the reader? Well one way is to consider the audience. Who will be reading what you're writing? What do they already know? What do they not know? You should also consider the purpose. For example if your purpose is to explain how something is done but your writing really describes instead of explains, then the person reading it is going to be confused.

The final way to make sure your ideas can be understood by the reader is to ask somebody else, for example another student, to read through it and see if it makes sense. This is called 'peer editing'. Of course, it's not always possible, for example in an exam essay. But for other types of writing, this is something that you can do to help make sure your ideas can be understood. Finally let's look at the criteria for the IELTS and TOEFL tests.

So there are four areas that the IELTS writing test assesses: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. So coherence and cohesion is one of these four. What we're going to do now is to look at the criteria in more detail and pull out features of coherence and cohesion. And these are the publicly available versions of the criteria which you can find online. The maximum score in the IELTS test, as you probably know, is 9.

And this is near native speaker level. Uses cohesion in such a way that it attracts no attention. Skilfully manages paragraphing. This doesn't really give us much information. But if we look at the criteria for band 8, we begin to understand a bit more what's being assessed. Sequences information and ideas logically. Manages all aspects of cohesion well. Uses paragraphing sufficiently and appropriately. So while there's not much detail for cohesion here, we can understand that for coherence, what's needed is logical organisation of ideas, and appropriate paragraphing.

These are the criteria for band 7. Logically organises information and ideas. There is clear progression throughout. Uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under- or over-use. So in terms of coherence we have clear progression. And these are all things I talked about earlier: logical organisation, having clear paragraphs with clear topic sentences, and clear progression. And here we begin to understand the details of cohesion.

It's important to have a range of cohesive devices, which remember is just a synonym for transition signals. It's also important to make sure that cohesive devices - the transition signals - are used appropriately, which means using the right ones in the right places, and also important not to use too many or too few. A common mistake for students learning English is to use too many transition signals. You don't need them for every sentence.

These are the criteria for band 6. I won't read all of these out, but I'll highlight the third one: may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately. So this here is talking about reference words: he, she, it, them and so on, which I mentioned earlier. And then looking at band 5, again I won't read all of these out because many of these are repeating the same ideas, but again if you look at the third point: may be repetitive because of lack of referencing and substitution.

So in other words substitution is used as needed. So you can see all of the points here about cohesion are the ones I've mentioned before: using transition signals, using reference words, using substitution. Let's look now at the rubric, in other words the criteria, for the TOEFL test. Again, these are publicly available criteria, so you can find them yourself online. And the maximum score on the TOEFL writing is 5. So these here are the criteria for the TOEFL at level 5.

And unlike with the IELTS test these are not separated into different areas, even though if you look at them closely, which we'll do now, you'll see that they do in fact address different areas. So these are the parts which relate to coherence and cohesion: is well organised, displays unity, progression and coherence. And then looking at level 4: is generally well organised, displays unity, progression and coherence though it may contain occasional redundancy digression or unclear connections.

And there's similar ideas at level 3: displays unity, progression and coherence, though connection of ideas may occasionally be obscured. And also level 2: inadequate organisation or connection of ideas. So again let's use these to understand what's being assessed in terms of coherence and cohesion. So in order to get a good score we need writing which is well-organised with no redundancy, in other words we don't have more ideas than we need.

And we also need unity, which we talked about earlier, which means having all of the sentences related to the topic sentence - and the opposite of this is digression, when you move away from the topic to something which is unrelated. And we also need clear progression. So again all of these ideas are ones which we mentioned earlier when looking at coherence. In terms of cohesion the rubric is much simpler: it just talks about connection of ideas.

This doesn't mean the things we've talked about are not important because in order to connect ideas you need reference words, repeated words or ideas, transition signals, substitution and ellipsis. So it's not that those things aren't important, it's just that they're not mentioned explicitly in the rubric. So summing up what we've learned in this video, first of all we had a short definition of coherence and cohesion, then we saw ways to improve cohesion in your writing using reference words, repeated words or ideas, transition signals, substitution and ellipsis.

We saw how to improve coherence by organising your ideas and making your ideas clear to the reader, and how the IELTS and TOEFL exams grade your work for coherence and cohesion. If you liked the video please subscribe to the channel or check out some of the other videos I've made for learning academic English.