Developmental Writing - Cohesion

What is Cohesion?

• Cohesion concerns the flow of sentences and paragraphs from one to another. It involves the tying together of old information and new.
• Cohesion is how sentences and parts of sentences link together.
• When we write academic essays, particularly in the humanities, we work hard to foster cohesion structurally, which enhances a reader's understanding of our ideas. 
• Cohesion helps your reader to follow the structure of your writing.  
• It is important that your writing is well-structured, according to the expected logical order of English writing. 
• Your ideas should be divided into well-connected paragraphs which contain well-connected sentences. 

Coherence and Cohesion

• Coherence refers to the overall connectedness of the ideas in a piece of writing.
• A piece of writing is COHERENT if it is clearly organised and has a logical sequence of ideas.
• Cohesion refers more specifically to connections between sentences.
• A paragraph of section of text is COHESIVE if the sentences are well-structured, well-linked together and there is no unnecessary repetition.

Ways to show Cohesion


 Transition from old information to new

• Place known information at the beginning of each sentence and place new information at the end of each sentence.
• The new information that is placed at the end of the first sentence then becomes known information to be placed at the beginning of the next sentence.
• Example: From the moment you wake each morning to the moment you fall asleep again at night, your life is filled with choices. Your first choice is when to get up … 

Summary words

• Instead of beginning the next sentence with the same or a similar word to the one with which the previous sentence ended, you begin the new sentence with a word that summarises several words in the previous sentence or the whole idea.
• The summary word is usually used together with a reference word such as “this” or “these”. 
• Examples:
  At any one point in time, there is a fixed amount of labour, land, capital, and entrepreneurship. These resources can be used to produce goods and services …  
  

 Thematic consistency

• The theme of a sentence is the word or phrase that begins the sentence.
• If the sentence beginnings all relate to the main idea of the paragraph, it is easier for the reader to focus on that idea.
• Examples: Scarcity is not poverty. The poor and the rich both face scarcity. A child wants a 75 cent can of soft drink and a 50 cent chocolate bar but has only $1 in her pocket. She experiences scarcity. Faced with scarcity, we must choose among the available alternatives

References:

•Eggins, S. (1994). An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. Pinter: London.

•Martin, J. R. (1986). Intervening in the process of writing development. In Painter, C.& J.R. Martin (Eds) Writing to Mean: Teaching Genres Across the Curriculum, Occasional Paper, No. 9, The Department of Linguistics, The University of Sydney.

•Martin, J. R. (1993). Life as a Noun: Arresting the Universe in Science and Humanities. In Halliday, M.A.K. & Martin, J.R. (Eds), Writing Science, Falmer Press: London.

•Oshima, A. & Hogue, A. (1991). Writing Academic English (2nd edition). Addison and Wesley: Mento Park, California.