Cohesion and Chorence :-X

[Chocolate01]

I;ve been having alot of difficulties "discussing how coherence/cohesion" is achieved in a text. Can someone please state the features to look for when discussing cohesion and the features for discussing coherence??
Help wud be greatly appreciated:)

[x Shane x]

Ah, good old cohesion and coherence, what better way could the EL examiners use to drain the lives of us poor EL students...

Firstly coherence, which is all about how well the audience understands the text. Does the text rely on inference (background knowledge) for it to be understandable? Does the text have a logical beginning, middle and end? Are there subheadings which organise the information provided (and if there are, does the paragraph that follows the subheading actually relate to that subheading?) Does the text use a standard variety of English (which is generally more widely understood than non standard varieties)?

Secondly cohesion, which is about how well different aspects of the text tie in together (i.e how well the text flows). Cohesion is present in a text if it displays one or more of the following features:
Pronoun substitution (in order to repeat unnecessary repetition), deictic ties (links to time and place), coordination and subordination (compound and complex sentences respectively, which allow for ideas to flow), repetition (that has a purpose behind it), collocation (ideas that go together ie. green and grass), parallelism (similar syntactic structures, such as listing).

I believe that's most of it, but if anyone else thinks of something that I've forgotten, feel free to add

Hope this helps!

[mumakai]

Where do all the stylistic features go into play?

[stonecold]

Where do all the stylistic features go into play?

How they fulfill the function of the text or are just a feature of the text type or the authors style.

i.e.  Government + Legal docs, look for passive voice and nominalisation.

Also, their is lexical cohesion, which involves the use of synonyms and antonyms, and repetition, which basically links elements of the text together.

Consistency is also important for coherence.  Same type of language and structure should be used throughout.  Semantic field can also create understanding, by constantly using words or jargon which is related to a particular topic.

[Chocolate01]

Thnx Guys
Much :smitten:

[mumakai]

thank you

[x Shane x]

Pleasure