Coherence– Learning from the broader concept
By Ng Lye Sim
For effective writing, it is crucial to be coherent.(Bamberg, 1984). But what is coherence? Traditionally, coherence is the relationship linking ideas in a text to make meaning to the readers (Lee, 2002) but this concept has not been well understood, hence making this abstract concept difficult to teach and learn .(Connor, 1990) Research has also shown that a majority of ESL (English as Second Language) students feel that “their only sense of security comes from what they have learned about grammar” (Leki 1996:34) and their understanding of tool to use in writing is confined to it (Silva, 1992). Though grammar is important, it is not the only way to create meaning in texts. It is therefore vital that teachers themselves must first have a clear understanding of this concept before they can teach others. In this essay, I hope that through the sharing of my writing difficulties I experienced as a student, my misconceptions of coherence and the new learning acquired through my readings, I would be able to build up the confidence of the ESL student in the aspect of writing coherently.
The term ‘coherence’ brought back haunting recollections of my upper secondary English classes, how I dreaded writing expository essays as I fared badly in them because my ideas were not understood and fruitless attempts to improve yielded comments like “ideas could be better linked and organized”. My other classmates who suffered the same fate steered clear from this genre, preferring descriptive or narrative writing instead. Perhaps it was the teacher’s inadequacies to address our writing problems or the general understanding of this elusive concept of coherence. Nevertheless, it affected how I learnt writing.
However, my concept of coherence changed after reading some of Icy Lee’s articles related to Coherence during this course. In the first article, ‘Helping Students To Develop Coherence In Writing,’ (Lee, 2002), she shared about the broader definition of coherence and the strategies to teach it. Previously, I too shared the narrow definition of coherence, believing that it lies in the aspect of grammar. This same misconception has enslaved many teachers, crippling them from effectively teaching writing. Coherence was previously believed to be restricted to a sentence level connectedness (McCrimmon, 1980) and paragraph unity through explicit use of cohesive devices (Bander, 1983) or connective devices such as pronouns and transitional markers . With this revelation, I saw the concept of coherence shifting from an understanding at a
micro level; that is a word, sentence and paragraph level to something of a macro level by looking at the entire discourse - that is textual coherence. (Bamberg, 1984) .By taking a closer look at the five aspects of the textural features such as macrostructure, information structure, proposition development, cohesion devices as well as metadiscourse markers (Lee, 2002) a better understanding of coherence in a broader sense is achieved, hence empowering the student to construct and create meanings more effectively.
The first feature, macrostructure, refers to the characteristic pattern in which ideas are organized based on an outline or framework to help the student to best achieve his rhetorical goal (Hoey, 1983). For instance, in problem-solution writing, the writer would first need to present the situation, propose a solution and then conduct an evaluation. The structures vary according to the different genres but this awareness helps guide the writer to plan his thoughts in a more systematic manner and the reader is able to follow the author’s line of thought.
The second feature, information structure, shows how coherence is increased in the text when new information is built upon the old. The old information activates the schema and helps make connections to the new information. It is interestingly displayed through a simple activity of arranging pairs of sentences. Icy Lee (2002, p 34) demonstrated how clarity is better achieved with the building up of new knowledge onto known facts, as shown below:
a. My mother has written a new book.
b. It’s about gardening.
Gardening is the new idea and the old information is ‘a new book written.’ Information structure, which although is seemingly simple, has been violated by many students when they write about new ideas, assuming the readers are already familiar about they are saying. It is wise for the writer to question the order and arrangement of the presented information. For instance, in another article about ‘Teaching Coherence To ESL Students: A Classroom Inquiry,’ Icy lee had ESL students conduct protocols which is, in essence, ‘Think–aloud’ (Lee, 2002, p 149 ) whereby students talk about their thinking. This is one useful strategy that teachers can adopt to help students to write. Therefore, something as simple as information structure ensures terms are clarified before there is the addition of new information. This strategy works for other features of coherence too.
The third feature, proposition development, refers to the need for an assertion to be justified through examples or elaboration. Failure to support or develop the idea could lead to forming mere generalizations, which was one of my past writing weaknesses. Hence, it is vital that ESL students to take note of this feature to ensure that statements are adequately supported, especially in expository writing.
The last two features are the use of cohesive devices and metadiscourse markers. In my opinion, most students are quite familiar with cohesive devices such as pronouns, references and conjunctions. Metadiscourse markers, on the other hand, are less used. Some examples like logical connectors, sequencers and hedges will help a reader to understand the text better. Though these markers do not support a proposition, they are important to ESL students, particularly to organize, interpret and evaluate information.
I have significantly developed more confidence towards writing after grasping this broader concept of coherence. Hence, as teachers, we should empower our ESL students through teaching of this broader concept of Coherence and build up the students’ metalanguage of coherence equipping them to improve their own writing through self-editing or peer reviewing.
References
Bamberg, B. (1984 ). Assessing coherence: A reanalysis of essays written for the National Assessment of Education Progress. Research in the Teaching of English, 18 (3), 305-319.
Bander, R. B. (1983). American English rhetoric (3rd ed.) New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Connor, U. (1990). Linguistic/rhetorical measures for international persuasive student writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 24 (1), 67-87.
Hoey, M. (1983). On the surface of discourse. London: George Allen ad Unwin
Lee, I. (2002). Helping students develop coherence in writing. English Teaching Forum, 40(3), 32-39.
Lee, I. (2002). Teaching coherence to ESL : a classroom inquiry. Journal of Second language writing. 11(2), 135-159.
Leki, I. (1996). L2 composing: Strategies and perceptions. In writing a second language: Insights from first and second language teaching and research, ed. B. Leeds. White Plains, NY: Longman, 27-36.
McCrimmon, J. M.(1980).Writing with a purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Silva, T. (1992). L1 vs L2 writing. ESL graduate students’ perceptions. TESL Canada Journal, 10(1) 27-47.
By Ng Lye Sim
For effective writing, it is crucial to be coherent.(Bamberg, 1984). But what is coherence? Traditionally, coherence is the relationship linking ideas in a text to make meaning to the readers (Lee, 2002) but this concept has not been well understood, hence making this abstract concept difficult to teach and learn .(Connor, 1990) Research has also shown that a majority of ESL (English as Second Language) students feel that “their only sense of security comes from what they have learned about grammar” (Leki 1996:34) and their understanding of tool to use in writing is confined to it (Silva, 1992). Though grammar is important, it is not the only way to create meaning in texts. It is therefore vital that teachers themselves must first have a clear understanding of this concept before they can teach others. In this essay, I hope that through the sharing of my writing difficulties I experienced as a student, my misconceptions of coherence and the new learning acquired through my readings, I would be able to build up the confidence of the ESL student in the aspect of writing coherently.
The term ‘coherence’ brought back haunting recollections of my upper secondary English classes, how I dreaded writing expository essays as I fared badly in them because my ideas were not understood and fruitless attempts to improve yielded comments like “ideas could be better linked and organized”. My other classmates who suffered the same fate steered clear from this genre, preferring descriptive or narrative writing instead. Perhaps it was the teacher’s inadequacies to address our writing problems or the general understanding of this elusive concept of coherence. Nevertheless, it affected how I learnt writing.
However, my concept of coherence changed after reading some of Icy Lee’s articles related to Coherence during this course. In the first article, ‘Helping Students To Develop Coherence In Writing,’ (Lee, 2002), she shared about the broader definition of coherence and the strategies to teach it. Previously, I too shared the narrow definition of coherence, believing that it lies in the aspect of grammar. This same misconception has enslaved many teachers, crippling them from effectively teaching writing. Coherence was previously believed to be restricted to a sentence level connectedness (McCrimmon, 1980) and paragraph unity through explicit use of cohesive devices (Bander, 1983) or connective devices such as pronouns and transitional markers . With this revelation, I saw the concept of coherence shifting from an understanding at a
micro level; that is a word, sentence and paragraph level to something of a macro level by looking at the entire discourse - that is textual coherence. (Bamberg, 1984) .By taking a closer look at the five aspects of the textural features such as macrostructure, information structure, proposition development, cohesion devices as well as metadiscourse markers (Lee, 2002) a better understanding of coherence in a broader sense is achieved, hence empowering the student to construct and create meanings more effectively.
The first feature, macrostructure, refers to the characteristic pattern in which ideas are organized based on an outline or framework to help the student to best achieve his rhetorical goal (Hoey, 1983). For instance, in problem-solution writing, the writer would first need to present the situation, propose a solution and then conduct an evaluation. The structures vary according to the different genres but this awareness helps guide the writer to plan his thoughts in a more systematic manner and the reader is able to follow the author’s line of thought.
The second feature, information structure, shows how coherence is increased in the text when new information is built upon the old. The old information activates the schema and helps make connections to the new information. It is interestingly displayed through a simple activity of arranging pairs of sentences. Icy Lee (2002, p 34) demonstrated how clarity is better achieved with the building up of new knowledge onto known facts, as shown below:
a. My mother has written a new book.
b. It’s about gardening.
Gardening is the new idea and the old information is ‘a new book written.’ Information structure, which although is seemingly simple, has been violated by many students when they write about new ideas, assuming the readers are already familiar about they are saying. It is wise for the writer to question the order and arrangement of the presented information. For instance, in another article about ‘Teaching Coherence To ESL Students: A Classroom Inquiry,’ Icy lee had ESL students conduct protocols which is, in essence, ‘Think–aloud’ (Lee, 2002, p 149 ) whereby students talk about their thinking. This is one useful strategy that teachers can adopt to help students to write. Therefore, something as simple as information structure ensures terms are clarified before there is the addition of new information. This strategy works for other features of coherence too.
The third feature, proposition development, refers to the need for an assertion to be justified through examples or elaboration. Failure to support or develop the idea could lead to forming mere generalizations, which was one of my past writing weaknesses. Hence, it is vital that ESL students to take note of this feature to ensure that statements are adequately supported, especially in expository writing.
The last two features are the use of cohesive devices and metadiscourse markers. In my opinion, most students are quite familiar with cohesive devices such as pronouns, references and conjunctions. Metadiscourse markers, on the other hand, are less used. Some examples like logical connectors, sequencers and hedges will help a reader to understand the text better. Though these markers do not support a proposition, they are important to ESL students, particularly to organize, interpret and evaluate information.
I have significantly developed more confidence towards writing after grasping this broader concept of coherence. Hence, as teachers, we should empower our ESL students through teaching of this broader concept of Coherence and build up the students’ metalanguage of coherence equipping them to improve their own writing through self-editing or peer reviewing.
References
Bamberg, B. (1984 ). Assessing coherence: A reanalysis of essays written for the National Assessment of Education Progress. Research in the Teaching of English, 18 (3), 305-319.
Bander, R. B. (1983). American English rhetoric (3rd ed.) New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Connor, U. (1990). Linguistic/rhetorical measures for international persuasive student writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 24 (1), 67-87.
Hoey, M. (1983). On the surface of discourse. London: George Allen ad Unwin
Lee, I. (2002). Helping students develop coherence in writing. English Teaching Forum, 40(3), 32-39.
Lee, I. (2002). Teaching coherence to ESL : a classroom inquiry. Journal of Second language writing. 11(2), 135-159.
Leki, I. (1996). L2 composing: Strategies and perceptions. In writing a second language: Insights from first and second language teaching and research, ed. B. Leeds. White Plains, NY: Longman, 27-36.
McCrimmon, J. M.(1980).Writing with a purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Silva, T. (1992). L1 vs L2 writing. ESL graduate students’ perceptions. TESL Canada Journal, 10(1) 27-47.