COHERENCE IN WRITING

COHERENCE IN WRITING

by Chinh Bảo

​BE MORE COHERENT

​When you write a paragraph, your ideas and sentences probably seem to make sense in your own mind. Your writing seems coherent to you.

But take a closer look at your sentences and they might not be as coherent as you thought. The example below will show you what I mean.

​AN EXAMPLE FROM A STUDENT

​In my opinion, the depleting fossil fuels can be conserved by adopting two methods. Firstly, government can urge people to use public transportation more. This is because the number of private vehicles on the road is rising, and therefore petrol and diesel are being used at an alarming rate. If government tries to make people aware about the grave consequences of running out of fossil fuels then there would be definitely a sharp decline in their consumption. Secondly,…

​Analysis

​The best way to check the coherence of a paragraph is to look at the job that each sentence is trying to do. Here’s what I see in the four sentences above:

1. Topic sentence: two methods to conserve fossil fuels

2. First method: use public transportation more

3. Reason why: increasing use of private vehicles → increasing use of fuels

4. Hypothesis: raised awareness of fossil fuel depletion → lower consumption

​Analysis

​There are two main problems with the coherence of these sentences.

First, while public transportation is given as one method to conserve fossil fuels, nothing more is written about public transportation is sentences 3 and 4. There is no explanation of how public transportation can help.

Second, the hypothesis in sentence 4 has no real connection with the public transportation and private vehicles idea. Awareness of fossil fuel depletion would be a new and separate point.

Can you see how coherence is lost due to the problems above?

​Improving coherence

​My advice for improving the paragraph is simple: use sentence 3 to explain how public transportation can reduce our use of fossil fuels, and then delete sentence 4.

So, we’ll have three sentences that do three clear jobs:

1. Topic sentence: two methods to conserve fossil fuels

2. First method: use public transportation more

3. Explain: exactly how public transportation will help

There’s no need to add a fourth sentence. After sentence 3, we would move on to the second idea.

​Study task:

​Here are the first two sentences, as I would write them:

In my opinion, the depletion of fossil fuels can be mitigated in two ways. Firstly, governments should encourage people to use public transportation instead of private vehicles.

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Can you write sentence 3?

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