How to Make a Coherent and Cohesive Writing

By Nikki Leres Mulyati 
 

          Coherence and cohesion have a very important position in an academic writing. These two things are considered important because it determines a person's understanding when reading a text. A good writing is one that has these two elements. It is said to be good when writing is easy to understand and does not make readers read over and over to capture the author's intent.

Cohesion refers to the presence or absence of explicit cues in the text that allow the reader to make connections between the ideas in the text. For example, overlapping words and concepts between sentences indicate that the same ideas are being referred to across sentences. Likewise, connectives such as because, therefore, and consequently, inform the reader that there are relationships between ideas and the nature of those relationships. Whereas cohesion refers to the explicit cues in the text, coherence refers to the understanding that the reader derives from the text, which may be more or less coherent depending on a number of factors, such as prior knowledge and reading skill (O’Reilly & McNamara, 2007).

There are several ways to create essays into coherence and cohesion. First, we should create an outline essay by taking note of the main idea of ​​each paragraph. The main idea in each paragraph is expressed in the form of topic sentence, and we see if they relate to each other. In addition, all sentence topics should also explain the sentence thesis at the beginning of the paragraph.

        Second, we can use cohesive devices such as logical bridges (repetition), verbal bridges (synonyms), linking words, and clear back referencing. Repetition or parallel construction can be formed by carrying the same idea of a topic over from sentence to sentence, i.e. using In the first stage, In the next stage, etc. key words/phrases might be repeated in a number of sentences, or synonyms utilised instead to avoid exact repetition. Words/phrases can help linking ideas between sentences for smooth transition. For example, we can use which, and, however, when, etc.

Coherence and cohesion are essential for aiding readability and idea communication. They give a text the feeling of being well-organized, well-structured, with a clear logic that doesn’t require multiple reads to understand. Cohesion means that one idea flows into the next, and coherence means that a paragraph comes together to actually make a point about the topic. Every writer should ensure whether their paragraphs make a sense and have a logical flow from start to finish and take a critical look at your text.

References

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McGraw Hill/Contemporary, 2002.

Division for Language and Communication. (2016). Coherence & Cohesion.

Retrieved October 10, 2017, from http://writing.chalmers.se/en/75-coherence-cohesion.

Gongal, Patricia. ( August 6, 2013). Checklist to diagnose paragraph coherence

and cohesion in your scientific writing. Retrieved October 10, 2017, from

http://www.theenglishedition.com/wordpress/?p=283

Min,Young-Kyung. ESL: Coherence and Cohesion. Retrieved October 10, 2017,

from https://www.uwb.edu/wacc/for-students/eslhandbook/coherence.

O’Reilly, T. & McNamara, D.S. (2007). The impact of science knowledge,

reading skill, and reading strategy  knowledge on more traditional “high-stakes” measures of  high school students’ science achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 161–196.

Seyler, Dorothy U.. Read, Reason, Write. New York: McGraw Hill, 2008