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1、 Coherence and the Teaching of EFL Writing Writing is one of the four basic abilities (listening, speaking, reading and writing) that an English learner as a foreign language learner should have. But writing well is not an easy task. An excellent writer should have not only a good command of grammar
2、, but also should know how to make his composition coherent in structure and content. My experience in teaching writing to undergraduates at Central South University shows that incoherence is a recurring problem in the students writing and can be a major obstacle to their success in writing classes.
3、 “I can not follow your argument” and “I do not understand what you are saying” are just two of the comments written on students papers to indicate the inability of the papers to be understood by their teachers. Unfortunately, unlike grammatical errors which can be easily corrected, errors in cohere
4、nce are more difficult to handle as they involve a chunk of units, such as a series of sentences and paragraphs. Most ESL teachers may believe that they have a sense of what coherence is, but they often discuss coherence with their students in vague terms. As a result, students do not have a clear u
5、nderstanding of the concept of coherence, often focusing only on errors at sentence level when asked to revise their own work or that of their colleagues. Coherence is an area that deserves teachers attention. This paper aims at making students understand what coherence is and aware of their errors
6、in writing which they did not pay any attention to before. And I hope this paper will be also beneficial to teaching of EFL writing.First, it is necessary to give a clear definition of coherence.What is coherence?Coherence can be generally viewed in two aspects: test-based and reader-based coherence
7、 (Johns, 1986).Text-based coherence refers to the features associated with the internal structure of the text itself. It is a textual phenomenon, linguistic devices, which is closely connected with the form of the text.Reader-based coherence is associated with the meaningful aspect of writer-reader
8、interaction.Coherence and textA text is distinguished from a non-text by its texture. The texture is primarily provided by cohesion, which is a semantic concept, which refers to relations of meaning that exist in the text, and that define it as a text cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some
9、 element in the discourse is dependent on that of another. The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it can not be effectively decoded except by recourse to it. Since the speaker or writer uses cohesion to signal texture, the listener or reader has to react to it in order to interpret it “(Ha
10、lliday and Hassan, 1976)Coherence holds segments of a text together, making it a semantic edifice, just as motor does bricks or stones in a building. The importance of coherence lies in the continuity it expresses between one part of the text and another.Text-based coherenceCoherence of a text refle
11、cts both in its unity of ideas and its structure.Unity of ideas:A text usually has a controlling idea which is usually presented in the first paragraph by the writer. Then each paragraph in the following may has a main idea (topic sentence) which must be related to the controlling idea (thesis state
12、ment) of he text. So the context of each paragraph must serve for the main idea. The unity of ideas makes a text coherent. In order to obtain this successfully, methods are always helpful or even necessary: in this regard, the following paragraph is incoherent. CITIZENSHIP: DO ILLEGAL IMMERANTS DESE
13、RVE IT?Ever since its first existence, man has known power as the highest target. No one doubts that economy is the strongest weapon of total control .Singapore with the smaller than Pahang for example, is actually the giant in South East Asia. It has an economic growth rate of 11 percent and foreig
14、n savings of 230 billion dollars. Man dares to do anything including begging and killing in order to fulfill his desire and sense of self love. Due to this very statement, I strongly believe that no illegal immigrant should be given citizenship in view of the countrys development.This introductory p
15、aragraph has not advanced any coherent background information in relation to the thesis statement that “no illegal immigrant should be given citizenship.” Although some of the points may be useful in providing background context, the connections between those points are not shown. The student should
16、 state clearly the reasons that make him or her feel that illegal immigrants do not deserve to be given citizenship. Is it due to social problems that have caused in the country such as begging or killing? Is it because it is a hindrance to the countrys development? These and other questions have to
17、 be asked by the student to clarify his or her ideas in the introduction.Unity of StructureA) Coherence Among ParagraphsReaders may get lost among paragraphs if they are not coherent .So teachers should teach their students some strategies to achieve this .Here I think writing a transition sentence
18、at the beginning of every paragraph is an acceptable method to create coherence .A transition sentence guides readers so that they will be able to follow the writers thought. A transition sentence is necessary at the beginning of each paragraph, because the end of each paragraph is a corner. When re
19、aders get to that corner ,their minds are able to go in almost any direction .At just that point the writer must take readers by the hand and lead them in the right direction. That is the purpose of transition sentences: to reach back to something the writer has already said and at the same time rea
20、ch ahead to what the writer is about to say next.B) Coherence within paragraphsA paragraph should be coherent in one main idea. Readers can get lost within paragraph, as well as between them. So the writer must take the lead and direct readers attention where the writer wants it to go. The next para
21、graph is incoherent:The paragraph is incoherent because no sentence answers the question generated by the first sentence: Why was the trip home a disaster? or sentences which immediately precede it.My trip home was complete disaster. The weather was fine all the way. It took me 11 hours to drive a l
22、ittle over a hundred miles. And I have never seen such beautiful fall foliage as I saw that day long the road. The sky was clear until almost there in the afternoon, with the sun shining brightly. Once I saw two rabbits playing in the field beside the road, chasing each other though the grass, back
23、and forth across a stream that ran along in the edge of some woods. The bright sun brought out the color in the leaves, so that I could distinguish a dozen shade of red and orange.Often a writer can help the readers attention with the simplest, most evident kinds of transitions. The transitions also
24、 show the cohesive relations between sentences. According to Geoff Thompson (1987), there are five main types of cohesive relation: reference (this, these, it, she, he, etc.) substitution, ellipsis, conjuction (and, but, however, therefore, etc.).And whats more, the writer can use repeated key words
25、 and parallel constructions to achieve coherence between sentences.In the following paragraph ,Winston Churchill uses all these .He connects the sentences to each other with conjunctions such as however ,but ,and thus ;with referential pronouns such as “ they” and “ it”(using these in such a way tha
26、t the reader can be able to understand easily what these reference words refer back to);key words, such as “ English” repeated throughout the paragraph; and parallel construction such as “he knew how to do it .He taught it as no one else has ever taught it.”I continued in this unpretentious situatio
27、n for nearly a year. However, by being so long in the lowest form I gained and immense advantage over the clever boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English .We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell-a m
28、ost delightful man, to whom my debt is great-was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing-namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. NOT ONLY DID WE LREARN English parsing thoroughly, but we also practic
29、ed continually English analysis. Mr. Somervell has a system of his own.Reader based coherenceThis aspect concerns the ability of a text to be understood by the reader. The content of the text must be also consistent with the readers paragraph knowledge or his expectations based on his world knowledg
30、e So any text which is out of topic, or which advocates ideas perceived as not sensible by the reader, as considered incoherent. For example:ANTI DRUG EDUCATION PROGRAMMES SHOULD BEGIN FOR CHILDREN AS EARLY AS THE AGE OF TEN IN AN EFFORT TO PREVENT DRUG ABUSE .ARGUE FOR AGAINST THIS STATEMENT. When
31、people speak of drugs, they usually speak on its worst rather than its advantages. Usually, people know the effect of drugs and try to prevent their families from being drug abuses. And it is wise, that anti-drug education programmes should begin for children as early as the age of ten in an effort
32、to prevent drug abuse. In my opinion, drugs have bad effect and taking it can only risk our own life. And it is proper for kids to know more about drugs and their effects.Taking drugs can make people around you avoid seeing you. Your friends will no longer be your friends to chat and laugh with. The
33、y will avoid you and declare that you are not one of their friends. And the worst is when your own family abandons you. And finally you are entirely alone in this world. You do not have any friends or relatives to rely on. It will make your life worse because in our lives we need someone to rely on.
34、The 2nd paragraph describes the negative effects of drugs on people instead of on the reasons for introducing anti-drug programmes for children as early as the age of 10.This deviates from the main objective set by the question and it does not even support the writers own thesis statement that “chil
35、dren should know more about drugs and their effects”.Conclusion and implication for TeachingIn conclusion, coherence is an intricate notion consisting of a number of mechanisms either explicitly stated or implicitly embe3ded in the text. It covers both the form and content of a text, and the interac
36、tion between the reader and writer. From my experience of teaching EFL writing, students have such a misconception that the more they write on a certain topic, the better the composition will be. So they present some irrelevant ideas and deviate from the topic.Based on this, I think that more emphas
37、is needs to be given to the teaching on coherence. Teachers should introduce much the knowledge about coherence, and give examples as many as possible .There is also a need to revise or review the skills on coherence with reference to students own errors. Teachers can make students be clear about co
38、herence by breaking the lessons into several units to examine the relationship among paragraphs and sentences. EFL teachers may employ similar strategies by using their own students work as samples, for students learn better when they see how corrections are made on their essays. Another suggestion
39、for the EFL writing teachers is that coherence is emphasized in English teaching. If students pay much attention to it, they will be better at achieving it.ReferencesBramer, George R. & D. Seldley, 1981, Writing for Readers , Bel & Howell CompanyBruffee, Kenneth A. 1980, A Short Course in Writing, W
40、inthrop PublishersHalliday M.A.K, 1985/1994, An Introduction to Function Grammar, Edward Arnold Publishers LimitedGeoff Thompson Edward, Principles of Language Learning Grammar , Arnold Publishers LimitedH.Douglas as Brown, 1987, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching , Prentice Hall INC. 胡壮麟，1994，语篇的衔接与连贯，上海： 上海外语教育出版社 。