1 00:00:00,720 --> 00:00:07,740 OC Let's have a good conversation about coherence and what exactly coherent writing is. 2 00:00:07,890 --> 00:00:14,280 One of the biggest issues that I see when I take a look at student essays on any exam that they take 3 00:00:14,460 --> 00:00:21,720 is that there is a lack of coherence and coherent writing is something that really, really impresses 4 00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:22,530 graders. 5 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:30,870 And I think that most students hear the word coherent, but they really don't understand what coherent 6 00:00:30,870 --> 00:00:32,040 writing looks like. 7 00:00:32,700 --> 00:00:39,120 And they don't know understand they don't truly understand the, the the skills required to produce 8 00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:40,230 coherent writing. 9 00:00:40,620 --> 00:00:46,440 So in this lecture, we're just going to touch on some of those skills to kind of build your awareness 10 00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:47,730 of coherent writing. 11 00:00:49,170 --> 00:00:52,230 You can't just look at a video and think that you got it. 12 00:00:52,380 --> 00:00:59,640 You have to actually practice these these skills and these techniques in order to get better at your 13 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:00,720 coherence. 14 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:05,970 But if you want to if you want to impress a greater, this is what you need to do and work on. 15 00:01:10,750 --> 00:01:15,250 So the basic definition of coherence, right? 16 00:01:15,550 --> 00:01:19,870 It deals with the connection of your ideas at the idea level. 17 00:01:19,870 --> 00:01:23,470 Right, in the connection of ideas at the sentence level. 18 00:01:24,130 --> 00:01:24,460 Right. 19 00:01:24,700 --> 00:01:33,010 So coherence is referring to the certain aspects, certain rhetorical aspects of your paragraphs, of 20 00:01:33,010 --> 00:01:37,270 your sentences that deal with developing your argument. 21 00:01:38,350 --> 00:01:45,160 Or another way of saying that developing your thesis statement, it's dealing with the synthesizing 22 00:01:45,160 --> 00:01:53,350 and the integrating of your sentences together to produce an answer that actually addresses the thesis 23 00:01:53,350 --> 00:01:54,010 statement. 24 00:01:54,730 --> 00:01:59,290 Coherence is different than cohesion. 25 00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:05,470 Cohesion more focus is on the grammatical aspects of writing, and there will be another lecture that 26 00:02:05,470 --> 00:02:07,710 talks about cohesion. 27 00:02:07,720 --> 00:02:11,230 But cohesion and coherence go hand in hand together. 28 00:02:11,350 --> 00:02:14,410 And very often people are confused by what they mean. 29 00:02:14,680 --> 00:02:19,750 But cohesion deals with the grammatical aspects of writing to help create coherence. 30 00:02:22,060 --> 00:02:26,650 So coherence relates to the quality of unity in a text. 31 00:02:26,650 --> 00:02:28,600 How unified is your text? 32 00:02:29,130 --> 00:02:29,680 Right. 33 00:02:29,980 --> 00:02:36,100 So when they say on rubrics where they say they want you to have clear progression. 34 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:39,520 You're talking about unity, right? 35 00:02:39,550 --> 00:02:47,380 Secondly, as as I've said before, the thesis statement the thesis statement is the most important 36 00:02:47,380 --> 00:02:49,330 sentence in the entire essay. 37 00:02:50,380 --> 00:02:53,590 Is the most important sentence in the entire essay. 38 00:02:54,580 --> 00:03:02,050 And so when you have good coherence, all the elements in the essay relate to the thesis statement and 39 00:03:02,050 --> 00:03:03,580 answer the thesis statement. 40 00:03:04,510 --> 00:03:08,920 And again, all points flow together in a logical, organized manner. 41 00:03:09,340 --> 00:03:09,610 Right. 42 00:03:09,610 --> 00:03:10,840 It's the flow. 43 00:03:11,680 --> 00:03:16,510 A very a very a very well written essay. 44 00:03:16,540 --> 00:03:18,280 A very well written essay. 45 00:03:18,640 --> 00:03:20,320 Is is like water. 46 00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:22,150 It's like water. 47 00:03:22,150 --> 00:03:24,190 It flows down the stream. 48 00:03:24,580 --> 00:03:24,800 Right. 49 00:03:24,910 --> 00:03:25,980 It's effortless. 50 00:03:25,990 --> 00:03:29,620 It's it's something that just has really good flow. 51 00:03:31,010 --> 00:03:37,940 But when you have a situation where there's a lack of coherence, it's like it's choppy water. 52 00:03:37,940 --> 00:03:39,980 It's very, very difficult to read it. 53 00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:49,680 So some of the steps to really creating really good coherence, having a precise, fully developed thesis 54 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:50,370 statement. 55 00:03:50,970 --> 00:03:57,660 And if you watch the earlier lectures or actually the later lectures that earlier lectures, if you 56 00:03:57,660 --> 00:04:03,750 look at the later lectures, you're going to have a specific discussion on thesis statements. 57 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:08,810 Logical outline is very important for creating coherence. 58 00:04:09,300 --> 00:04:11,520 Clear explanation of all relationships. 59 00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:18,460 One of the biggest things that most students do is they just they just state the relationship, right? 60 00:04:18,510 --> 00:04:19,740 They just state the detail. 61 00:04:19,740 --> 00:04:20,580 They don't have really good. 62 00:04:20,580 --> 00:04:21,240 Explain it. 63 00:04:21,810 --> 00:04:26,700 They don't have really good ways of explaining it and then using the elements of coherence. 64 00:04:26,700 --> 00:04:29,640 And again, that deals with cohesion also. 65 00:04:31,330 --> 00:04:35,440 Coherence is extremely important when it comes to English level assessment. 66 00:04:36,500 --> 00:04:39,350 Is one of the main things that graders really look at. 67 00:04:39,980 --> 00:04:46,790 Because it gives extremely clear focus and it makes sure that everything is logically linked together. 68 00:04:47,090 --> 00:04:53,210 So coherent writing is extremely impressive to a greater, extremely impressive to a greater. 69 00:04:54,410 --> 00:04:56,150 There are three types of coherence. 70 00:04:56,570 --> 00:05:01,130 Coherence between words, sentences and paragraphs. 71 00:05:01,520 --> 00:05:09,410 And you're expected to be able to perform at all three levels in terms of words, sentences and paragraphs. 72 00:05:11,340 --> 00:05:13,700 Now your clearance is going to be enhanced. 73 00:05:13,710 --> 00:05:19,980 If when I read your essay, I can very easily understand it because it's organized and it answers the 74 00:05:19,980 --> 00:05:20,760 question. 75 00:05:21,270 --> 00:05:26,610 If that's happening, then we have coherence when there breakdowns of that. 76 00:05:26,610 --> 00:05:31,500 Very often I'm looking at a student's essay, I'm like, Well, you're writing really good sentences, 77 00:05:31,500 --> 00:05:33,510 but none of this is answering the question. 78 00:05:34,200 --> 00:05:36,390 None of this is addressing the question. 79 00:05:36,810 --> 00:05:38,730 You're outside of the box. 80 00:05:38,820 --> 00:05:39,170 All right. 81 00:05:39,270 --> 00:05:42,990 So when I say you're outside of the box, I'm talking about your coherence. 82 00:05:46,330 --> 00:05:53,440 So some great ways the coherence is very helpful is it helps you to see how your ideas are organized. 83 00:05:53,650 --> 00:05:59,620 You have you have sometimes you have headings in subheadings, paragraph breaks, punctuation, presentational 84 00:05:59,620 --> 00:06:00,190 devices. 85 00:06:00,190 --> 00:06:03,310 There are different things to be able to help in terms of coherence. 86 00:06:03,340 --> 00:06:08,260 Now, some of this I'm talking about disk coherence in general to everybody. 87 00:06:09,260 --> 00:06:14,960 I'm not talking about coherence in terms of all of this applies to to what you do on examination. 88 00:06:14,960 --> 00:06:19,070 Some of these you will use on examination, some of these you will not use on examinations. 89 00:06:19,940 --> 00:06:26,660 The main point I'm making here is coherence is really about the organization of your ideas and helping 90 00:06:26,660 --> 00:06:29,030 to see how your ideas are organized. 91 00:06:36,660 --> 00:06:37,220 Right. 92 00:06:37,400 --> 00:06:47,100 So we're talking about how the page breaks and overview punctuation, drawing attention to certain sections 93 00:06:47,100 --> 00:06:48,660 that make meaning more clear. 94 00:06:49,350 --> 00:06:49,710 Right. 95 00:06:50,790 --> 00:06:55,320 Understanding the different question types and how they should be laid out. 96 00:06:55,860 --> 00:06:56,460 Opinions. 97 00:06:56,460 --> 00:06:56,760 Cause. 98 00:06:56,760 --> 00:06:57,240 Effect. 99 00:06:57,240 --> 00:06:57,780 Advantage. 100 00:06:57,780 --> 00:06:58,890 Disadvantage. 101 00:07:03,230 --> 00:07:03,540 Right. 102 00:07:03,650 --> 00:07:07,310 Plan your writing in advance on a skeleton framework. 103 00:07:07,610 --> 00:07:09,950 It really, really helps the outline. 104 00:07:09,980 --> 00:07:14,000 I know you've heard me preach that many, many times, but it really does help. 105 00:07:19,620 --> 00:07:19,790 Right. 106 00:07:20,110 --> 00:07:22,950 So these are just some ideas about pair graphing. 107 00:07:25,530 --> 00:07:30,870 And if you need to go ahead and stop and read through some of these ideas on paragraphs and coherence. 108 00:07:33,450 --> 00:07:39,930 So one great thing that you have to do, one important thing you have to do is you have to be able to 109 00:07:39,930 --> 00:07:42,600 eliminate vagueness and fragments. 110 00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:50,070 So, for example, this sentence says in Oregon, they have they have passed a law which encourages 111 00:07:50,070 --> 00:07:52,020 the recycling of waste materials. 112 00:07:52,710 --> 00:07:54,090 In the instruction manual. 113 00:07:54,090 --> 00:07:56,720 It explains, right. 114 00:07:56,730 --> 00:08:00,750 Inflation is when these are all fragments. 115 00:08:01,150 --> 00:08:01,620 Right. 116 00:08:01,620 --> 00:08:02,550 We have vague. 117 00:08:02,550 --> 00:08:04,830 We have vague writing and fragments. 118 00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:08,900 And when you have these kind of fragments, it creates incoherence. 119 00:08:08,910 --> 00:08:12,570 Because I have no idea what you're talking about sometimes. 120 00:08:14,710 --> 00:08:15,060 Right. 121 00:08:15,060 --> 00:08:15,900 So it should be. 122 00:08:15,900 --> 00:08:17,940 Oregon has passed a law which. 123 00:08:20,570 --> 00:08:26,300 The instruction manual explains how inflation occurs when. 124 00:08:26,960 --> 00:08:35,270 So a lot of times I see this kind of writing, I really see this kind of writing, and students want 125 00:08:35,270 --> 00:08:37,250 really, really high scores. 126 00:08:37,820 --> 00:08:45,200 But if you're writing this kind of way vague with fragments, it destroys coherence, and then you're 127 00:08:45,200 --> 00:08:46,970 going to have a problem with your score. 128 00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:51,220 All right. 129 00:08:51,220 --> 00:08:56,980 So on this one, I'm not going to read through this in detail, but what I want you to do is look at 130 00:08:56,980 --> 00:09:04,330 this paragraph, read this paragraph, and then read through the explanation at the bottom as to why 131 00:09:04,330 --> 00:09:05,410 it's coherent. 132 00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:07,570 Right. 133 00:09:07,780 --> 00:09:08,680 Take some time. 134 00:09:08,680 --> 00:09:09,850 Stop the video. 135 00:09:10,150 --> 00:09:17,380 Read the paragraph, read the paragraph, and then read the part at the bottom and understand why it's 136 00:09:17,380 --> 00:09:18,130 coherent. 137 00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:20,380 Same thing here. 138 00:09:20,770 --> 00:09:22,390 Read the paragraph. 139 00:09:22,420 --> 00:09:26,830 Read was below the paragraph and read why it's coherent. 140 00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:27,760 Right. 141 00:09:27,790 --> 00:09:32,170 So very often students are not getting explained to them why something is coherent. 142 00:09:32,170 --> 00:09:36,130 They just talk to you and tell you this is what coherence is. 143 00:09:36,940 --> 00:09:38,710 Or they tell you be coherent. 144 00:09:38,710 --> 00:09:42,340 But I'm trying to show you here why this is coherent. 145 00:09:42,340 --> 00:09:47,800 And if you understand why this is coherent, you'll understand how to produce it yourself. 146 00:09:49,450 --> 00:09:49,870 All right. 147 00:09:49,870 --> 00:09:51,610 So thank you very much. 148 00:09:51,640 --> 00:09:55,450 And I hope that you've enjoyed this video on coherence.