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Coherence and Cohesion

Coherence:

It implies the way in which concepts and relations underlying the text are accessible and relevant. In other words how the meaning withing the text is interconected and develop through causality, enablement, reason, purpose and time.

Cohesion:

It is determined by grammatical dependencies among the textual components which cannot be rearranged without causing ambiguities.

Cohesive devices 

Ellipsis

It is omission of information within the text, in other words, the fact of words being left out of a sentence, but the sentence can still be understood.

Example:

She broke the table and (verb missing) the desk

Reference

It implies referencing to a term that is part of the text.

Example:

She is my sister, and this is her backpack

Lexical Cohesion

It is the one that deals with the meaning in the text, and also with word classes. 

Example:

Synonym of House: home, residence and dwelling 

Parallelism

It happens when the sentence follows patterns

Example:

I like running, cycling and walking 

 

Substitution

It happens when a word is replaced for another word of the same function. 

Example:

There are many books here. which ones are yours?

Conjunctions

They are the ones that relates in meaning one sentence to another and it specifies the way in which two sentences are connected. 

Example:

No one wants to be rejected, and to prevent rejection we change our behaviour often.

Recurrence

It is the repetition of elements or patterns.

example:

He met very attractive girl. The girl didn’t seem to pay any attention to him 

Proforms

It is basically the use of pronouns.

Example:

John is doing business, because he is very clever

Paraphrase

It implies repeting content with different words

Example:

His mother collude with his uncle

His mother and uncle are conspiring

Text analysis

In the following project the article “Very high inequality” in Chilean Society Breeds Resentment by Linn Helene Loken was analyzed according to every cohesive device.

Personal reflection

This unit helps us to develop the capacity to find cohesive devices in a text which was very useful, because we could review our knowledge in term of lexis which is something that is going to be part of our knowledge as future teachers in every moment of our classes. 

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