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Hello there.

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In this lecture, we're going to discuss the methods to improve paragraph coherence.

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Many students have asked me to give them some idea of what this idea of what this concept of coherence

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means.

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You see it in the red writing, rubrics.

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You've seen it all over the internet.

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When they're telling you about good paragraphs, use coherence.

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But many of you don't really understand how to implement coherence.

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So in this short lecture, I'm going to hopefully give you some examples of how you can include coherence

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in your writing.

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Now, I will also say that this advice that I'm giving you for including coherence in your writing also

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works well for including coherence in your speaking.

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So remember, for the most part was good for writing is also good for speaking.

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So let's move on and let's find out how we can get better with including coherence.

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This isn't a this is not a writing class.

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But I just thought that it was so important to include coherence because many students don't know how

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to implement it properly.

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All right, so let's have a look and see exactly what we need to do.

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Well, when we talk about coherence, there are when you look over the Internet or you look at a year

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from different sources.

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Most of the time they give you about three or four.

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Actually, there are about a good seven different ways to include coherence.

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And so I'm going to go over all seven of these.

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We're dealing with repeating key words pronoun reference, parallelism, transition words, verb tense

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synonyms, and also sequencing.

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And using all of these or just a few of these is going to greatly impress the greater when it comes

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to judging you on the concept of coherence, did you use it or not?

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Well, our first two concepts deal with repeating a key phrase and also pronoun reference.

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Look at our paragraph here for repeating a key phrase.

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For Donald Trump, without power, a politician is nothing.

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A politician must have the power to be heard, the power to decide, and equally important, the power

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to shape events.

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According to Trump, a politician without power is an empty suit.

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Every politician should exude power in every move and nonverbal gesture.

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If he wants to be powerfully respected now, there's good coherence here, right?

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Because without a question, you know, this paragraph is about politicians needing power is clear.

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Right.

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That's an example of coherence.

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Now, I think if you are using some synonyms for the word power, that can make it even better because

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it's showing also some creativity to your writing.

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But just as a basic tenet, repeating a key phrase is a good way to show cohesion.

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Now, pronoun reference.

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Pronoun reference is also a very good way to show cohesion.

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Now I am in this paragraph.

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I am exaggerating it a little bit.

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I probably wouldn't use this many pronouns, but I'm just exaggerating it a little bit to give you the

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idea of what it means to use pronouns.

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Chinese people can be very self spoken, but don't let that give you the wrong idea of their intensity

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and determination.

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When the time comes, that can be pretty tough and they will let you know with clarity what they mean.

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Chinese culture spread all over the world in pre-history, and it is because these soft spoken people

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learn how to get their point across without saying it loudly right.

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So there we have a really good use of pronouns to build cohesion.

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Now let's take a look at our next two concepts parallelism and transition language.

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First, parallelism with the Republican Party.

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In 2017, the with the woman side.

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With the Republican victory in 2017, the Democratic Party felt all that Obama had worked for was to

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be lost.

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Their voters had deserted them.

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Their policies were being dismissed, and their credibility as speaking for the people have been lost.

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You see that sentence?

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That's parallelism.

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The more they search for answers and the more they adjusted their point of view, the less confident

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the average American became in their ability to govern.

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That sentence also has parallelism.

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Write this.

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These are the kind of things that you can do that will impress the greater when it comes to evaluating

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your writing on the concept of coherence transition language.

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Although it is now nearly two years since Barack Obama left office, his legacy is still debated in

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American politics.

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While Donald Trump and the and the Republican Party have not been in power since 2008, many of their

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policies still live on.

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Despite Obama's efforts to change them.

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Indeed, some people see Obama as having failed in his legacy since now, Trump can easily wipe out

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any gains Obama made with the stroke of a pen.

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Right.

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So with parallelism is important because parallelism helps you to bind your text together to less like

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glue.

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And remember also a transition words you don't really want to necessarily overdo it and also a transition

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words don't use the same words, paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence.

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Variety, right range.

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Range, range.

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Range is very, very important.

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Our final two concepts, our final two concepts that we're going to talk about together like this.

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I guess there are a couple of more I'm going to mention, actually, synonyms.

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Synonyms are very, very important.

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It's a way of of repeating key phrases, but doing it creatively.

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And I think that's even more highly valued.

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Highly valued.

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Teenagers face an enormous amount of peer pressure from friends and schoolmates.

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As a result, many young adults are exhibiting signs of severe stress or depression at an early age.

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These adolescents need professional help to overcome their problems.

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When this help is given, our high school aged youngsters will feel less.

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They will feel less peer pressure.

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I have to change that sentence grammatically.

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That last sentence, everybody.

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That last sentence should read when this help is given.

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When this help is given, it should be a comma there.

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And I'll have to go I'll have to go back and edit that when this help is given comma.

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Our high school age youngsters will feel less peer pressure.

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That's how that final sentence should read everybody speaking to you like we're in a classroom.

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But this that's actually what I would do in the classroom is just correct myself right then.

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So again, that final sentence is when this help is given comma, our high school age youngsters will

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feel less peer pressure.

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They should be crossed out.

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All right.

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But that's an example of using synonyms.

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Next when it comes to sequencing information, information from old to new.

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That just means that the old or known information is placed at the beginning and the new or unknown

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information is placed at the end of a sentence.

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Right.

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That's proper sequencing and also in terms of sequencing.

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Things go from general to specific.

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All right.

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In a paragraph, the general idea goes before the specific idea.

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That's also proper coherence and proper cohesion.

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Which is the same thing.

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Cohesion.

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Coherence.

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Verb tenses should not be incorrectly used, as you see in this paragraph here.

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As you can see in the first sentence, we're using the past tense, and then in the very next sentence,

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we're using the present tense.

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You wouldn't believe how many how many times I see this in essays.

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It's amazing.

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It really is amazing how many times I see this in essays where people are just mixing up their tenses

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in one paragraph and it's difficult.

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I mean, this is a challenge.

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You have to be aware of it.

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I've made that mistake before.

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So, I mean, none of us are perfect, but this is just something you want to be aware of in terms of

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if you want to get a high grade, in terms of coherence.

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Right.

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This is what that paragraph will look like.

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As you see now, everything is in the past tense.

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So now we have really good coherence here.

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Point of view is very important.

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If you look at this paragraph, you have to keep the point of view of the same person throughout the

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whole paragraph.

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That's very, very helpful.

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If you look at this paragraph, the point of view is changing from the first sentence to the second

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sentence.

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And you don't want to do that.

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Here is a very good example of weak and strong coherence.

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The first paragraph where it says, We coherence is really not.

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It's a it's an okay paragraph.

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Right.

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Look at it.

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It's okay paragraph.

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But it doesn't have strong coherence.

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It doesn't have strong coherence and language in it.

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The next paragraph is even better, right?

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It has really strong coherence and I've underlined the language and you see some of the key language

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phrases repeated.

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Now that gives stronger coherence.

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So maybe I should have called it weaker coherence and stronger coherence.

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But that that first paragraph is is good.

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But the next paragraph, the paragraph below it is even better.

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Much better because of the coherence language that we built into that paragraph.

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Right.

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So just remember that coherence is something that really allows a paragraph in an essay to flow smoothly,

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to build one on top of the other.

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Coherence is like a scaffold when you're making a building.

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A paragraph should have a flow from beginning to end, and that's done with very good coherence.

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All right.

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Good luck, everybody.

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I wish you well.

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And if you have any questions, please let me know.

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Thank you.