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Cohesion and coherence

An awareness of cohesion and coherence in texts is a very important skill for students to develop.

Cohesion can be thought of as all the grammatical and lexical links that link one part of a text to another. This includes use of synonyms, lexical sets, pronouns, verb tenses, time references, grammatical reference, etc. For example, it, neither, this all refer to an idea previously mentioned; first of all, then, after that, help to sequence a text; however, in addition, and, for instance, link ideas and arguments in a text.

Coherence can be thought of as how meanings and sequences of ideas relate to each other. Typical examples would be: general > particular; statement > example; problem > solution; question > answer; claim > counter-claim.