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Coherence
and Students' Errors
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Weaving
the threads of Discourse
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Recent development in English
Language teaching has seen a shift in focus from teaching individual components such as
reading, writing, speaking, and grammar toward teaching these components integratively as
they are being used in daily communication. This change in methodological approach
subsequently affects the way teachers perceive learners' errors in writing. Teachers no
longer view errors only as those which affect discreet grammatical, lexical, or structural
items but also as errors that affect the discourse of a written text. In other words,
teachers today are also concerned about a particular piece of writing communicating
effectively and meaningfully by means of its coherence and its conforming to the
expectations of its prospective readers.
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My experience in teaching writing to
pre-university students and undergraduates at the International Islamic University,
Malaysia shows that incoherence is a recurring problem in the students' writing and can be
a major obstacle to their success in writing classes. "I cannot follow your
argument" and "I don't 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 coherence are often more difficult to handle as they involve a chunk
of units, such as a series of sentences or paragraphs. Because of the difficulties in
correcting errors, students sometimes do not get sufficient insights into their errors.
Teachers find it impractical to correct the whole erroneous section.
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This paper was initiated because of the need for
students to be made aware of and to understand what coherence is in their writing.
Although initially understanding coherence is self-exploration, it will be beneficial to
other teachers who encounter similar problems in teaching writing. This paper is based on
the convictions that:
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- Coherence is an area that deserves attention, for problems can easily arise from
coherence or cohesion either in reading or writing (Dubin and Olshtain 1980; Cohen et. al
1979; Cook 1989).
- English as a second language (ESL) teachers may believe they have a sense of what
incoherent means, but they often discuss coherence (and incoherence) with their students
only in vague terms (Johns, 1986);
- As a result of the above factors, students do not have a clear understanding 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.
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Therefore, there is a need for a simple
definition of the concept and examples of typical mistakes made in coherence. (see Footnote 1 ) This paper will be based
on previous literature on coherence and illustrated with samples of students' errors.
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To begin with, coherence is not a well defined
notion (Van Dijk, 1977:93). The vagueness in its definition may be related to the fact
that coherence is an "interpretive process," created by the reader while reading
the text (McCarthy, 1991:26). Thus, a writer always needs to predict the reader's response
to his/her text. This task is what some learners cannot cope with. Despite its
arbitrariness in definition, coherence can be generally viewed in two aspects: text-based
and reader-based coherence (Johns, 1986). The former refers to the features associated
with the internal structure of the text itself while the latter is associated with the
meaningful aspect of writer-reader interaction. Within this framework, a text is said to
be coherent if it fulfills the following conditions.
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Unity of ideas: An assertion made
in a piece of writing should be related to all other elements. This simply means that each
idea must relate to the main idea (topic sentence) of the particular paragraph it is in
and also to other ideas in the same paragraph. The main idea of that paragraph is in turn
related to the controlling idea (thesis statement) of the essay. There is an underlying
thread weaving all the points in the entire essay as shown in the diagram below:
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In this regard, the following example of a
paragraph is incoherent.
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CITIZENSHIP: DO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DESERVE IT?
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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 width smaller than Pahang for example, is actually the giant
in South East Asia. It has an economic growth rate of 11 percent and foreign 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 country's
development. (P1)(See Footnote 2 )
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This introductory paragraph 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 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 they have caused in
the country such as begging or killing? Is it because it is a hindrance to the country's
development? These and other questions have to be asked by the student to clarify his/her
ideas in the introduction.
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Another example is the following:
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OUR LIFE IS BETTER WITHOUT AUTOMOBILES
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Apart from expenditure and environment, life
without automobiles will decrease the number of road casualties. A country like Denmark
where people of all generations ride on bicycles in the city has proven it. The road
casualties could be decreased by not using automobiles. Furthermore, road accidents that
are caused by bicycles have lesser degrees of serious injury. On the other hand, if a
collision happens, for example, between a car and a lorry, the possibility of death, major
injuries and handicap is higher. [It is also known that the rate of road accidents
excessively increases during major festivals such as Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, and
school vacation.] These examples clearly show that how automobiles can turn our lives into
miserable ones. (U1)(See Footnote 3
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In the above paragraph, the student inserts
information (the rate of accident is higher during festivals) which is of no direct
relevance to the topic being discussed. The digression diverts the reader's attention from
the main idea for a while. In that sense, it is a problem in coherence because there is a
lack of unity in points which requires extra effort on the reader's part to review the
paragraph for a better understanding.
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Organization of points: This
aspect in producing a coherent text concerns the need of the points to progress in a
logical sequence from the beginning till the end of the essay. An alternate or reverse
order of the points can cause confusion to the reader as evident in the example below.
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ADVERTISING BRINGS MORE NEGATIVE EFFECTS THAN
POSITIVE EFFECTS
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Advertising is a kind of business tool that is
used by producers to attract people's attention to buy their products. Advertisements also
seem like news of fashions, and styles. [Producers promote their products in magazines,
newspapers, posters, and also through television and radio.] Whether we realise it or not,
advertising brings more negative than positive effects. Our life is influenced by
advertising without realizing that we are cheated by the producers who used advertisements
to promote their products.(U2)
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The sentence in brackets would be more
appropriately placed at the beginning of the paragraph. With some adjustments made to the
sentence in this case adding "through advertisement" to the sentence, (producers
promote their products through advertisements in magazines.), the points in the paragraph
are arranged in a more systematic order, that is from general to more specific ideas. The
paragraph can also do without the sentence in question.
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Meanwhile the following example illustrates
another problem in organization:
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THE USES AND ABUSES OF ADVERTISEMENTS
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Most magazines and periodicals survive because
of advertisements. The people of firms that advertise provide the necessary finance to
keep these magazines running. Both parties can benefit. The publishers get to carry on
their business and the advertisers get to sell their roducts. [However, some magazines
seem to lose their original purpose after a while because they carry too many
advertisements].
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For an employer looking for workers, advertising
provides one of the most efficient methods to get them
________________________________________________________.
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It is the same when people want to sell or buy
houses, cars and other things. Through advertisements, they can come in contact
________________________________________________________.
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In contrast, as useful as it is, advertisements
are sometimes abused by unscrupulous people. Misleading the public is the most common form
of abuse ________________________________________________________.
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Since the above essay is constructed is such a
way that the first half of the essay focuses on the uses of advertisements while the later
half of the essay concentrates on its abuses, the sentence in brackets is thus out of
place. It causes discontinuity in meaning and may mislead the reader.
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Link and reference (cohesion):
This concept is associated with the surface marking of coherence which signals the ties
between sentences and points being made. It ought to be noted however, that cohesion is
only part of the convention of coherence (Van Dijk 1985) for the elements of a text can be
seen as "connected, with or without overt linguistic connections between these
elements." (Brown and Yule, 1983).
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According to Halliday and Hassan (1976) whose
work comprehensively deals with cohesion, there are five main types of cohesive relations:
reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. I will limit this
discussion to those areas in which errors are perceived to be causing the most problems to
the learners. They are as follows:
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Reference: These are expressions which
make reference to other words in the text for their interpretation. They are obviously
illustrated by third person pronouns. A third person pronoun can be used to refer back to
a noun mentioned earlier in the text (anaphoric reference) or to refer to a noun which the
pronoun proceeds (cataphoric reference).
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The following is an example of a cohesive error
in the third person pronoun.
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THE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY
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Even worse is the third type of irresponsibility
which is very dangerous to a large number of people such as the prime minister proposing
an unsuitable policy to parliament and getting it accepted; [then implemented it in his
country.] (U4)
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The absence of "he" before
"then" in the last sentence is an anaphoric reference problem.
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Conjunction: Halliday and Hassan (1976,
226) assert that "conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly,
by virtue of their specific meanings."
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In order to use conjunction competently,
students have to know the semantic properties of conjunctive words which are categorised
by Halliday and Hassan into four classifications.
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Additive: And he filled in the leave form.
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Adversative: But, John did not approve his
leave.
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Causal: Therefore, he resigned from his post.
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Temporal: Then, he regretted his action.
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The author's observation of the students' work
show they rarely commit errors in using temporal conjunction but do commonly make them in
the use of some additive, adversative, and casual relationships.
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The typical types of errors are:
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Using the wrong conjunction to signify a
particular meaning. For example:
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ALL FOREIGN TRAVELLERS ENTERING MALAYSIA SHOULD
HAVE THEIR BLOOD TESTED FOR AIDS. ARGUE FOR OR AGAINST THE PROPOSITION.
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Firstly, it is a waste of time and a waste of
money. When blood is taken from a particular person, the blood sample has to be sent to a
laboratory and it needs a couple of days to get the results. The traveller may be only on
a week's vacation and with this interruption, the traveller will face difficulties and
regret the interruption. [On the other hand,] the cost of the test will not be paid for by
the traveller. Instead the government will pay for the cost of the test and each test will
cost at least RM $50 and if all the travellers are being tested, how much will the
government pay?(P2)
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Since the second supporting point in the
paragraph "...the cost of the test." is adding to the first point, a more
appropriate transition for the sentence is "In addition" not "On the other
hand" as used in the text. The wrong choice of a transitional word though does not
lead to a breakdown in communication, it simply disorients the reader.
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Another example is the following:
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THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ELECTRONIC AND PRINT
MEDIA
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Secondly, electronic media can give direct
information and easily reach the consumers. For example, when we watch news on television,
we can get quick national and international information. [Hence], information in print
media is limited. It can give information only to those who read the newspaper or
magazines. If not_____________________________________.(U5)
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Instead of a causal relation, the student should
have used an adversative conjunction such as "however" or "meanwhile".
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Using the wrong form of the linking phrase
occurs in the example below:
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CAR POOLING SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED IN KUALA LUMPUR
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It will lead to a harmonious condition instead
of a boring condition. [In the other side,] single occupancy vehicle users are more
individualistic and do not care about others.(U6)
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The use of "in the other side" versus
"on the other hand" is less detrimental, for readers can probably still get the
gist of the message. It nonetheless, interferes with the readers' smooth flow of thought
because they have to stop to review the meaning. To this extent, it is incoherent.
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Lexical cohesion: My observation of
students' work does not find lexical cohesion a prominent problem as students do not
intentionally choose words which are not associated with or are distantly related to what
they are writing on. It is natural for any writer to use words which are semantically
related when they are writing on a particular subject either in the form of collocation or
reiteration such as in the use of synonyms. Despite not being a pressing problem for
students, I found it is beneficial to highlight the link between the topic of sentences in
the same paragraph. By writing the topical structure of each sentence in a paragraph on
the board, students can see whether the points are interrelated or not and can observe the
existence or nonexistence of an internal topical framework in that paragraph.
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This aspect concerns the ability of a text to be
understood by the reader. Apart from displaying the characteristics discussed earlier, the
content of a text must also be consistent with the reader's pragmatic knowledge or his
expectations based on his world knowledge. Before a reader reads, s/he will have certain
basic assumptions and expectations about the communication such as what is important and
relevant to that particular discourse. For the reader to make the appropriate inference,
the writer will have to conform to the communicative principles by being
"informative, relevant and sufficiently clear" (Van Dijk, 1985: 113). In other
words, the text must have a sense of connectedness and appropriateness in terms of form
and content. In this respect, any text which does not follow its prompt (often said as
being "out of topic"), or which advocates ideas perceived as not sensible by the
reader, are considered incoherent. For example:
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ANTI-DRUG EDUCATION PROGRAMS SHOULD BEGIN FOR
CHILDREN AS EARLY AS THE AGE OF 10 IN AN EFFORT TO PREVENT DRUG ABUSE. ARGUE FOR AGAINST
THE STATEMENT.
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When people speak of drugs, they usually speak
on its worst rather than the 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 10 in an effort 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.
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Taking drugs can make people around you avoid
seeing you. Your friends will no longer be your friends to chat and laugh with. They 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're entirely alone in this world. You don't have
friends or even relatives to rely on. It will make your life worse because in our lives we
need someone to rely on. (P3)
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The second paragraph (and indeed all the
supporting paragraphs in the above essay) describe the negative effects of drugs on people
instead of on the reasons for introducing anti-drug programs 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 writer's own thesis statement that "children should know more about drugs
and their effects."
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Let us take another example:
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Mr. Ali is my grammar and writing teacher and
Puan Zainab is my reading lecturer. Mr Ali is a handsome man. He always wear slacks,
trousers and shirts when he teaches me. Without [ it ], he also smiles and jokes
when my class. (P4)
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"It" does not seem to have any
referent. Even if "it" is substituted by "them" in which case the
pronoun "them" would refer to slacks, trousers and shirts, the sentence would
then be grammatically correct but semantically inappropriate as no reader would be able to
infer that a teacher would come to class improperly dressed.
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Conclusion and implications for teaching
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In conclusion, coherence is an intricate notion
consisting of a number of mechanisms either explicitly stated or implicitly embedded in
the text. It concerns the meaningfulness of a discourse which leads to a successful
interaction between the reader and writer of the text. The role of considering the reader
and following some theoretical constructs for the text to be interpreted as coherent is
what many student writers need to be made aware of. From post-composition conferences with
my students, I have found that a misconception ESL students have is that if they write as
much as possible on a particular topic the higher marks they can expect to get. They feel
they need to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge to the examiner; therefore, they
tend to include irrelevant ideas and deviate from the topic. When this occurs throughout
the whole essay, it creates a web of confusion that teachers find difficult to
disentangle.
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Based on the above, I feel that more emphasis
needs to be given to the teaching of coherence. Although students are taught the basic
techniques of writing (writing topic sentences, thesis statement, paragraphing) in great
detail, students are not able to apply the skills when it comes to actual writing. Thus,
there is a need to revise or review these skills with reference to students' own errors.
Johns (1986) provides a systematic approach in teaching coherence by breaking the lessons
into three units: deconstructing the prompt and preparing a thesis, examining a thesis and
the relationships among assertions in an essay, and examining the information structure.
ESL 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.
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Another indispensable issue triggered by this
observation is in the evaluation of essays. Unreliability in grading is particularly
inherent in essays which are superbly written with good points but do not answer the
questions. Teachers sometimes have difficulty agreeing on the relative merits of these
essays. Graders should use marking profiles which list the basic assessment criteria for
evaluating an essay, notes on coherence in the "content" and
"organisation" section should be explicitly stated. In this way, essays which do
not adhere to their prompts would be dealt with accordingly, taking incoherence into
consideration, and thus narrowing the difference in scores given by different teachers.
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Although this paper shows that ESL students may
not encounter problems in all aspects of coherence, it does call for a reevaluation of the
ways coherence is taught in ESL classes and for emphasis on the role of the teachers to
raise the students' awareness for producing a clearly communicated text. In most cases,
this requires teachers to demonstrate to their students their errors and to seek
clarification frequently from their students for ambiguous and vaguely written text.
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Editor's note: All of the above examples of
student compositions are printed here as they appeared in the original manuscript.
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Zahariah
Pilus is a lecturer teaching English at the Language Division, International
Islamic University, Malaysia. Her interests include syllabus design and computer-assisted
language learning. |
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Return
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- Van Dijk, T. A. 1977. Text and context. New York: Longman.
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- Zamel, V. 1983. Teaching those missing links in writing. English Language Teaching, 37,
1, pp. 22-29.
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Footnote 1
| These are based on my experience of teaching ESL writing for eight years in Malaysia. |
Footnote 2
| Abbreviation: |
P = pre-university
1 = student 1 |
Footnote 3
U = University
1 = Student 1 |
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