Coherence meaning writing how to#

An essay, letter, or report should feature progress by guiding the reader from a logical beginning to a logical ending. I’m sure you know the word “progress,” which is usually defined as moving forward or developing. As we saw earlier, band 5 essays typically lack progression, whilst band 7 ones have “clear progression,” and even a band 6 essay will have “overall progression.” But what does this mean? Progression is a tricky topic, or at least it seems that way at first. Likewise, for a letter, you would give one short paragraph for each main point. Last week, I talked about “grouping data” for task 1 reports and I said that you can often split a chart or table or diagram into two parts and devote one paragraph to each. In a letter or a report, the paragraphs are seldom structured with the same degree of complexity as a task 2 essay. It is also why there is no real mention of paragraphing for task 1 even though you are expected to use paragraphs. Well, that’s because by “paragraphing” we mean the intricate and difficult aspects of building paragraphs rather than just grouping ideas loosely according to their topic. You might be wondering why “organisation” and “paragraphing” are listed as two different criteria here. Most logically, you would have one paragraph with one perspective and another with the opposite perspective. Well, organising your essay would first require putting those ideas into paragraphs. Let’s say you are asked to “discuss both views” for a certain question. To score band 6 means having your ideas presented in a way that a reader could somewhat understand, and beyond that they will be more neatly divided. At band 4 and below, it will be extremely random and quite difficult to understand. There may just be a very basic structure imposed upon the ideas in this essay. As I mentioned earlier, an essay that gets band 5 for coherence and cohesion will have quite limited or ineffective organisation.

This means how your ideas are arranged within the essay. Organisationįirst of all, let’s look at organisation.

Coherence meaning writing how to#

Let’s look at each of these in turn so that we can understand how to improve our IELTS essays. Thus, we can conclude that there are 5 important factors in getting a good band score for coherence and cohesion: If we look at the band descriptors for task 1, which is to say a letter or report, the criteria given is basically the same, except that there is no specific mention of paragraphing. It just talks about those same things being done in a better or more natural way, with few if any problems. When we go above band 7, there is nothing really specific. If we skip ahead to band 7, there is now LOGICAL organisation, CLEAR progression, mostly good use of cohesive devices, and good paragraphing. It talks about “inadequate, inaccurate or overused cohesive devices,” as well as repetition and poor paragraphing.

When we look at band 5 for IELTS writing task 2, we can see it talks about the essay having “some organisation” but perhaps lacking progression. As such, I want to show you the descriptors and explain exactly what they mean so that you fully understand what is required of you. In fact, a 2008 study reported that IELTS examiners found it more difficult to mark coherence and cohesion than any other part of the exam, and this seems to be partly related to the language used. Many candidates and even IELTS tutors misunderstand the words used here, and that is hardly surprising.

These are freely available on the IELTS and British Council websites, but actually they are quite difficult to understand, and this causes various problems. Now we have a GENERAL idea of what coherence and cohesion means, let’s look at the IELTS band descriptors to get a better understanding. Taking a Closer Look at Coherence and Cohesion So from that, we can gather that a high score in coherence and cohesion requires having your ideas put logically into paragraphs and having your sentences flow together in an intuitive way. You could think of it another way: coherence refers to your paragraphs, and cohesion is about how your sentences link together “Coherence” is defined in the Cambridge dictionary as “a clear relationship between parts” while “cohesion” means “the state of sticking together.” In my 2019 book, How to Write the Perfect Essay for IELTS, I explained that:Ĭoherence means the connection of ideas on a larger scale, while cohesion means connection at a sentence level. Perhaps we should first consider what those two words mean because they are not exactly the same. After all, you could probably learn the basics of essay structure in less than one hour!

Most people think of it as structure, but this is a little too limited and it is in fact a bigger and more complicated idea than that. Generally speaking, coherence and cohesion means how well your ideas are linked together.