FOCUSING ON COHESION

11.1 INTRODUCTION

 This is an area which is of  relev ance to all discourse, spoken and written, ‘one-way’ and ‘two way’ alike, althoungh the choice of approptiate cohesive ties isprofoundly affected by wherter the discourser is spoken or written, and bay the discourse type. Cohesion has often been neglected in language teaching, where sentences have been created, manipulated, and assessed in insolation. It has been assumed that student difficultes arise primarily from lack of vocabulary or the complexity of Ølevels, for they affect both production and processing. In production they can result in the creation of a strech of language in which every sentence, in isolation, is foultless, yet the overall effect is one of incoherence or inappropriateness.

Althoug grammar has been extensively studied, anglo-american linguistic in the middle decedes of this century, believing the sentence to be the highest unit ameneble to formal analisis, paid little attention to cohesion.where there has been knowladge of cohesion in language tiching, there has sometimes been an implicit assuption that cohesive lingks must operate between sentences in the same way in the first and second language, in other words, though straightforward translation aquivalents. The cohesion between sentences is not as easily assessed as the grammar within them.this belief is unfortunate, for anerror of style can so antagonize an interlocutor that it will negate the positive effects of lower level accuracy.

11.2 ACTIVITIES DEVELOPING COHESION

Activities focusing on cohesion will need to consider every intersection on the grid in figure 15. The should, however, avoid convusing the use of cohesion with knowladge about cohesion. As teacher we will need to approach any stretch of language in two ways. The passage is from a play. It is not therefore real speech, but it has incorproated some of its features.it illustrates the fact that texts which are lexically and grammatically quite simple at sentence levelcan be very complicated-and therefore confusing-in their cohesion. From a vocabulary poin of view this is quite elementary. Although there are some very colloquilal uses (kids meaning children, bloody for ephasis, and things meaning life in general),the majority of words could be expected to accour quite early in learner’s vocabulary.

In the use of cohesive devices, however, the passage is rich and complex. We can show this by underlining each referring expression and inserting the simbol ø for each ellipted word. These are straghtforward comprehension questions, rather like the traditional ones which test vocabulary. They can be phrased as they are here, or presented which multiple-choice alternative, exploting the absudity of misinterpreted reference.in this from, this exercise is very difficalt. It can be made easier, and thus adjusted to the level of particular studens, by changing only some of the referring items, and leaving others in their original from.