Week 6 Workshop Discussion

This week we developed our understanding of important literature terms. Within our groups, we worked on matching terms such as grapheme and morpheme to their meanings. After reading our designated readings and being several weeks into this course, we still had a few moments of confusion while completing the worksheet. Many of these terms seem so similar!

This week it was our group's turn to research the notion of 'coherence' in writing. We unfortunately ran out of time and were unable to present these findings to the class, so I have chosen to incorporate some key points here:

Coherence in linguistics is what makes a text semantically meaningful.

‘Every paragraph, every sentence, and every phrase contribute to the meaning of the whole piece.’

Kies, D (1995) Coherence in Writing, viewed online 26-8-2012 http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/comp1/coherent.htm

Sentence Cohesion is a key component of coherent texts.

Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical relationship within a text or sentence.

Lexical refers to the language used (also referred to as the vocabulary), while grammatical refers to the structure used to order the language.

Paragraph Unity is also key to developing coherent texts.

Unity requires that a single focus or concept is stated in the first sentence of the paragraph.

All subsequent sentences in a united paragraph should maintain the same focus as the topic sentence; but convey further information.

Paragraph Unity is important for essay style texts; however may not be relevant in all texts.

Paragraphs within fictional narratives often utilise varying paragraph structures. Similarly, journalists may divide paragraphs of the same focus to create ‘white space’, which makes texts more visually appealing and easier to read.

 

Discussion posted by Ashleigh Barnden