Day Seven: Writing Coherently

Up to this point we've talked about the three general factors that determine the content to include in an EAP essay: audience (who is going to read our work?), purpose (why are we writing, what is the goal?) and tone (how will our essay be written?). A good visualization of the interplay between these factors can be found in the diagram below: 

From there we went on to discuss the most important structural components of any EAP essay. During our discussion on structure, we touched on the importance of a good thesis statement as well as the dual role it plays in stating the purpose or goal of the essay as well as providing a brief preview of the subsequent organization of the essay's body paragraphs. We also talked about an efficient way of structuring our body paragraphs through the use of the PIE-C technique. To review, PIE-C is an acronym that stands for: 

Point (the topic sentence of the paragraph that expresses the main idea)

Illustration (an example from a scholarly/credible source, i.e. quotations, statistics, expert opinion)

Explanation (where you, the writer, make the connection between the illustration and the point in your own words!)

Conclusion (a sentence that sums up what you've written about and connects that discussion to a greater end)

By utilizing the PIE-C paragraph structure technique, we can ensure that everything mentioned in our essays refers back to the main points as laid out in the thesis, which is one way to achieve greater coherence in your writing. Today we will be talking about other ways to achieve maximum coherence in your writing. The outline for today's class is as follows: 

Writing Coherently 

I. Brainstorming: What is coherence? What is cohesion? How are these two concepts different? What are some ways to write coherently? How about cohesively? 

II. Unity, Coherence and Cohesion Defined

Follow this link for a brief overview on what the above concepts mean, as well as some practical ways to achieve these goals. After the presentation, we will do this practice on using transition words. For a list of transition words, look here.

After we've discussed this activity, we'll do a short practice that combines the concepts of coherence and cohesion in one sample paragraph. 

III. A Strategy for Detecting and Maintaining Coherence: Word Chains 

Let's take a look at this short video that explains how word chains work and why they're a good way to help check to see if you've been coherent throughout your body paragraphs. 

Housekeeping Details and Homework for Thursday (9/19/2013)

Due Date Reminder: Your "Diagnostic Analysis Portfolio" and "Diagnostic Essay Revision" are due next Tuesday, September 24th, 2013, before class. You will submit this assignment via the SafeAssign feature on Compass 2G as one document with two titles. We will discuss how to do this in class on Thursday. 

"Writer's Help" Activity: Transitions between Sentences

Review the information in "Writer's Help" on transitions and then do the corresponding activity. As always, you must receive an 80% to get credit for the activity. 

Diagnostic Analysis Paragraph #5: write a short paragraph (no more than 300 words) that answers the following questions: what is "coherence"? What is "cohesion"? How are they related? How are the different? Why are they both important to the writing process? Finally, take your first body paragraph and try and code it for word chains. Is you paragraph coherent? Explain why or why not? When you are finished, titled your document, "DA_5_YourName" and upload it to the "Diagnostic Analysis Portfolio" in your Dropbox. The paragraph is due before our next class.