Teaching Coherence to ESL Students

Journal of Second Language Writing
11 (2002) 135±159
Teaching coherence to ESL students:

a classroom inquiry
Icy Lee*
Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Abstract
``Coherence'' is traditionally described as the relationships that link the ideas in a text to
create meaning for the readers. It is often regarded as a fuzzy concept which is dif®cult to
teach and learn. This paper describes a classroom inquiry which investigated the teaching
of coherence. In this study, coherence was de®ned in terms of a number of coherence-
creating devices, and pedagogical materials were designed accordingly to teach the concept
to a group of 16 ESL university students in Hong Kong. Data was collected from their pre-
and post-revision drafts, think-aloud protocols during revisions, as well as post-study
questionnaires and interviews. The ®ndings suggest that at the end of the explicit teaching
of coherence, students improved the coherence of their writing and directed their attention
to the discourse level of texts while revising. They also felt that the teaching of coherence
had enhanced their awareness of what effective writing should entail. The paper concludes
with insights gained from the classroom inquiry.
# 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Teaching; Coherence; ESL students
Introduction
``Coherence'' is an important quality of effective writing (Bamberg, 1984;

Richards, 1990). However, it is often considered an abstract and fuzzy concept
(Connor, 1990; Roberts & Kreuz, 1993) which is dif®cult to teach and dif®cult to
learn:
Although most teachers consider coherence an essential element of good writing,

it remains difficult to teach. Teachers acclaim its benefits, demonstrate its effects,
*
Tel.: 852-93152448 (mobile)/31244028 (R); fax: 852-31244032 (R).
E-mail address: icylee@cuhk.edu.hk (I. Lee).
1060-3743/02/$ ± see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 0 6 0 - 3 7 4 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 6 5 - 6
136 I. Lee / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 135±159
and exemplify good models, but students still do not know how to write
coherently. (Cerniglia, Medsker, & Connor, 1990, p. 229)
More recently, Grabe and Kaplan (1996) have pointed out the controversial
nature of coherence: ``There is little consensus on the matter of an overall
de®nition of coherence'' (p. 67). In the writing classroom, ESL teachers tend to
refer to ``coherence'' in abstract terms without making a systematic attempt to
explain and to teach it, saying, for instance, your writing is not coherent; your
writing lacks unity; the ideas don't hang together; the ideas are disorganised.
However, what exactly is meant by coherence? Can students improve the
coherence of their writing just by being told in vague terms that their writing
is not coherent? Should coherence be explicitly taught, and if so, how? Smagor-
insky and Smith (1998) say that ``practice and research should have a symbiotic
relationship'' (p. 5). This classroom inquiry is an attempt, for me as a teacher, to
cope with a major problem I have faced in the writing classroom, and this
provided the impetus and point of departure for the investigation.
Defining coherence
Early conceptions of coherence
Attempts to de®ne coherence can be traced to the 19th century, when the
predominant emphasis was put on sentence connections and paragraph structure.
Bain (1890), for example, de®ned coherence in terms of between-sentence
connections that create tightly-structured and autonomous paragraphs, which
are then linked together into a larger text by transition devices. Such conceptions,
however, construe coherence narrowly in terms of sentence-level connectedness
and paragraph unity rather than discourse unity. They re¯ect the major emphasis
of many ESL writing textbooks which teach sentence-level grammar rather than
coherence in a broader sense (e.g., Langan, 1996; Oshima & Hogue, 1991).
Influences of discourse analysis and textlinguistics
The emergence of studies in discourse analysis in the 1960s shifted the emphasis
of writing research from the sentence and its constituents to the larger principles of
discourse Ð namely, principles that tie sentences to one another and to the context
in which the text occurs (de Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981; McCarthy, 2001;
Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986). Textlinguistics, among the many other branches of
discourse analysis, has, in particular, broadened our understanding of the concept
of coherence. Central to textlinguistic research is the notion of ``text,'' which is a
``multidimensional construct'' conveying meaning at different levels (Grabe &
Kaplan, 1996; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Hatim & Mason, 1990; Hymes, 1972).
Grabe and Kaplan (1996) maintain that `à theory of coherence is important to any
model of text construction'' (p. 61). ``Coherence'' should, therefore, derive its
I. Lee / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 135±159 137
meaning from what a text is and how a text is constructed. It can be considered in
two different ways: as internal to the text and as internal to the reader.
Coherence as internal to the text
Coherence can be de®ned in terms of the formal properties of the text. In their
theory of ``cohesion,'' Halliday and Hasan (1976) look to the formal properties of
language in their attempts to explain ``texture,'' with which the notion of
coherence is often equated. According to Halliday and Hasan, the linguistic
signals of cohesion can help writers achieve connectivity of the surface text and
guide the reader to establish the coherent interpretation intended by the writer
(also see Halliday & Hasan, 1989). Functional Sentence Perspective (see Danes,
1974; Firbas, 1986) introduces the notion of theme and rheme (see Halliday, 1985,
1994), also referred to as given and new (Vande Kopple, 1983, 1986), or topic and
comment (Connor & Farmer, 1990; Lautamatti, 1987), and connects it to the
information structure and its relation to text coherence. From the pattern of topic-
comment progression, Lautamatti (1987) and subsequently Connor and Farmer
(1990) recommend topical structure analysis as a tool for analyzing the coherence
of writing. On the other hand, Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) describe coherence in
terms of the propositions that make up a text and the ordering of the propositions
(microstructures) to form the macrostructure of texts, creating global coherence.
Thus, coherence lies beyond the surface structure of texts often characterized by
cohesion and information structure and can be conceived in terms of the under-
lying relations that hold between assertions and how these assertions contribute to
the overall discourse topic (i.e., macrostructure). Hoey (1983, 1991) looks at both
the lexical patterns and the macrostructure (i.e., discourse organization) to explain
the coherence of texts. Other linguists have looked to some metadiscoursal
features in the texts (e.g., logical connectors, sequencers, hedges) that help
readers organize and interpret the information (e.g., Cheng & Steffensen,
1996; Crismore, Markkanen, & Steffensen, 1993) and how they contribute to
the coherence of texts. From the linguistic perspective, therefore, coherence can
be said to be internal to the text, adding to our understanding of what a text is.
Coherence as internal to the reader
Over the last two decades, research in psychology, linguistics, and applied
linguistics has focused on the role of the reader in constructing the coherence of
texts. Modern reading theories maintain that text processing is an interaction
between the reader and the text and that readers employ their knowledge of the
world (content schemata) and knowledge of text structures (formal schemata) to
make sense of a text (Carrell, 1988). Research on arti®cial intelligence has
demonstrated that we make use of conventional knowledge structures known as
scripts, frames, or schemas in organizing experience and knowledge (Dehn &
Schank, 1982). According to Bamberg (1983), these knowledge structures ``help
readers anticipate upcoming textual information, thereby enabling them to reduce

and organize the text into an understandable and coherent whole'' (p. 419). Brown
and Yule (1983) have also highlighted the role of the reader in establishing
coherence: `` . . . what the textual record means is determined by our interpretation
of what the producer intended it to mean'' (Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 25). On the
other hand, researchers in pragmatics and conversational analysis maintain that
coherence is at least partly based on the readers' ability to make inferences from
the texts, irrespective of the text structure itself (Garnham, 1985; Oakhill &
Garnham, 1988). Nonetheless, the readers' attempts at inferences in the process of
constructing textual coherence may be triggered by formal elements in the text
(Britton & Gulgoz, 1991; Singer, 1990).
While a cognitive theory of discourse supports the notion that coherence is a
matter of interaction between the text and the reader's knowledge base, another
source of the non-linguistic nature of coherence is derived from an interactional
theory of discourse. In this view, coherence is based on the readers' understanding
of the writer's intentions, the context of writing, and the relationship between the
writer and the readers. Williams (1985) states that coherence
. . . is a property ascribed to a discourse when the decoder judges that it

successfully executes the encoder's intentions and that it meets the decoder's
expectations of what the discourse should be, given his [sic] perception of the
context, goals and intentions underlying the language event. (p. 474)
Crucial to an interactional theory of coherence is a pragmatic view of discourse

predicated on Grice's (1975) Co-operative Principle Ð that is, that the writer has a
benign intention in writing and the reader intends to co-operate (also see Grundy,
1995; Hatch, 1992). Coherence is based on the writers' `ìntentionality'' and the
readers' `àcceptance'' Ð that is, text producers' and receivers' attitudes and
assumptions play a signi®cant part in determining whether a text is coherent.
Coherence, therefore, is not dependent on the properties of the texts but on ``the
extent to which effort is required to construct a reasonable plan to attribute to the
text producer in producing the text'' (Green, 1996, p. 107). Gernsbacher and Givon
(1995) maintain that ``coherence'' is a mental entity, which is a property of the mind
that interprets the text rather than a property of the text. This view of coherence is
supported by the Theory of Relevance proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1986),
which is predicated on the assumption that the readers attempt to seek relevance in
texts by comparing the information from texts to other information, thus creating
new information or rejecting old information (Verschueren, 1999). Therefore, the
reader can be regarded as an important contributor to ``coherence.'' From a non-
linguistic perspective, ``coherence'' can be said to be internal to the reader.
Therefore, coherence can be interpreted from two divergent sources Ð
linguistic and non-linguistic. Whether coherence is regarded as text-based or
reader-based, it is important to note that the writer, the text, and the readers all
interact in the construction of coherence.
Operationalizing ``coherence''
Since the classroom inquiry reported in this paper aimed to investigate the
teaching of coherence, it is crucial to de®ne ``coherence'' in more concrete terms
so that students know exactly what to do when they attempt to achieve coherence
in writing. As Grabe and Kaplan (1996) have argued, ``de®ning the concept of
coherence in some manageable way seems to be crucial to any understanding of
how texts are constructed'' (p. 76). Knowledge of coherence in writing is
particularly important for ESL learners since the concept of coherence may be
different in L1 writing. An operational de®nition of coherence which concep-
tualizes coherence in terms of a range of coherence-creating devices would
help students manageably de®ne coherence, since students need to know the
linguistic resources available to help them create coherence in writing. Based on
the literature review on the textual elements of coherence (see ``Coherence as
internal to the text''), coherence is operationally de®ned in terms of the following
features:
1. Connectivity of the surface text evidenced by the presence of cohesive
devices (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
2. An information structure which guides the reader in understanding the
text and contributes to the topical development of the text (Connor &
Farmer, 1990; Firbas, 1986; Lautamatti, 1987).
3. Connectivity of the underlying content evidenced by relations between
propositions and how these relations contribute to the overall discourse
theme and organization (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978).
4. A macrostructure with a characteristic pattern or shape appropriate to its
communicative purpose and context of situation (Hoey, 1983, 1991).
5. Reader-based writing signalled by appropriate metadiscoursal features
(Cheng & Steffensen, 1996; Crismore et al., 1993).
Such an operational de®nition also takes into account the reader's role in
constructing coherence (i.e., coherence as internal to the reader), since the above
coherence features are essentially reader-based features that sensitize the writers to
the needs of the readers (i.e., how these features like macrostructure and cohesion
can be employed to make the writing more explicit and more reader-friendly).
The classroom inquiry
The teaching of coherence
The teaching of coherence in this study was derived from the operational
de®nition above (see words in boldface). The pedagogical focuses included (1)
cohesion, (2) information distribution and topical development, (3) propositional
development and modi®cation, (4) macrostructure, and (5) metadiscourse. Since
the readers play an important role in the construction of coherence, it was felt
important to take into account reader-based factors like purpose, audience, and
context (Lee, 1998). Therefore, another topic ``Purpose, audience, and context of
situation'' was included to bring in a cognitive perspective of coherence. Also, the
sequence of presenting the coherence topics was considered, and it was decided
that the teaching should begin with the macro-elements (e.g., purpose, context,
macrostructure) and then move on to the micro-elements of writing (e.g.,
cohesion and metadiscourse). In the study, the coherence topics were taught
in the following sequence (see Lee, 1998 for further explanation of the topics):
1. Purpose, audience, and context of situation Ð i.e., how explicitness of
purpose and awareness of audience and context contribute to coherence.
2. Macrostructure Ð i.e., overall structure of texts.
3. Information distribution and topical development Ð i.e., how information
can be best organized (e.g., given-new) to contribute to overall topic
development.
4. Propositional development and modification Ð i.e., how propositions can
be made more explicit by means of elaboration, illustration, exemplifica-
tion, etc.
5. Cohesion Ð i.e., reference, substitution, conjunctions, etc.
6. Metadiscourse Ð i.e., certainty markers, topicalizers, announcements,
attitude markers, etc.
De®ning coherence as a list of features in the way it was done in this study is
considered bene®cial in at least two ways. First, with a list of coherence features, a
text analysis approach can be used to teach coherence and to sensitize students to
the coherence-creating devices used by writers in texts. Through text analysis,
students can examine the uses of particular linguistic structures, transition
devices, information structure, etc., and how these features function in the context
of the entire text. Second, pedagogical materials to teach coherence can be based
on problematic realizations of the coherence features, i.e., (`ìnadequate textua-
lizations''; Coulthard, 1994, p. 2) to help students understand better the nature of
successful textualizations (i.e., how coherence can be better achieved).
Instructional context and procedure
The students who participated in the classroom inquiry were 16 ®rst-year

students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU). The teaching of
coherence was incorporated into the English Communication Skills (ECS) course1
1
Ideally the classroom investigation should have been conducted in a writing class. However, at
the time of the study, the ESL writing programme in HKPU was not yet in place. The ECS course
was selected mainly because there was a good fit between the objectives of the study (i.e., teaching
coherence) and those of the ECS course (i.e., teaching study skills and speaking, listening, reading,
and writing English). For example, understanding propositional relations and organizing information
are laid down as two important objectives of the writing component of the ECS course.
in which they were enrolled. These 16 students belonged to the same ECS class
taught by the teacher±researcher (the other two ECS classes were not taught by the
teacher±researcher). The students, all aged between 18 and 23, speak Cantonese as
their ®rst language. When they entered the university, they had had about 16±17
years of exposure to English Ð English as a subject in pre-school (for 3±4 years) and
primary school (for 6 years), and English as a subject and/or as the medium of
learning in the secondary school (for 7 years). Before their entry into university, all
of them took the Use of English (UE) examination of the Hong Kong Advanced
Supplementary Level Examination (HKASL) held by the Hong Kong Examinations
Authority (HKEA). Research conducted by the HKEA has shown that a pass (i.e.,
Grade E) in the HKASL UE examination is approximately equivalent to a score of
515 on the internationally recognized Test of English as a Foreign Language
(TOEFL) (see HKEA, 1993). Fourteen out of the sixteen students attained D or E in
UE (E is the passing grade), and the majority (12) attained a Grade D for the writing
component. It can, therefore, be concluded that this was a relatively homogenous
group of students whose general English and writing pro®ciency were rather low.
The teaching of coherence was based on a package of pedagogical materials
designed around each of the six topics described above. The instruction, which
lasted about 42 hour,2 was interspersed with other focuses on the ECS course (i.e.,
speaking, listening, reading, and study skills), which totaled 112 hour. There was
a break after each coherence topic so that students could focus on other language
skills such as speaking and listening. For each of the six coherence topics a similar
instructional procedure was adopted, which consisted of four episodes:
1. Introduction to coherence topic: The students were introduced to the
coherence topic by means of tasks involving them in discussion to
stimulate their interest in the topic. Then explicit explanations on the topic
were provided to prepare them for the subsequent tasks described below.
For example, in ``purpose, audience, and context of situation'' students
were asked to read a text and discuss whether the text was coherent. From
their discussion, issues relating to purpose, audience, and context of
situation and how these could affect the coherence of writing were brought
up and explained.
2. Reading handouts about the coherence topic: Then students were given a
set of handouts on the specific coherence topic to read in class. The
purpose of the handout was to consolidate students' understanding of the
topic taught. Also, unfamiliar metalinguistic terms were explained and
illustrated with examples.
3. Coherence awareness-raising tasks: This formed the major part of the
pedagogy. Students were engaged in a range of coherence awareness-
2
The breakdown is as follows: 4 hour on ``purpose, audience, and context of situation''; 10 hour on
``macrostructure''; 10 hour on `ìnformation distribution and topical development''; 8 hour on
``propositional development and modification''; 5 hour on ``cohesion''; and 5 hour on ``metadiscourse.''
raising tasks, essentially mini text analysis tasks, during which they applied
the concept learnt. These tasks involved mainly reading and text analysis,
and occasionally some follow-up writing or rewriting. For instance, a
coherence awareness-raising task on the topic ``cohesion'' might involve
students in reading a text, analyzing the cohesive features, and revising the
text so as to improve its cohesion. I played the role of facilitator and helper
when students were working on these awareness-raising tasks.
4. Follow-up writing practice: This stage allowed students to apply the
coherence concept learnt independently in their own writing. Students
were given a topic on which to write or were asked to revise a previous
draft, paying specific attention to the coherence topic(s) hitherto taught.
The above instructional steps were repeated for each coherence topic taught. All
together, students wrote four essays. The number of essays and essay topics (see
Appendix A) were prescribed by the course leader to make sure that all students in
this study (three ECS classes) had the same written assignments. Since students
were required to write on four topics and there were six instructional topics, it was
decided that students would write 10 drafts (i.e., they revised two essays two times
and the other two three times), so that the revision of a draft could be preceded by
the input of a new topic (i.e., topic 1 taught before draft 2 of Essay 1; topic 2 before
draft 2 of Essay 2; topic 3 before draft 3 of Essay 2; topic 4 before draft 2 of Essay
3; topic 5 before draft 2 of Essay 4; and topic 6 before draft 3 of Essay 4).
Research questions
This classroom investigation sought to answer three research questions from

the product, process, and student perception perspectives:
1. Did students' writing show improvement in coherence during the study?
2. Did students display an awareness of coherence in their revision processes
during the study?
3. What were students' views of the teaching and learning of coherence and
writing at the end of the study?
Methods of data collection and analysis
In this study, three sources of data were used to answer the research questions
regarding the teaching of coherence:
1. Product data Ð students' pre- and post-revision texts collected during the
study.
2. Process data Ð students' think-aloud protocols when they were revising
their texts during the study.
3. Perception data Ð students' evaluation questionnaires and interviews at
the end of the study.
While all 16 students completed the pre- and post-revision tasks as a require-
ment of the ECS course, the protocols were not made compulsory for the students.
This was mainly a decision based on the result of the pilot study that preceded this
classroom investigation, which aimed to try out some pedagogical materials and
research instruments designed for the study. One signi®cant ®nding that emerged
from the pilot study was that students resisted the idea of think-aloud protocols,
since each time they were required to perform think-aloud protocols, a number of
students skipped classes to avoid the procedure. Therefore, it was felt that inviting
volunteers to perform the protocol outside class time would be in students' best
interest. Unlike traditional research, in teacher research, pragmatism may some-
times be necessary to maintain `à ®t between teacher needs and student needs in
the research process'' (Baumann, Bisplinghoff, & Allen, 1997, p. 136). Due to
attrition, complete protocol data was collected from only four students who
volunteered to perform the protocols (in total seven students volunteered).
Pseudonyms are used when referring to these four students; they are Alfred,
Berta, Carly, and Thomas. In the study, in-depth analysis was carried out using
data collected from these four students.
Product data
The ®rst and ®nal drafts produced by Alfred, Berta, Carly, and Thomas were
selected for in-depth data analysis.3 Two kinds of data analysis were applied to the
drafts. First, ``topical structure analysis'' was used to ®nd out if students improved
the coherence of their writing between drafts. There is research evidence to show
that topical structure is a useful indicator of coherence in writing and that more
coherent texts tend to rely less on sequential progressions and more on parallel
progressions (see Connor & Farmer, 1990; Witte, 1983a, 1983b). An independent
reader read a random selection of each of the students' texts and identi®ed the
sentence topics of the texts, and these sentence topics were compared with my
own analyses. Perfect agreement was reached 78% of the time, and the differences
were resolved in conference. Second, three independent raters, all experienced
ESL teachers, read the pre- and post-revision drafts and compared them blindly
for overall coherence, using the Coherence Scoring Guide I developed and piloted
together with the raters. The raters were asked to indicate which draft was better in
terms of overall coherence. For essays where three drafts were produced, it was
decided that only the ®rst and ®nal drafts would be used in order to get quick,
impressionistic feedback from the raters as to which draft was more coherent,
taking into account factors like time and fatigue if three drafts were used. The data
collected from these raters was triangulated with the text analysis data based on
the same drafts (i.e., ®rst and ®nal).
3
All final drafts produced by the 16 students were subjected to coherence rating by experienced
English teachers to find out if students improved in overall coherence from the first to the last essay.
These results, however, are not presented in this paper.
Protocol data
The six protocols (one for Essay 1, two for Essay 2, one for Essay 3, and two for
Essay 4) produced by each of the four students while they were revising (i.e., a
total of 24) were translated (where Cantonese was used), transcribed, and coded.
The coding scheme contains 14 categories, which include the coherence topics
covered in the lessons, as well as others which arose from the data (see Table 1).
The data was coded according to the major concern expressed by the students,
either an explicitly expressed concern (e.g., Just a moment. New information
comes ®rst, after old information Ð concern with information distribution) or an
implicit concern observed from the student's remark (e.g., Then leave out ``people
get divorce.'' In its place, use ``they'' instead Ð concern with ``cohesion''). An
independent reader coded a random selection of each of the students' protocols,
and 90% agreement was reached. Differences were discussed and resolved with
the independent reader. Table 1 summarizes the 14 categories of concerns
Table 1
Concerns (with examples) expressed during students' think-aloud protocols
Coherence-related concerns Examples extracted from protocols
Purpose This sentence does not seem to be useful because there's no need
to introduce myself. State the purpose of writing this letter clearly.
Main idea The theme Ð This is the first time I'm writing to you and maybe
you do now know who I am. But I am writing to tell you
something about my ideal university life.
Audience How can I shorten the distance between myself and the reader?
Context of situation I want to put in something that would make it sound like an article
you see from a woman magazine. What would that be?
Macrostructure This should be put at the front . . . following teenage marriage. Let
me change the order; the second paragraph should be about
reluctant parenthood, and the third unemployment.
Information distribution Just a moment. New information comes later, after old information.
Propositions The length of the book is short. How short? You need to support
your statement.
Cohesion Then leave out ``people get divorce.'' In its place, use ``they''
instead.
Metadiscourse Furthermore, first to put a rhetorical question, eliciting the
reader's own views.
Content The second paragraph talks about why I recommend this book,
and it's because of vocabulary.
Language use I think an ideal university life should include several aspects. Use
`àspects,'' or `ìnclude several things'' Ð which is better? OK.
Use `àspects.''
Syntax Combine two sentences into one.
Mechanics According to Confucianism Ð C-o-n-f-u-c-i-a-n-i-s-m. . . .
Length (paragraph or essay) As my essay is about 400 words, I think I have to delete a lot to
about 200 words.
expressed by students, giving examples extracted from the protocol data to

illustrate the meaning of each category.
Perception data
All 16 students completed an evaluation questionnaire (see Appendix B)

at the end of the study. The questionnaire served the overall purpose of
evaluating the teaching of coherence in the course. In order to obtain as
much truthful data as possible, students ®lled out the questionnaires
anonymously. For the purpose of this study, only the data from questions 4
and 5 were used. A group interview (see Appendix C for interview guide) was
also conducted with the four students selected for in-depth analysis to ®nd out
their views about the teaching and learning of coherence and writing. The aim
was to provide additional information about the four students selected for in-
depth analysis and to shed light on ``student perceptions'' in the study. The
interview was semi-structured and conducted in a mixture of Cantonese
and English. The Cantonese data was translated into English. In this paper,
the interview data regarding students' dif®culties in applying the coherence
principles learnt (i.e., question 3 in the interview guide Ð see Appendix C)
is presented.
Results and discussion
This section reports and discusses the ®ndings, and, where appropriate, the data
is supported by samples of students' writing.
Product data: students' pre- and post-revision texts
Table 2 presents the results of topical structure analysis, comparing the

sentences per sentence topic of the pre- and post-revision drafts written by
the four students. The results show that in 12 out of 16 texts (i.e., 75%), the ®nal
drafts contain more sentences per sentence topic than the ®rst drafts Ð the
Table 2
Comparing sentences per sentence topic in pre- and post-revision drafts
Essay 1 Essay 2 Essay 3 Essay 4
D1 D2 D1 D3 D1 D2 D1 D3
Alfred 2.14 2.14 3.5 3.8 (8%) 2.75 5.25 (48%) 2.4 3.17 (24%)
Berta 2.8 3.0 (7%) 4.14 6.2 (33%) 2.71 3.29 (18%) 4 4
Carly 1.77 (12%) 1.55 2.75 3.18 (12%) 2.23 2.33 (13%) 2.3 2.44 (6%)
Thomas 1.78 2.30 (23%) 2.0 2.0 3.0 4.5 (33%) 2.38 3.5 (52%)
D1: draft 1; D2: draft 2; D3: draft 3.

average is 21.3%. On average, the pre-revision drafts contain 2.67 sentences per
sentence topic, while the post-revision drafts have 3.29 sentences per sentence
topic. The results therefore suggest that in post-revision texts, students elaborated
on the sentence topics more than the pre-revision texts and, thus, were more likely
to produce coherent writing. Students also relied less heavily on sequential
progressions, and, as a result, they were likely to produce writing which had a
clearer topical focus and, hence, was more coherent (see Witte, 1983a, 1983b).
The following example shows Carly's effort at elaboration of the sentence topic
in her revised draft on the topic of ``divorce'' in Essay 2 (sentence topics are
underlined):
Original draft Revised draft

It is disheartening to find It is disheartening to find that the divorce rate
that the divorce rate in in Hong Kong is rising dramatically. This is
Hong Kong is rising typically a phenomenon of the changing view
dramatically. This situation towards divorce. It is mainly caused by the
can't be blamed on only rise of women status and the easy divorce
one factor. process.
Table 3 presents the results of the independent readers' judgments of the pre-
and post-revision drafts, which can be used to triangulate with the topical structure
analysis data. The percentages of agreement among the three readers are in
parentheses. The results suggest that in 14 out of 16 essays (i.e., 87.5%), students
improved the overall coherence after revisions. When juxtaposed with the data
gathered from topical structure analysis (see Table 2), the results consistently
show that students improved in coherence in the same post-revision drafts, except
in two essays which have the same number of sentences per sentence topic
(Thomas's Essay 2 and Berta's Essay 4 Ð see Table 2).
Below are the ®rst three paragraphs of Alfred's drafts of Essay 4 (see Appendix
D for full drafts) to illustrate his improvement in terms of coherence criteria
such as information distribution, use of cohesive devices (e.g., connectives
and pronouns), explicitness of propositions, etc. In this essay students were
Table 3
Independent readers' coherence judgments of pre- and post-revision drafts
Essay 1 Essay 2 Essay 3 Essay 4
D1 D2 D1 D3 D1 D2 D1 D3
Alfred Better (100%) Better (66.7%) Better (66.7%) Better (100%)

Berta Better (100%) Better (66.7%) Better (100%) Better (100%)
Carly Better (100%) Better (66.7%) Better (66.7%) Better (100%)
Thomas Better (66.7%) Better (100%) Better (100%) Better (100%)
D1: draft 1; D2: draft 2; D3: draft 3.

asked to write a letter to the local newspaper to express their views of the fur
industry.
Alfred's pre-revision draft Alfred's post-revision draft

(1) I want to give my response (1) It is commonly believed that
towards those animal rights fur trade is cruel and inhumane.
groups who regard fur trade as a However, I cannot be convinced
cruel and inhumane trade. because the arguments of animal
rights groups are invalid for me.
(2) They commonly argue that killing (2) Those groups indicate that killing
animals for fur is brutal. Animal animals for fur is brutal which not
rights are disregarded. Animals have concerns animal rights. Animals have
the right to live just as the same as the right to live just as the same as
human beings. Their opinions sound human beings. Those opinions sound
nice but is it the true story? nice but do they hold the same
standard for all animals?
(3) Killing, regardless of human beings (3) Killing, no matter which species
or animals, are no doubt savage. So, of animal are, is no doubt savage.
we can't only concern those animals Those groups should not only oppose
making fur. Those group should stop killing of animals for making fur but
eating meat and go to protest against also for eating such as cows, pigs and
killing of cattle such as cow, pig and sheep. Why do they oppose killing
sheep. They all have their right to live, animals selectively?
not to be killed. Why killing these
livestock is humane while killing
others for fur is not?
In his post-revision draft, Alfred improved the opening by re-arranging the

information about fur trade being cruel and inhumane, putting it at the very
beginning to serve as background information for the topic, which asked students
to express their views of the fur industry. Then he stated his stance on the issue
categorically, using the connective However to link the ®rst two sentences. In the
second paragraph of the post-revision draft, Alfred used Those groups to replace
They, which renders the reference clearer. The rhetorical question in the second
paragraph of the post-revision draft, compared with that of the pre-revision draft,
conveys the idea of the writer more clearly: Those opinions sound nice but do they
hold the same standard for all animals? The question do they hold the same
standard for all animals? improves the vagueness in is it the true story? in the pre-
revision draft. It shows that Alfred was able to make the original proposition more
explicit for the readers. Interestingly, while Alfred tended to lengthen the proposi-
tions in the ®rst two paragraphs to make explicit his purpose of writing and to
elaborate on ideas (which might give the impression that the post-revision draft is
more dif®cult to read), in the third paragraph, he condensed the information in the
pre-revision draft to make his ideas more direct and relevant to the topic. In the ®rst
sentence of the third paragraph, for example, he deleted the idea of killing human
beings as it is not relevant to the following example about killing cows, pigs, and
sheep. In the third paragraph of the pre-revision draft, Alfred digressed from killing
in sentence 1 to concern for animals in sentence 2, and then to eating in sentence 3.
In his post-revision draft, however, he developed the sentence topic of killing in the
®rst sentence by attacking the double standard of the animal rights groups in his
second sentence: Those groups should not only oppose killing of animals for
making fur but also for eating such as cows, pigs and sheep. He continued with the
idea of killing in the last sentence: Why do they oppose killing animals selectively?
Overall the third paragraph in the post-revision draft is clearer than that in the pre-
revision draft, and hence more coherent. The full drafts in Appendix D will show
that other attempts at revisions in Alfred's post-revision draft have rendered the
essay more coherent than the pre-revision draft.
Overall, the results gathered from topical structure analysis and the indepen-
dent readers seem to indicate improvement in coherence at the end of instruction.
Hence, the answer to the ®rst research question posed earlier, whether students
improved the coherence of their writing during the study, is af®rmative.
Process data: students' protocols
A total of 425 concerns were expressed in the six protocols produced by the
four students, of which 167 concerns (39.3%) were about coherence. Although the
data does not indicate a gradual increase in the percentage of coherence-related
concerns from the ®rst to the last protocol, the ®ndings do suggest that coherence
was a signi®cant concern throughout the students' revision processes (the
percentages of coherence-related concerns ranging from 23.5 to 46.5%). Results
in Table 4 consistently indicate that students showed increased awareness of a
particular facet of coherence after instruction. For example, 11 concerns out of 33
coherence concerns (i.e., 33.3%) were expressed about ``macrostructure'' after
instruction, but there was no concern about ``macrostructure'' before instruction.
This could be because ``macrostructure'' was an unfamiliar concept to students
Table 4
Students' coherence concerns during think-aloud protocols
Coherence topics Before instruction After instruction
Purpose, audience, and context of situation NA (not measured) 14 out of 30 (46.7%)

Macrostructure 3 out of 30 (10%) 11 out of 33 (33.3%)
Information distribution 0 out of 33 (0%) 11 out of 32 (34.4%)
Propositional development and modification 11 out of 32 (34.4%) 8 out of 16 (50%)
Cohesion 2 out of 16 (12.5%) 18 out of 38 (47.4%)
Metadiscourse 3 out of 38 (7.9%) 2 out of 18 (11.1%)
before instruction. The same can be said for `ìnformation distribution,'' which was
one of the students' coherence concerns after instruction. The percentages before
and after instruction for ``propositional development and modi®cation'' are 34.4%
(11 out of 32) and 50% (8 out of 16), respectively; for ``cohesion'' 12.5% (2 out of
16) and 47.4% (18 out of 38), respectively; and for ``metadiscourse'' 7.9% (3 out of
38) and 11.1% (2 out of 18), respectively. On the whole, the data suggests that
instruction could have a direct effect on students' revision processes.
In the previous section on product data, Alfred's drafts were used to illustrate
the improvement in coherence. Below is some protocol data from the same
student to supplement the product data, which illustrates his concerns with
coherence while revising the same essay (i.e., Essay 4 on fur industry). In
revising the introductory paragraph, in his think-aloud, Alfred said,
Oops! Am I digressing? How could I have not noticed it earlier? Your views of
the fur industry [reading from essay topic] . . . totally off target! What should I
do? My views of the fur industry Ð don't know what do. What am I supposed to
do? Obviously, I am digressing as it is, definitely off the mark, right from the
introduction. How about going like this: I can't be convinced . . . animal rights
groups . . . they can't convince me that fur trade is a cruel trade. I think a lot of
people are cruel themselves, but . . . I can't be convinced. Anything else? They
commonly believed . . . commonly believed that fur trade . . . is cruel. However
. . . what contrasts what here? Not everyone believes that. Take me. I can't be
convinced that it is so, because . . . I find . . . because . . . the argument . . . the
argument from those animal rights groups . . . invalid for me. The argument . . .
the argument of animal right groups . . . are invalid for me.
When revising the introduction of the draft, Alfred realised that he had not paid
suf®cient attention to the key words in the essay topic (i.e., your views about the
fur industry), which would probably be a criterion for measuring coherence. In his
pre-revision draft, he began with I want to give my response towards those animal
right groups who regard fur trade as a cruel and inhumane trade; the focus is put
on animal right groups. During revision, he realised that the emphasis in the
statement of purpose was misplaced, and so he revised it substantially by giving
some background information about the subject of fur industry and then stating
his stance explicitly. When he was reading the second paragraph, he said:
They commonly argue that killing animals for fur is brutal Ð animal rights are
disregarded. They have the right to live just . . . they . . . they have the right . . . used
they to refer to animal rights groups? Better use animal rights groups. Do it later.
The protocol data shows that Alfred was concerned with the use of cohesion to
link ideas between the ®rst two paragraphs. In the ®nal draft, Alfred in fact
changed animal right groups to those groups and used it to begin the second
paragraph. Nonetheless, it was an improvement over ``they'' as the reference is
clearer. Later, he said:
Their opinions sound nice . . . but is it the true story? Is it true? They say it isn't
fair, but often hold a double standard. Let me see. Their opinions are basically
good, but do they hold the same standard for all animals? Yes, do they hold the
same standard for all animals? Done.
Alfred was examining the proposition is it the true story and was thinking aloud
to elaborate on it. He thought of the ``double standard'' of animal rights groups
and so modi®ed the proposition to do they hold the same standard for all animals?
The revised proposition pinpoints the double standard Alfred expressed in his
protocol, which supplements and complements the product data presented earlier.
When he came to the third paragraph, Alfred revised his opening proposition to
make it more relevant to the topic. In his protocol, he said, Killing, regardless of
human beings or animals, are no doubt savage. I'll say apart from those killed for
fur, there are other animals killed for some things we need. Don't mention human
beings Ð leave it out completely. Alfred realized that he should be referring to the
killing of animals, not humans, and so he decided to delete human beings from the
original sentence, thus modifying the original proposition. Alfred was aware of the
need to be relevant by deleting redundancies in the next sentence in the same
paragraph: So we can't only concern those animals making fur. This is a redun-
dancy. . . . It's redundant. In another place in the same paragraph, Alfred said, They
all have their right to live, not to be killed. This is a tautology. Redundant. The
previous sentence says more or less the same thing. Alfred was also concerned with
the importance of maintaining the topical focus of the paragraph: Those group
should stop eating meat and go to protest against killing of cattle such as cow, pig
and sheep. No, don't say it like this Ð they don't really have to make a protest. In the
post-revision draft, he dropped the idea of stop eating meat and protest against
killing of cattle and came up with a neater sentence with killing animals as his
topical focus: Those groups should not only oppose killing of animals for making fur
but also for eating such as cows, pigs and sheep. Alfred's protocol data suggests that
he paid close attention to the topical focus when he was revising the third paragraph.
Overall, the protocol data suggests that students showed awareness of different
aspects of coherence during revision. To answer the second research question
about whether students displayed an awareness of coherence in their revision
processes, the ®ndings suggest that, during the study, students were concerned
with coherence during revision, and they tended to pay attention to the aspects of
coherence taught prior to revisions.
Perception data: students' questionnaires and interview
In response to the question, What do you know now about `èffective writing''4
compared with when you ®rst started the course? students' responses suggest that
4
At the beginning of the course, the students were asked what they understood to be `èffective
writing.'' All of them said ``grammatical accuracy'' was the most important, and the next was
``vocabulary.'' When asked about ``coherence,'' all said that it was an alien concept to them.
they have broadened their awareness of what ``good writing'' entails. ``Good
writing,'' at the end of the study, is described in terms of organization (by one
student), reader-friendliness (by three students), coherence (by ®ve students),
multi-facetedness (by two students), etc. One student wrote in the response, for
example, Started the course Ð write a essay without grammatical problems. Now
also include the coherence of the essay. Another student remarked, Before taking
the course, I believed that effective writing must be supported by many things,
such as a wide range of vocabulary, hard sentence structure. . . . Now, I learn that
there are many fundamental knowledge to be improved in order to write a good
essay. The protocol data does indicate students paid attention not only to grammar
but also to different aspects of coherence, such as clarity of purpose and linkage
between propositions. Also, some students felt that they had learnt more concrete
ideas about how they could go about their writing: There is a much more clearer
picture to show me that what's `èffective writing.'' At the very beginning, I just
don't know the way to improve my writing. I don't know what's needed to
improved, although I knew I had to. Thus, it is plausible that the teaching of
coherence has broadened students' views of ``good writing.'' One caveat, how-
ever, is that some students seemed to think that good writing is equivalent to
incorporating the six coherence features taught in the study. For instance, one
student wrote, I think good or effective writing should have the six topics which
this term learn. Another remarked similarly, Effective writing should include all
the topics I learnt in the course. If this teaching of coherence were to be done
again, methods would need to be found to steer students away from such a limited
and potentially limiting view of writing. Another caveat is that students might
have given positive remarks to please the teacher, despite the fact that they did not
have to disclose their names on the questionnaires.
In response to the question, Have the lessons on coherence helped you write
better? In what ways? Explain,5 six students answered that the lessons on
coherence helped them write better (e.g., I think I can write better than before).
These students possibly felt empowered by the explicit teaching of coherence.
Eleven students said that their awareness of various aspects of writing had been
raised as a result of the teaching. For example, one student remarked on the use of
``connectives'': I now use every word with a higher awareness. I won't use
connective to ®ll the gap of my mind and I won't say something without support.
Another student wrote, I am more aware of what I am writing. Similarly, Alfred's
protocol data suggests that during revision he was aware of the importance of
maintaining the topical focus, taking out irrelevancies, and elaborating on
propositions in writing. One student pointed out speci®cally that the instruction
provided students with more `òptions'': I think the topics provide us with more
options and choices for us to do better in our writing. Leki (1996) believes that
some ESL students feel that ``their only sense of security comes from what they
5
This question attempted to shed further light on the informal feedback the teacher±researcher
collected from students during the study, which was, on the whole, very favorable.
have learned about grammar'' (p. 34). In his study of ESL students' perceptions of
L1 and L2 writing, Silva (1992) quotes one Chinese student's perception about L2
writing: `Ìt seems that the grammar is the only tool that I can use in writing
English essays'' (p. 34). However, in this study, at least some students felt that they
could focus on other things in writing, such as ``metadiscourse'' and `ìnformation
distribution.'' This was, to some extent, con®rmed in the protocol data. On the
whole, the results may suggest that the lessons on coherence have succeeded, to
some extent, in providing students with strategies for writing in addition to
``grammar.'' This result is encouraging, especially because research has indicated
that, in writing, ESL students focus almost exclusively on the word and sentence
levels rather than the level of the whole discourse (Bamberg, 1984; Ferris &
Hedgecock, 1998). Nonetheless, at the end of the study, some students might still
focus a great deal on the accuracy of writing, as seen from the following comment:
After the lessons, I know how to limit mistake in writing. Another student stated,
I'll put more emphasis on proofreading my text. One student thought that the
lessons were not very useful in effecting a change: But I still ®nd that it is dif®cult
to write a text to ful®ll these elements of coherence. Only one other student seemed
to agree: Frankly, not very much, for it's hard to change my style. Most of the time,
I simply pick up my pen and write, thinking little of whether it is coherent or not.
To ®nd out why the application of coherence principles might be dif®cult for
students, in the group interview, Alfred, Berta, Carly, and Thomas were asked to
talk about the dif®culties they encountered in applying the coherence principles
taught. The ®ndings show that Berta and Carly did not ®nd the principles dif®cult
to apply. Alfred said that he tried to apply them, but sometimes he could not
decide what to use. Thomas confessed that he did not always apply the principles
because he focused mainly on grammar. Both Thomas and Berta said that
``language pro®ciency'' was a factor which in¯uenced the application of the
coherence principles. They felt hamstrung by a weak command of grammar and
vocabulary in attempting to create coherence in writing. Carly thought that some
coherence topics were dif®cult to apply (e.g., metadiscourse). She also pointed
out ``text type'' and `èssay topic'' as possible factors which might affect the
application of the coherence principles taught (i.e., when the text type and essay
topic were less familiar, such as the magazine article and topic on the fur
industry). The teacher±researcher felt that some of the students' points were
valid. Since the pedagogical focus of the ECS course was on speaking, listening,
reading, and study skills as well as coherence, not much time was left speci®cally
for grammar and vocabulary in the lessons. This may explain why Thomas and
Berta felt that their attempts to create coherence were hampered by their weak
command of language. In the study, the coherence features were presented as
generalized principles not linked to speci®c text types and topics. For example,
students were asked to write a personal letter, a magazine article, a book review,
and a letter to the newspaper editor. However, the coherence lessons were not tied
in with the requirements of these different text types, and, in particular, the
emphasis was not on how the coherence elements function in these genres. It would
have been more useful if students were shown how coherence would function
differently in different genres rather than learn it as some generalized principles.
To answer the ®nal research question about what students thought about the
teaching and learning of coherence and writing, students seemed to have
broadened their understanding of writing and felt that the teaching of coherence
had equipped them with various resources to go about their writing.
Limitations
A number of limitations of the study have to be noted. First, the coherence lessons
had their own shortcomings. Due to the heavy academic focus, students, at times,
found the lessons boring and overwhelming because they expected something less
academic from an English Communications Skills class. It was unfortunate that a
more appropriate site, such as a writing program speci®cally designed for upgrad-
ing students' writing pro®ciency, could not be found for the purpose of the study.
Second, in the study the essay topics were not directly related to the input in the
lessons, so students might have dif®culty applying the principles to speci®c text
types. Further, students engaged in peer reviews during the revision process without
getting a great deal of input from the teacher. However, it seems that students
probably need more teacher feedback to help them revise their drafts to improve
their coherence. Finally, in a single case study like this classroom inquiry (and in the
absence of a control group), the ®ndings cannot be generalized, but are speci®c to
the particular group of students and to the speci®c context described in the study.
Suggestions for further research
In this study, coherence was taught to a group of university students in a Hong

Kong university where English is learnt as a second/foreign language. Future
research could investigate the effects of teaching coherence in other contexts,
especially with students of different levels of language pro®ciency. An experimental
or quasi-experimental study could be conducted to ®nd out whether any causal
relationship between coherence instruction and students' writing can be identi®ed.
Second, it would be interesting to ®nd out how teaching coherence could be geared
toward different text types instead of being presented as generalized principles, so
that students could be provided with speci®c help to understand how coherence
conventions vary with different genres. Third, given the importance of grammar in
writing as well as the students' felt need to work on grammar, the relationship
between the teaching of coherence and grammar provides another interesting area
for future research. It would be useful to ®nd out how grammar can be exploited in
the teaching of coherence to enhance the effectiveness of writing instruction,
instead of focusing on ``coherence'' exclusively, as in this study. Finally, to shed
light on why ``coherence'' continues to be a dif®cult concept for ESL students,
it would be worthwhile to conduct in-depth case studies to ®nd out what actually
occurs in the minds of the writers as they employ coherence-creating mechanisms in
writing (e.g., the factors that govern their choice of coherence features, the
dif®culties they encounter, and how they perceive ``coherence'' while writing).
Further research could be carried out to explore coherence as a property of the mind
of the writers through think-aloud protocols and post-writing conferences.
Conclusion
This classroom inquiry began with a quest for a better understanding of

coherence, which was operationalized in terms of a number of coherence-creating
features. Coherence was then taught based on these features, and as a result of the
®ndings gathered from the study, insights were gained to help the teacher±
researcher re-examine coherence as a pedagogical concept. Indeed, the classroom
research has demonstrated that coherence need not be a fuzzy and elusive concept;
it can be understood, taught, learnt, and practiced in the classroom.
Appendix A. Essay topics
1. Write an anonymous letter to a classmate telling him or her about your

`ìdeal university life.'' Your letter will be randomly given to a classmate
who will read it and try to ®nd out who you are. Begin your letter with
``Dear classmate,'' and sign it with `À classmate of yours.''
(The students wrote the letter in the first week of the course.)
2. Write an article for a local women's magazine on the title ``Divorce in
Hong Kong.''
(The students wrote the article after a series of integrated skills lessons
on the topic of dating and marriage.)
3. Read a novel during term break and write a review. Say whether you
would recommend the book to a friend or not, and why
(The students wrote the book review during term break.)
4. Write a letter to the South China Morning Post expressing your views
about the fur industry.
(The students wrote the letter after they had watched a video about the
fur industry and had some discussion about the topic afterwards.)
Appendix B. Post-study evaluation questionnaire
In the course, you have learnt about six topics relating to coherence:
Purpose, audience, and context of situation.
Macrostructure.
Information distribution and topical development.
Propositional development and modification.

Cohesion.
Metadiscourse.
Try to re¯ect on what you have learnt and answer the following questions. You
don't have to write your name.
1. Rank the six topics in terms of their usefulness by putting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and
6 in the blanks provided (1 being the most useful and 6 the least useful).
2. Explain why the one you selected as ``1'' is the most useful.
3. Explain why the one you selected as ``6'' is the least useful.
4. What do you know now about `èffective writing'' compared with when
you first started the course?
5. Have the lessons on ``coherence'' helped you write better? In what ways?
Explain.
Appendix C. Interview guide
The interview guide consists of the following:

What are students' views of the role of language accuracy and coherence in
writing?
What do students think of the metalinguistic terms used in the coherence
lessons?
What difficulties, if any, did students encounter in attempting to create
coherence in writing?
What do students think of their own writing (overall quality, coherence, etc.)?
Appendix D. Alfred's pre- and post-revision drafts of Essay 4
Topic: Write a letter to the Editor of the South China Morning Post expressing
your views of the fur industry. (300 words)
D.1. Pre-revision draft
I want to give my response towards those animal rights groups who regard fur
trade as a cruel and inhumane trade.
They commonly argue that killing animals for fur is brutal. Animal rights are
disregarded. Animals have the right to live just as the same as human beings. Their
opinions sound nice but is it the true story?
Killing, regardless of human beings or animals, are no doubt savage. So, we
can't only concern those animals making fur. Those group should stop eating meat
and go to protest against killing of cattle such as cow, pig and sheep. They all have
their right to live, not to be killed. Why killing these livestock is humane while
killing others for fur is not?
Considering animal rights again, have you set up a cage to catch mouse? Why
mouse should be caught and others should not? What I query is which species are
animal which have right? Why some animals can be killed and some are not?
The only answer I can get is a double standard. Those animal rights group kill
animals on one hand and blame the others do so. Ha! Ha! What a big joke.
I suppose one day, the fur production will be regarded as necessity, not luxury if
all can afford these fur clothes. Meats from cow, sheep and pig are cheap enough
for all to buy and eat. Everyone do the same and it regards as necessity. However,
this is untrue since those dietitians and vegetarians are all alive. When everyone
can afford fur, no one will oppose to it because everyone do the same and so
there's nothing wrong. The reasons why people oppose to it is that still few people
can afford this. When everyone can afford this, fur will be just the same as cotton.
I hope those animal rights group should make a more reasonable argument to
urge for the ban of the fur trade.
D.2. Post-revision draft
It is commonly believed that the fur trade is cruel and inhumane. However, I
cannot be convinced because the arguments of animal right groups are invalid for
me.
Those groups indicate that killing animals for fur is brutal which not concerns
animal rights. Animals have the right to live just as the same as human beings.
Those opinions sound nice but do they hold the same standard for all animals?
Killing, no matter which species of animal are, is no doubt savage. Those
groups should not only oppose killing of animals for making fur but also for eating
such as cows, pigs and sheep. Why do they oppose killing animals selectively?
What's more, have the people of those groups eaten any meat from cows, pigs
and sheep? Why should these animals be killed for eating while the animals for
making fur should not? Are those groups living by a double standard? Those
groups show their opposition towards the fur industry which kills certain species
of animal but keep silent when others kill other species. Therefore, can this
argument, protecting animal rights, be justi®ed?
One will still argue that killing animals for fur is a luxury while animals for
eating is a necessity. So, the industry should be stopped. However, since dietitians
and vegetarians who do not eat animals are all alive, meat from animals are a
necessity. It is a luxury instead. Thus, this logic is also invalid.
I hope those so called animal right groups should make a more sensitive and
reasonable argument to urge for the banning of the fur trade.
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Teaching Coherence to ESL Students

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Teaching Coherence to ESL Students

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Journal of Second Language Writing

Teaching coherence to ESL students:

Keywords: Teaching; Coherence; ESL students

``Coherence'' is an important quality of effective writing (Bamberg, 1984;

Although most teachers consider coherence an essential element of good writing,

Early conceptions of coherence

Influences of discourse analysis and textlinguistics

Coherence as internal to the text

Coherence as internal to the reader

readers anticipate upcoming textual information, thereby enabling them to reduce

. . . is a property ascribed to a discourse when the decoder judges that it

Crucial to an interactional theory of coherence is a pragmatic view of discourse

The classroom inquiry

The teaching of coherence

Instructional context and procedure

The students who participated in the classroom inquiry were 16 ®rst-year

This classroom investigation sought to answer three research questions from

Methods of data collection and analysis

Coherence-related concerns Examples extracted from protocols

expressed by students, giving examples extracted from the protocol data to

All 16 students completed an evaluation questionnaire (see Appendix B)

Results and discussion

Product data: students' pre- and post-revision texts

Table 2 presents the results of topical structure analysis, comparing the

D1: draft 1; D2: draft 2; D3: draft 3.

Original draft Revised draft

Alfred Better (100%) Better (66.7%) Better (66.7%) Better (100%)

D1: draft 1; D2: draft 2; D3: draft 3.

Alfred's pre-revision draft Alfred's post-revision draft

In his post-revision draft, Alfred improved the opening by re-arranging the

Process data: students' protocols

Coherence topics Before instruction After instruction

Purpose, audience, and context of situation NA (not measured) 14 out of 30 (46.7%)

Perception data: students' questionnaires and interview

Suggestions for further research

In this study, coherence was taught to a group of university students in a Hong

This classroom inquiry began with a quest for a better understanding of

Appendix A. Essay topics

1. Write an anonymous letter to a classmate telling him or her about your

Appendix B. Post-study evaluation questionnaire

 Propositional development and modification.

Appendix C. Interview guide

The interview guide consists of the following:

Appendix D. Alfred's pre- and post-revision drafts of Essay 4

D.1. Pre-revision draft

D.2. Post-revision draft

Bain, A. (1890). English composition and rhetoric. London: Longmans, Green.

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Propositional development and modification.