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Coherence devices in IELTS test essays
We are going to talk about Coherence devices in IELTS test essays, IELTS writing. We’ve already talked about IELTS test scores in separate articles. One of the criteria we mentioned was Coherence important in both speaking and writing IELTS.
We have said that the concept of coherence is that the English sentences of a paragraph or of a speech must be perfectly coherent and logical.
Now we want to answer the question:
What devices can we use to create coherence in English essays in the IELTS test ?
Textual coherence theory:
In 1976, Halliday and Hasan published the book “Coherence in English”, which is a turning point in the theory of text coherence. We present some practical points here based on this theory.
Coherence devices in IELTS test essays
There are five types of coherence devices in English that using a combination of all of them in the essays of IELTS test is recommended. We have classified them under the three major categories:
1. Grammatical coherence devices
English grammatical coherence includes reference, substitution, and omission.
References occur when the reader or listener wants to retrieve previous content by referring. For example, when a pronoun is used to refer to a noun phrase.
Example:
Micheal is preparing himself for IELTS. He is working on IELTS writing as it seems to be a bit difficult for him.
In the example above, the pronouns including he, it and him connect these to two separate sentences to each other.
Substitution is a relationship in which a kind of counting tool is used instead of repeating a particular element.
Example:
I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t believe you do either.
In cases where omission occurs, there is actually a structural gap that needs to be filled by referring to a related structure in the immediate text. For Example:
Have you been swimming? Yes, I have.
Note that in IELTS writing, coherence and cohesion are one of the four marking criteria. To tie the ideas and sentences one another, you need to know how to make the best use of these devices.
2. Lexical coherence devices:
Lexical coherence is the devices you can take advantage of in IELTS test essays to create coherence through multiple ways of using words.
Vocabulary coherence in English is the coherence that is achieved either through the choice of words or through the collocation of words.
Some cases that are repetitive include repeating the same particular word, using a synonymous or contradictory word, or using a metaphorical word.
Example: “ascent” is repeated because of “climb”:
I turned to the ascent of the peak. The climb is perfectly easy.
Coherence is a type of relationship that can also result from the association of lexical elements with each other, collocation in other words.
Example:
The woman in the story gives birth to children that have the same appearance.
The two words give and birth in English are neither synonymous nor have the same reference. The type of relationship they have with each other is coherence that is called collocation.
Note that using collocations in IELTS writing not only helps you achieve coherence, but it also improves lexical resource of your essay, the other marking criterion.
3. Textual coherence devices
Textual coherence, which is almost at the boundary between grammatical and lexical coherence in English, is also achieved through the use of conjunctions.
Conjunctions themselves are not cohesive, but indirectly they create coherence because they have specific meanings. They are divided into five categories: addition, contrast, reason, condition and time.
Example:
For the whole day, he climbed up the steep mountainside, almost without stopping. So by nighttime, the valley was far below him.
In this example, the word “so” is used. It is a sort of coherence devices that expresses the cause and effect between the two sentences. Depending on the purpose, you can choose correct coherence devices between the sentences and ideas in your IELTS test essays.
Proper use of these tools in IELTS writing will give you enough scores.
The abstract of the article:
In this article, we talked about the devices for creating Coherence in IELTS test essays, and we’ve covered that in detail. You can take a look at this article.
