Cohesion in Academic Writing

Cohesion in Academic Writing

English 8

"Good paragraphs show cohesion, which means that the movement from sentence to sentence is logical and smooth."

An effective text creates many and frequent references to things and ideas presented elsewhere in the same text.

We may refer to ‘the government of Colombia’ and later to ‘it’, or we might refer to ‘Colombia’ and then later in the same text to ‘this country’. We can present an idea (e.g. social inequality is increasing) and recall this idea later by using ‘this fact’.

In written language, reference items generally only refer to things mentioned somewhere else in the text. Readers need to track backwards to find out what the reference item refers to. For example:

Julia Costello is facing a difficult situation at Western Technologies Corporation. She has difficulty functioning in the executive team. This situation is explained in terms of team dynamics and a number of solutions is included.

With the increasing expansion of experimental science, particularly in the area of genetics, scientists have become more and more involved in the nature of the world’s future. It has been argued that scientists have no moral responsibility for the use or misuse of their discoveries; however, this oversimplifies the issue. It ignores the fact that top-level research scientists are not ordinary people. Since their duty is to do no basic harm to their society, a society which has trained them and which funds their research, they should suppress those scientific discoveries which might be misused, and which ordinary people do not know about. There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place, as individuals or as members of a research team, scientists are in a position to know what is going on at a given moment in their field, nationally and internationally. They are in a position to know what has been discovered and in which field crucial discoveries are likely to be made.

Pronouns

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Plural Usage

Singular – common usage

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Singular – emerging/inclusive usage

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Democracy has provided greater opportunities for women in many countries, however, they still face the pressures of dealing with traditional gender roles. In many cases, religious persuasion can affect the degree to which women are willing to challenge their roles. Often, it can prevent women from changing altogether, thereby reinforcing the status quo. Within some contexts, a woman can be punished if she is seen to be contradicting religious doctrine.

There are two ways of arguing that passive euthanasia can be justified while active euthanasia cannot. The first relies on the intuition that killing someone is morally worse than letting him or her die. It is argued that a doctor who kills his or her patient directly causes the patient’s death, but a doctor who withdraws or withholds treatment merely allows that death.

Demonstratives

High salinity in soils is a problem facing many farmers in Australia. This is demonstrative shown by recent studies focussing on the effects of intensive logging on land productivity.

The structural analysis of texts has become increasingly important to linguists in recent years. In fact, it is now an essential component of most linguistic inquiry.

After heated debate, the legislation was finally passed. However, it has now pronoun been shown to have been racially discriminatory.

Testing in schools often involves high levels of artificiality. This can lead to a demonstrative misrepresentation of students’ actual ability.

Demonstratives

This/these + a noun can be used to establish a good old-to-new flow of information.

Writing instructors know that students need to understand that the differences between formal and informal language. This understanding can help students make strategic choices in their writing.

In rencent years, the number of students appliying PhD programs has increased steadily, while the number of places available has remained fairly constant. This situation has resulted in intense competition for admission.

Comparatives

Traditional high culture in Brazil’s thirties was preoccupied with another struggle, that against the right-wing dictatorship. Much of the intelligentsia and artistic scene, united in the Popular Front, chose the direction of regionalism. Upper class painter Tarsila do Amaral, after having explored aspects of Brazilian nativism in her work, now started to focus on ...

Upper-class women were able to use chloroform during birth, but no such aids were available to those from the working class (Donnison, 1993). Such differences in treatment helped to increase the division between ...

Overall this shows that reliability and validity are hard to establish in official statistics, due to the number of human decisions involved, and the different ways in which people apply concepts. However, according to the radical approach, there are more limitations with statistics. The radical approach tells us that official statistics tell us ...

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