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, Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 135±159 * Tel.: 852-93152448 (mobile)/31244028 (R); fax: 852-31244032 (R). E-mail address: [email protected] (I. Lee). 1060-3743/02/$ ± see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII:S1060-3743(02)00065-6
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Teaching coherence to ESL students: a classroom inquiryIntroductionDefining coherenceEarly conceptions of coherenceInfluences of discourse analysis and textlinguisticsCoherence as internal to the textCoherence as internal to the readerOperationalizing "coherence"
The classroom inquiryThe teaching of coherenceInstructional context and procedureResearch questions
Methods of data collection and analysisProduct dataProtocol dataPerception data
Results and discussionProduct data: students' pre- and post-revision textsProcess data: students' protocolsPerception data: students' questionnaires and interview
LimitationsSuggestions for further researchConclusionEssay topicsPost-study evaluation questionnaireInterview guideAlfred's pre- and post-revision drafts of Essay 4Pre-revision draftPost-revision draft
References