Cohesion and coherence

Dear all,
First of all, I would like to tell that the text given is very long and and is full of examples . Reading such a text is time-consuming and needs special attention to grab what the writer wanted to tell readers more or less. Before reading the text, I understand that the two words- cohesion and coherence- are quite close in term of meanings but after reading it my thought has changed.
As long as I understand, Williams, the writer, described cohesion as the connection or the relation between the story idea and the supportive sentence to form the whole story.
The writer said good cohesion must rely on clarity and context, management of the flow of information, beginning of good sentence, and finding topic of sentence. So good writers are necessary to apply these rules to their writing which would be easier to read.
Coherence on point of the writer's view means the connection and the relation between ideas, arguments and statements in the story. The writer yet told us that coherence is abstract: we cannot point to it as we can point to a noun( p.81). That's why he was giving us many examples to learn so that we will know whether each writing is incoherent or not.
Thanks /anucha

Cohesion & Coherence

Hi all,

Firstly, I would like to say sorry for myself :) because I am ill. I haven't finished reading all of this article, Williams (1990), yet.

What I have read from this article make me get an idea that the author tries to tell readers know how to make writing flow by using cohesion and coherence -- he suggests the way to write and gives example. Also the author says that "Give your readers a familiar context to help them move from the more familiar to the less familiar, frim the known to the unknown" (p. 48). I like it.

What I know about cohesion and coherence, cohesion is about a hierarchy of words and lexical set that are disregardied by some writers and me too, and coherence is connection between topics to make writing flow, and also changing one topic to another without connection is unacceptable in English rhetoric.

I think cohesion and coherence are interesting for me now. I didn't consider about them when I wrote before. Also Ajan Karnchanoke told me that cohesion and coherence are very important in writing.

Thanks :)

Cohesion and Coherence:

Cohesion:
According to this sentenses, principles of cohesion that fuse seperate sentences into a whole discourse (p.48) I am understand what is the cohesion. I have a problem about the cohesion, becuase I got many teacher's comments about cohesion of my writing. when I wrote the drafts, my writing was not a whole discourse. I didn't use transitional metadiscourse and expressions, so my writing was separated into many parts. Some of them aren't related to one another.

Coherence:
After I red the artical, I interested a rule. It is that "Paragraph = Issue + Discussion."(p.92)
I think that the paragraph consist of the two parts. The firts part is the subject, and the second part is explanation. Two parts have the point related together.

Finally, I think that the cohesion and coherence is near. They are useful to writers writing the good drafts.

Best Regards
Banna Wanishayanun

The Writing Conference

Dear all,

After I read this article, I know about the differences between conference method and written comment. I agree with the conference method because it help the students to improve their writing more than written comments like the way of Ajarn Karnchanoke' s teaching. Because the students can pratice their writing throughout the writing process such as prewriting, writing, and rewriting.

The conference method is the way of writing which help the students to pratice their writing by improving several drafts. These things have many advantages to develop the ability and skill of the students. However, the written comment is the good way of writing as well because it is the basic of writing which most students must to learn about writing.

Finally, both the conference method and the written comment have the significances which will conduct between the teachers and the students about the writing.

Regards,
Sudarath

The Writing Conference: A One-to-One conversation

Yes, The conference method is useful, becuase it is a talking about the draft between the student and the teacher . The problems about writing are vanished, If the teacher participates in the writing process of the student. The conference is the method that easier and efficient to solve the complex problem than teacher's comment written on the draft. The student can knows what is the teacher want from discussion more than comment writing.

For my class, I guess that the writing conference is a method done after the peer review. If It's true, I will happy. After I recieved commemts from my friend, I have many problems becuase the feedbacks are variety and conflict. I need and appreciate the teacher's help.

Furthermore, I have other problems discussed in the conference, becuase I will present in the second draft.

Best Regards
Banna Wanishayanun

The writing Conference

Dear all,

I agree with Khun Nit that the writing conference is useful for both teachers and students.

According to the article, the writer clearly inform about the conference teacher’s role (p.111). These suggest the teacher to develop their student’s writing. Moreover, the writer emphasizes that “[t]he teacher should read the paper carefully (p.111).” I agree with Carnicelli (1980) and realize it’s important.

As for the students, the writing conference is valuable because this help them improve their writing as revision. It let them know and understand about the error.

Furthermore, the writer says this method is use in general and popular at present.

Regards,
Jib

The Writing Conference

I really agree with the writing conference because some written comments are not clear for us (students), especially they are English language as we are not English native speakers. Also written comments are important as Carnicelli said that "[written comments] are more permanent than oral comments..." (p.109).

In this paper, The Writing Conference, there is only teacher's role, not student's role. Anyway, the writer explain it well. I think it is good for students but it is a task for teachers, isn't it?

I do believe that writing conference are useful for both teacher and students to make everything clearier and not misunderstood.

Response to Khun Nit's Questions

1. It's not wrong to put examples in a summary. It's actually good if the examples are at the right places (when they are needed).

2. The paper you chose to summarize is fine--it's just different from other people's papers because it's not a research with data collection, results, and all that. Don't worry.

3. Now about "I'm starting to forget your voice because there are a lot of quotations!": Imagine you're hearing me talking to you right now (while you read what I say on the monitor). That's my voice talking to you. It's not my physical voice, but it's my identity that you're hearing, right? Same thing with your writing. When you write and I read your essay, I hear your voice in that sense. So when you put a lot of quotations in your essay, I hear other people's voice (Khun Tipa's voice in this case) more than your own. This has an effect on the reader because the reader needs to hear you more than anybody else in your writing. Otherwise, you won't stick in the reader's mind--like you don't have an identity. That's not good when you want to be a writer, you know. We'll get to talk about that later in the course.

Back to Peer Review

Dear Ajan Karnchanoke,

I agree with you and all my friends that there are too many quotations and paraphrases in my paper work, A3.1, and I also feel annoyed with them. In A3.2. there are less quotations and paraphrases but there may be too many of them still. I feel that I have to put them in some parts such as example, purpose and some writer's saying. Is that wrong? Is it wrong to put examples in a summary?

After I got comments from friends, I feel that I have made a mistake to choose this BOOK to summarise because it is not a real research. It is a collection of papers that the writer (Tipa) got while he was doing his reserch. In fact, the book is about more theory than research. I tried to tell this in my paper work, A3.1. Perhaps it is not clear enough. I tried to make this part clearier in A3.2.

I don't understand a comment you gave me, "I'm starting to forget your voice because there are a lot of quotations!". What do you mean by "your voice"? Does it mean my opinion?

Anyway, I think that peer review is a good practice for who wants to be a good writer.

Do I complain much? I don't really want to complain but I just want to write.

Best Regards

Nittaya :)

The Writing Conference

Dear class

In thai Idiom "Two idea better than one idea", writing conference is process of writing for students to improvement their writing skill by various activity for example, students write first draft and give it to a teacher and the teacher has any comments to students and send first draft back. Students rewrit it again in second draft and give it to their teacher again.

Some monk call me. I will be back.

Thanks

Writing Conference Method

To class,
Writing conference
I do agreed with Carnicelli who wrote about the writing conference method because it is a kind of teaching to help students improve their wrting skill.
From my understanding, the writer tells us to to know the importance of the conference method which has been accepted in many universities in recent years. He tells us that the conference method must only be organised by the two parties. They are a teacher and a student, not all students in the class. The advantage is that the teacher and the student can hold the conference no matter where they are and no matter how much they wanted. With this teaching style, the student can get individually direct response from the teacher after reading his/her first draft, on the other hand, he/she can question the teacher back right away.
In the old days writing course teachers always sent their feedback about students' writing works through statements and written comments, sometimes the way discouraged the students from approaching to get the right comments from their teachers and many of them dared not do so because they were afraid that they would be reprimanded.
I also agreed with the writer, saying that normally the writing process has three steps. They are prewriting, writing, and rewriting., Most teachers in the past were not aware of this process. They just gave the topic and ordered their students to write a first draft immediately. After the students finished the works, they graded the works immediately while the students would not have the opportunity to know their writing mistakes and problems. By the way, the conference method being popular today is used as a way-out to solve the problem because the teachers give the opportunity for their students to write multiple drafts after receiveing feedback until the students will be happy about their corrections, and the evaluation will be made at the end of the course.
Like Acharn Karnchanok, she is doing the same thing as Carnicelli wrote in his chapter. She instructed us to write mulitiple drafts of writing in order that she will see the writing development of everyone. Well done my dear teacher.
Anucha

The Writng Conference

I try to understand this article because I think it's very difficult and too long. I think the conference is question of reader only but I maybe think wrong.

"Conference are parts of courses" (p.102). Of course, I agree. I understand that the conference is tool to help in writing which are same prewriting, writing and rewriting. All occur together for example, "If the student "can't think of anything to write about," a prewriting conference can help identify some promising subjects. If the student has found a decent subject but has written a dead-end draft, a conference can suggest he questions to ask, new possibilities to explore." (p.103).

The conference can help the writing because it makes feedback. The feedback help to develop the writing because it gets an idea more.

I can rewriting or revise my work because teacher' the conference and comment. I'm not sure that between the conference and the comment are different.

"The conference techer's role" (p.111) are duty of the teacher for reading. I think that teacher want to student can imporve writing when the teacher read the student' work so, page 111 "The teacher should read the paper carefully" is usual. The best thing is "The teacher should ask the right questions" (p.114) because I think that sometime teacher don't understand student' work but the teacher ask the right questions for understanding is same. Like Ajan Karn call Tom or p'Ben to ask the questions in writing essay.

I like "the teacher should make specific suggestions for revising the paper" (p.116) I agree. It's sure and the suggestions of teacher help the writing very much.

What is Qualitative?

The first I want to tell you about the meaning of qualitative that I understand. Qualitative is used to help us understand how people feel and why they feel as they do. It is concerned with collecting in-depth information asking questions such as why do you say that?. Samples tend to be smaller compared with quantitaive projects that include much larger samples. Depth interviews or group discussions are two common methods used for collecting qualitative information.
Thanks

The writing Conference: A One- to One Conversation

If you read this topic, you should understanding The writing Conference: A One-to one Conversation. Because of the term of Conference meanses Conversation between a one to one. In this topic the conference is a kind of teaching writing. A defination of the Conference Method (Thomas A. Carnicelli, 1980) said that it imposible to discuss the individual conference in isllation. Conference are parts of courses; the work better in some types of coruses than in others. I agree with him, but sometimesI do not agree with him since some student do not understand in teacher assightment them. They want to help from teacher immediately. They cannot help by teacher. There are many good ressons for using the conference method. Some were readily apparent to the students in all teacher's class. Others can best understood and appreciated by teachers. And the teacher can make a more effective response to the paper in an oral conderence than in written comments because a conference is far more effective than written comments as a way of communicating with students. The tongue is faster, if not mightier, than the pen.
The students also can learn more from an oral response than from written comments because most students, a writing conference is a new experience. They have never discussed their writing with a teacher before. The have simply received written "corrections"
The most importance of teacher is the teacher should read the paper of students carefully.
Finally, The conference method is the most efficient use of the teacher's time.

The Peer Review Process

Dear all

After reading the peer review process: harnessing students’ communicative power(1989), I got some idea about my writing
Mittan said that there are four steps to guides students in responding to each others’ writing. I agree with him because he has many experiences with English as a second language (ESL), even if I have studied English as foreign language.
The peer review process can be improved my writing. All comments of my friends or my teacher are the good thing for student’s developing. So far so good I hope I keep on doing well in my writing.

Thanks.