Teaching coherence to ESL students: a classroom inquiry

“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 difficult to teach and learn. This paper describes a classroom inquiry which investigated the teaching of coherence. In this study, coherence was defined 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 findings 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.