1. Cohesion
Lesson #19

2. Writing Tip of the Day – Dangling Modifiers
Read this sentence and determine what’s wrong with it:
Having read your , your dog will stay inside whenever it’s raining outside.

3. A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence.
A modifier describes, clarifies, or gives more detail about a concept.
The previous sentence was missing the subject “we” and the verb.
Having read your , we will keep your dog will stay inside whenever it’s raining outside.

4. Strategies for Revising Dangling Modifiers
Name the appropriate or logical doer of the action as the subject of the main clause.
Change the phrase that dangles into a complete introductory clause by naming the doer of the action in that clause.
Combine the phrase and main clause into one.

5. Freewriting Activity – Reverse Outlining
With your last major paper:
Highlight (or underline or circle) your thesis, main claim, or road map in the intro.
Highlight every topic sentence in every body paragraph (if there are no topic sentences, then highlight the sentence that presents the main idea of that paragraph.
Highlight the best concluding sentence of the conclusion.
Then, on a new page or Word document, rewrite or copy and paste these highlighted or underlined sentences in order. This will be your “reverse outline.”

6. Read through that outline and ask yourself the following questions:
Do the sentences match the roadmap set up by the claim?
Does one lead logically to the next?
Do they build an argument, using evidence and analysis?
Do any of the sentences repeat themselves?
Do any of the paragraphs have more than one topic sentence?
Does this “narrative” of the essay accurately reflect the argument they thought they were making?

7. What is cohesion?
What makes a text “cohesive”?

8. Cohesion – When elements within a text bind it together as a unified whole
Different from coherence, when an argument or theory is logical and consistent

9. According to Suzanne Eggins, “[I]f most texts are to make sense to readers or listeners, the links between the parts have to be more easily recoverable. Making the links between the parts of a text recoverable is what the resources of cohesion enable language users to do.”

10. Don’t make your readers guess on how your points or paragraphs are related to each other; make those connections explicit (depends on the genre).
Any aspect of your writing that establishes a link between one part of the text and another is creating coherence (transitions)
A logical relationship between ideas, established by a transitional word or phrase, can also be a cohesion tie.

11. Common Categories for Cohesion Ties
References to things mentioned previously, or to things about to be mentioned
Logical relationships between clauses, sentences, paragraphs, or ideas; expressed by:
Transitions (however, in spite of, because of, thus, therefore, moreover, furthermore, although, in other words, for example)
Conjunctions (for, and, not, but, or, yet, so)
References to a previous set of ideas (“As I said earlier ”)
Expectation relations between words

12. Group Activity
Get in your groups to read and analyze the following text you’ve been assigned.
Circle any transitions or instances of cohesion ties that you find.
Then answer the following questions:
Is this text cohesive? Why or why not?
What kind of cohesion ties are favored by the author?
What “effect” does the author create by using these cohesion ties?
Are they appropriate for this genre?