As soon as you start prepping for an exam, the first thing you come across is cohesion and coherence. We often nod to show that we’re aware of what they mean, but are we?!

To put it simply, cohesion and coherence help the discourse flow, ensure a smooth transition from one idea to another, build a logical structure.

In this post, I want us to delve into these concepts.

Cohesion means sticking sentences together within the text, connecting them syntactically. Coherence is the unity of ideas.



1. This example is both cohesive and coherent.

"My favourite colour is blue. I like it because it is calming and it relaxes me. I often go outside in the summer, lie on the grass, and look into the clear sky when I am stressed. For this reason, I'd have to say my favourite colour is blue."

Cohesive devices create physical links between words in a discourse.

They include:
- collocations
- lexical repetition
- linking adverbials
- substitution
- ellipsis
- conjunctions
- synonymy
- antonymy



Can we create a good discourse without each of these elements?

2. This example is cohesive but not coherent:

For example:

"My favourite colour is blue. Blue sports cars go very fast. Driving in this way is dangerous and can cause many car crashes. I had a car accident once and broke my leg. I was very sad because I had to miss a holiday in Europe because of the injury."

We see that cohesive devices are present here (blue/blue; very fast/in this way; car crashes/car accident; broke my leg/the injury). However, the string of sentences makes no sense; we jump from one idea to the next.



3. This example is coherent but lacks cohesion.
Now, let’s have a look at a piece of text that is coherent but lacks cohesion.

For example:
"I had my caffeine fix. My energy boosted."

It’s not meaningless; we see the unity of the ideas, yet there’s no cohesive device.


As you can see, these two elements go hand in hand and make a great contribution to the flow of both speech and writing.