Paragraph Cohesion
Link ideas across paragraphs using a wider range of cohesive devices including word repetition, grammatical connections such as adverbials, and ellipsis to create coherent extended texts
What a learner can do afterwards
- Use adverbials such as 'on the other hand' and 'as a consequence' to connect paragraphs
- Apply ellipsis to avoid repetition while maintaining clarity across sentences
- Create cohesion by repeating key words or using synonyms to link ideas between paragraphs
1 · Read
You already link paragraphs with time words like 'meanwhile' and 'later'. Now you will use contrast and cause words like 'however' and 'as a result', plus repeating key words and leaving out guessable words, which is called ellipsis.
Paragraph 1 ends: '...the whale surfaced near the boat.' Paragraph 2 begins: 'The huge creature dived again moments later.' No linking word is needed. 'The huge creature' is a synonym for 'the whale', so the reader carries the idea straight into the new paragraph.
Ellipsis has another job here: instead of the three dots, it means dropping words that would just repeat something already said. Instead of 'Maya packed her bag. Maya left the bag by the door,' you can write 'Maya packed her bag and left it by the door.' The meaning stays clear, but nothing is repeated for no reason.
Repeating a key word does not mean copying a whole sentence. 'The rain fell all night. The rain fell all night.' just tells the reader the same thing twice. Repeat only the word that carries the link, or swap it for a synonym. Small stand-in words like 'it', 'she' and 'they' work too: 'The boat rocked all night. It finally steadied at dawn.' Vary the tools so the writing does not sound dull.
Mix the three tools as your text moves on.
Extended writing stays joined together through repeated or swapped-in key words, well-chosen adverbials, and words left out because the reader already knows them.
The rewritten readings were written for this dataset.
2 · Watch
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24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.