Teach english new edition r

anaphoric reference 
is present in the second and third paragraphs, 
too, w ith words like ‘her’, ‘them ’, ‘his’, ‘she’, etc. But the writer also asks us to make stronger 
connections too. ‘This’ at the beginning of sentence 3 refers back to the whole situation
- the fact that the ‘thuglets had acquired a fearsome reputation’. ‘This’ in sentence 5 of 
paragraph 
1
, however, refers to both the first day of a new year and Clare’s job. ‘This’ in the 
first sentence of the last paragraph refers to the experience of walking into a new class - in 
other words it refers to everything that has gone before.
In many longer texts we also use 
linkers 
(‘In the first place’, ‘On the one hand . . . ’, 
‘Furtherm ore . . . ’, ‘In conclusion . . . ’, etc) to show the progress of a text.
Coherence
Cohesion will make no difference to the success o f a text if it is not coherent. The following 
four sentences (about the same teacher working on notions of perception) are perfectly 
well formed, but the text makes no sense because it has no internal logic: the ideas are in 
the wrong order.
She opened it and took a large spoonful. She held up the tin. Ignoring the children’s 
shocked faces, she put the spoon into her mouth. It was marked ‘ Dog food’.
W hen a text is coherent - when it has some internal logic - the readers should be able to 
perceive the writer’s purpose and follow their line of thought.
Conversational discourse
Many of the same elements of cohesion and coherence apply to face-to-face spoken discourse 
as well. But in speech we can also use ellipsis (see page 78) for grammatical cohesion, 
and participants need to be proficient at turn-taking, the conversational convention that 
requires that only one person speak at any one time. Moreover, if the conversation is to 
be successful, speakers should avoid long silences, and should listen when someone else is 
speaking.
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Chapter 5
The skill of turn-taking involves such attributes as recognising when you can take 
a turn, knowing how to keep your tu rn (or hold the floor), knowing how to signal that 
someone else can take their turn, and knowing how to show that you are listening. This 
kind of knowledge is not specific to English, of course, since such conversational skills are 
almost universal. However, speakers of English need to know typical