Coherence is an organisational skill that works at 2 levels.It is the skill of writing paragraphs that develop an idea in a way that the reader understands what the main point is and why it is important. (paragraph coherence) It is also the skill of organising your essay so that the paragraphs link together so that the reader understands the connections between the paragraphs and the flow of the essay. (essay coherence)
3 reasons why coherence matters?
- Coherence is 25% of your IELTS writing score. Enough said.
- Coherence matters because it can make your writing subjectively much more appealing to the examiner. If your essay is coherent, the examiner will understand what you are trying to say after one reading of the essay when they first decide how to grade the essay.
- Coherence matters from another point of view as well – it makes the essay writing process easier. As you learn to write coherently, you will find that one sentence naturally follows on from the previous sentence.
Paragraph coherence – a very brief explanation
One form of coherence is coherence within a paragraph. To achieve this you need to learn how to structure a paragraph with a topic sentence and to develop that sentence through the appropriate use of explanations and examples. The easy way to think about this is that a paragraph is a series of sentences all related to the same idea.
For more on paragraph coherence, go here
Essay coherence – a very brief explanation
Another form of coherence is on a larger scale in the essay itself: this is coherence between paragraphs so that the argument of the essay develops in a logical and ordered manner. To achieve this you need to learn how to structure an essay so that the different paragraphs connect to each other. The easy way to think about this is that an essay is a series of paragraphs/ideas that link together to form one coherent point of view.
Coherence and cohesion
In the test coherence is graded with cohesion. The 2 ideas are very similar but to understand more about cohesion which is banded with coherence in IELTS writing, I suggest you visit this page:
To see how avoid some common mistakes in the test and see how examiners grade coherence and cohesion, I suggest you visit this page:
For more on paragraph coherence, go here
this link is not working sir,
Thanks for that. The link should be fixed now. Please let me know if you find more broken links. I’m busy updating the site at the mo and I suspect there are a few things that no longer work.
Hi dominic,
thanks a lot for such an wonderful website. You are doing an amazing job for the students who are struggling with their IELTS score. With just 10days preparation ( just read the materials on your website) i managed to improve my band score dramatically. I was very bad at writing section. But today, my result has come out. I got 8 in writing. Overall, i got 8.5 …credit goes to you mate…Keep up the good works..My score is
Listening 9
Reading 8.5
Speaking 8
Writing 8.
Band 8.5
Cheers