Writing Quality, Coherence, and Cohesion

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among features of textual cohesion, as identified by Halliday and Hasan (1976), and primarytrait assessments of writing quality and coherence, with manuscript length held statistically constant. A random sample of 493 persuasive papers written by 17-year-olds during the 1978-79 National Assessment of Educational Progress writing evaluation were analyzed. The results of the analyses indicate that general coherence is an important element of writing quality and that the lexical cohesive features of synonym, hyponym, and collocation are important elements of writing quality and general coherence in manuscripts of the same length. When Alexander Bain (1867) first categorized prose discourse into four discourse modes, he stipulated that quality in each mode consisted of the elements of unity, mass (later known as emphasis), and coherence. Conners (1981) notes that Bain's ideas greatly influenced composition instruction in this country until 1950 but have waned since then, giving way to conceptualizations of written discourse that place increased emphasis on the contexts for writing (e.g., Kinneavy, 1971) and the processes that writers use to produce writing within varying contexts (e.g., Flower & Hayes, 1980). Clearly, these emphases now permeate all levels of practice and theory. Yet Bain's notion of coherence still holds sway, as Bamberg (1983) points out: Coherence is generally accepted as a 'sine qua non' in written discourse. Oddly, little research has been conducted to determine the relationship between writing quality and coherence, an important relationship because coherence is often used to identify the strengths and weaknesses in student writing. For example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 1980a) hypothesized that the apparent drop in the writing abilities of 13and 17-year-olds between the first national writing assessment (196970) and the second (1974-75) was due in part to a drop in the number of coherent paragraphs. However, at that time NAEP had no way of empirically determining whether this assertion was accurate. In an effort to determine if coherence in student writing was indeed declining, NAEP (1980a) constructed a primary-trait coherence measure (referred to as a cohesion measure by NAEP) for use in the third national writing assessment (1978-79). Scores on this measure were shown to have the same degree of reliability as scores on primary-trait measures of writing quality. What differed was the focus of the assessment. The primary-trait Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 19, No. 3, October 1985

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