Transcript Bartending Basics - Allegro Business Solutions,Inc.

Lions, Rhinos and Moose:
Stories from Africa and Canada
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Welcome back to
English Composition
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Agenda:
• Examine and practice cohesion in writing
– Introduce topic and stress
• Examine coherence in writing
• Writing Workshop
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Cohesion
• Cohesion refers to the sense of
sentence-by-sentence flow by which we
move easily through a passage.
©Suzanne Ryan
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Understanding Cohesion and Coherence
• Read the following passages aloud. Which one is more
clearly stated?
• The Gateway Arch at the edge of the Mississippi River in
St. Louis is the world’s tallest monument. Eero Saarinen
designed the stainless steel structure that
commemorates the Westward Movement.
• At the edge of the Mississippi River in St. Louis stands
the Gateway Arch, the world’s tallest monument. This
stainless steel structure, designed by Eero Saarinen,
commemorates the Westward Movement.
What makes the second seem to “flow” more
easily?
Two Principles for Revision
1. Begin sentences with information that is familiar
to your readers, usually information you’ve just
given them.
2. End sentences with information that is new to
your readers.
• This is called “The Known-New Contract.”
Information moves from familiar to unfamiliar.
An Example
• How might you fix the following sentences so that
they are more coherent?
• Some astonishing questions about the nature of
the universe have been raised by scientists
studying black holes in space. The collapse of a
dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a
marble creates a black hole. So much matter
compressed into so little volume changes the
fabric of space around it in puzzling ways.
An Example
• Some astonishing questions about the nature of
the universe have been raised by scientists
studying black holes in space. A black hole is
created by the collapse of a dead star into a point
perhaps no larger than a marble. So much matter
compressed into so small a volume changes the
fabric of space around it in puzzling ways.
• The Gateway Arch at the edge of the Mississippi
River in St. Louis is the world’s tallest monument.
Eero Saarinen designed the stainless steel
structure that commemorates the Westward
Movement.
• At the edge of the Mississippi River in St. Louis
stands the Gateway Arch, the world’s tallest
monument. This stainless steel structure,
designed by Eero Saarinen, commemorates the
Westward Movement.
©Suzanne Ryan
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What’s the Difference?
• In the 2nd paragraph, each sentence
connects easily to the sentence that
precedes it and the sentence that follows.
• The 2nd paragraph has cohesion.
©Suzanne Ryan
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The First Principle of Cohesion: Old First
• Begin your sentences with information
familiar to your readers.
– This can be information you’ve recently
introduced within the text.
– This can be brought to the text with the
general knowledge of the audience.
©Suzanne Ryan
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The Second Principle of Cohesion: New Last
• End your sentences with information your
readers cannot anticipate
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The Principle of Cohesion
as a Law of Cognition
• The principle of old-before-new is built
into our perception of time and story.
• The principle forms the conceptual basis
of the introduction or background sections
of an essay.
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What Cohesion Means for
Your Sentence Beginnings
• Don’t begin a sentence with a bit of new
information
• Don’t begin a sentence with a bit of technical
information
• Use your openings to refer back to previous
material or gently introduce a new topic
©Suzanne Ryan
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What Cohesion Means for
Your Sentence Endings
• Don’t end a sentence with old information
• Put the new, technical, and difficult
information at the end of the sentence
• Clearly signal when the end of a sentence
begins
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“But then my point will be lost!”
• Ending sentences with new and important
information is counter-intuitive.
• We want to put the new information first, to
“highlight” it.
• But if readers don’t understand its importance,
placing it first will not help.
• Besides, we remember what’s last anyway.
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What Readers Remember from Sentences
• First―the sentence ending
• Second―the sentence beginning
• Last―the sentence middle
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Topic and Stress
• The beginning of your sentence is its
topic: it’s what the sentence is about.
• The end of the sentence is its stress: it’s
what the sentence delivers.
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Topic and Stress in a Sentence
Topic (the
“beginning”)
Old, familiar,
simple information
linking back to previous
sentences
©Suzanne Ryan
Stress (the “ending”)
New, complex,
unfamiliar information
linking forward
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Let’s add Cohesion/Coherence
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Cohesion: In-class Activity
• For practice, look at the first three
sentences of a paragraph you’ve written
for your About the Staff assignment
• Check to see if your sentences start with
old information and end with new
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Cohesion: In-class Activity
• If the paragraph you chose does not
show cohesion, please rewrite it now
• If the paragraph you chose does show
cohesion, see if you can find one that
doesn’t and rewrite it
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Questions?
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Coherence
Coherence refers to the overall
sense of unity in a passage
©Suzanne Ryan
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Cohesion without Coherence
• As a reminder, please promptly return the lecture
notes you borrowed. Slide the notes under my
door if I am not there. I may become agitated if
you are late, much like my Uncle Chester after
several egg nogs on Christmas Eve. Most
Christmases I liked to stay up and open my
stockings after midnight. Staying up late was
exciting and would be repeated a week later at
New Year’s. So would Uncle Chester’s disgraceful
behavior.
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Cohesion Vs. Coherence
• The previous
example is cohesive
– Each sentence
connects with the
next and the previous
– Sentences begin with
familiar information
– Sentences end with
new information
©Suzanne Ryan
• But the previous
example is incoherent
– The paragraph has no
sense of focus
– Each sentence shifts
topic from the
previous
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Coherence is Established in Two Ways
• Readers identify the topics of individual
sentences clearly
• Topics of sentences come in a connected
set (usually a paragraph)
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“Sometimes I will stay up in my room for a day
trying to get two sentences that will flow, that
will seem as if they were always there.”
- Maya Angelou
American Poet & Autobiographer
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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• Ernest Hemingway rewrote the last
page of A Farewell to Arms 39 times.
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Summary of Key Points
• Cohesion: Connect sentences by moving from
old to new
• Coherence: Create thematic continuity in
passages
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“Nobody should suppose that good writing―the
kind that says what it means while being pleasant
to read―has ever been easy.”
- Jacques Barzun
a French-born American
historian of ideas and culture who
lives in San Antonio
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural
Life, 1500 to the Present
©Suzanne Ryan
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• Finally:
It’s an uphill
battle
(if at first you
don’t
succeed…..)
Questions?
©Suzanne Ryan
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Writing Workshop
• Get with a new partner and swap outlines for
review, share constructive comments
• Spend 5 minutes
• Look for
– unnecessary material? Remove it.
– missing material? Add it
– It is much less painful and more time-efficient to
make such decisions early, during the outline
phase, rather than after you've already done a lot
of writing which has to be thrown away.
Writing Workshop
• Freewrite about one section of your outline
for 5 minutes
.
Keeping going
• Brainstorm, Question, Mind-map, Freewrite/Loop
about each section of your outline
• Share writing early and often with your group and
me
• Deal with procrastination. Keep lists of tasks,
broken in to small manageable pieces, including
writing tasks (a few pages at a time).
• Identify a time and location where you can write
with good focus and few distractions, and take
advantage of it daily.
Wrap-up
• Examined and practiced cohesion in writing
– Introduced topic and stress
• Examined coherence in writing
• Outlines are due Friday, 11/30
• No late submissions
• Typed in Times New Roman 12, Word, double-spaced
• Hardcopy with your name
• List of your reviewers from class (at least 3 names)
• Include your outline worksheet
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Thank you for participating!
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