Beneath the surface of every captivating story and every vivid description lies an unseen current, pulling the reader along: this is coherence.

Coherence is the quiet logic, the subtle link that weaves individual strands of thought, action, and speech into a seamless narrative fabric; it is the assured constancy that allows a narrative, no matter how fantastical its elements, to unfold with a sense of direction and purpose, inviting the reader to willingly suspend disbelief and embark on the journey the writer has charted.

Now, imagine a world where the sky rains upward, where characters age in reverse with each passing day, and where cities float aimlessly like ships lost at sea. While such elements could craft a marvelously surreal tapestry, without the thread of coherence to stitch them into the fabric of a story, the tapestry unravels, leaving behind nothing but a tangle of confusion. This exemplifies how essential coherence is in writing, and how its absence can disrupt the reader’s engagement.

As we voyage through the realms of personal narratives, where coherence carves a clear path through the forests of personal experience; descriptive essays, where it paints a consistent scene; short stories, with their need for concise and cohesive arcs; and analytical essays, where arguments are laced together into a compelling narrative, we will explore how coherence remains the indispensable compass for writers navigating the sea of storytelling.

This essay will unfurl the significance of coherence as the gravitational force that holds the planets of plot, setting, and character in orbit, preventing the narrative universe from descending into chaos in a context that is relevant to you as an IGCSE student, highlighting its relevance to descriptive and narrative writing before diving into the different text types you may create in the IGCSE.

Ready? Let’s go!

Descriptive and Narrative pieces

In both descriptive and narrative pieces, coherence is key, but its application and impact vary based on the type of writing.

Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing focuses on painting a picture in the reader’s mind using vivid language and sensory details. Coherence in descriptive writing involves creating a consistent and clear image. This means that all the details provided should contribute to a unified impression. For example, if describing a serene lake, details about sounds, colors, and atmosphere should all reinforce the sense of tranquility.

When responding to essay prompts in descriptive writing, the principle of coherence dictates that all descriptive elements should be harmoniously aligned to convey a singular, cohesive impression. Even when introducing surprising or unusual details, they should fit into the overall image being created.

Narrative Writing

Narrative writing, on the other hand, is about storytelling. Coherence in narrative writing involves ensuring that the plot, characters, setting, and dialogue all work together seamlessly to advance the story. In response to essay prompts, a narrative writer should focus on constructing a coherent plot with a clear sequence of events and character motivations that are understandable and logical within the story’s context.

Types of Pieces and Influence of Coherence

1. Personal Narratives: In personal narratives, coherence helps in structuring the story around a central theme or experience, ensuring that all elements contribute to the overarching message or insight.
2. Descriptive Essays: For descriptive essays, coherence ensures that all descriptions contribute to the overall sensory experience or atmosphere the writer intends to create.
3. Short Stories: In short stories, maintaining coherence is crucial for keeping the reader engaged and ensuring the plot unfolds logically, even if it includes twists or non-linear timelines.
4. Analytical Essays: In analytical pieces, coherence is key in forming a logical argument where each point builds upon the previous one.

Evaluating the Role of Coherence

In the creation of a final piece, whether descriptive or narrative, writers should continuously ask if each element (be it a character detail, a sensory description, or a plot twist) contributes to the overall coherence of the piece. While creative liberties can be taken, especially in genres that bend the traditional rules of storytelling, such deviations should always serve a purpose and not detract from the reader’s understanding or enjoyment of the piece.

However, it’s important to note that in some narrative styles, especially in post-modern and experimental literature, coherence might be deliberately disrupted to challenge the reader or to convey complex themes like disorientation or the fluidity of reality. In such cases, the lack of traditional coherence is a deliberate stylistic choice.

In conclusion, for most descriptive and narrative writings, especially in response to essay prompts, coherence enhances readability and impact.

However, in specific genres or styles, breaking coherence can be a powerful tool to achieve certain artistic or thematic goals, provided it’s done with clear intent and skill.

At the same time, intent and skill are what underpin every successful endeavor into creative writing, whether used in descriptive or narrative writing, or any other form of writing that you might consider. Beyond all of that lies the appreciation for language that this course is meant to bring forth from within you as you learn to create universes that suit what you envision and what you want to see come to life in ways that transport the reader away from the mundane into the fold that you will construct for them seamless, coherent, and a treat for the imagination.

Best of luck!

V.

You’re probably here because you want to just get an A* for your English exam and then be done with it.

You’re looking for tips and tricks to be able to do well in the exams and then be able to go home and then just be done with it.

Well, I think that you should absolutely get what you want because that’s just one of the numerous things that a person should do along the way.

After all, once you master those English skills, it will surely be easy for you to do reading comprehension or, for example, write essays with no problems whatsoever.

After all, that’s what this training is meant for and why you’re even spending an evening looking at this website right now.

But is that really all? Is that all there is? Will you just take the A* and then go away?

If so, I think that that would be a crying shame.

English is a language that you’re going to use for the rest of your entire life. Right now, you’re reading everything here in English. You’ll probably go out there and speak to your friends in English, listen to an English-language TV show, and end up interacting with others in English as well.

Now, it’s absolutely true that from reading this site, you’ll learn the exam techniques and all the different things that you need to be able to excel at the IGCSE First Language English exam, but life at the end of the day is not just that exam.

In fact, a much wider world lies outside the things that you’re doing just for the purpose of doing well for this curriculum. Here are some suggestions for what you’ll get.

Professional benefits

English is, first and foremost, a means of communication, and even writing an exam paper is an act of creating a communication that tells your examiner that you are a qualified person, somebody who has the ability to deliver quality work that is able to be recognized on an international level as operationalizing key skills in the English language – an act of persuasion that will be important throughout the entire course of your adult and professional life.

Persuading others is not simply just a way of creating an exam response that manages to pass the expectations of some examiners, and then net you a nice-looking grade on a slip of paper that you’ll use for college applications but then forget about – It is also a means of learning to convince other people to do what you want, whether that’s to buy a product or to do something in a way that you advocate, leading in turn to professional success as you take on further responsibilities and refine the things that you are able to do; heck, even finding a boyfriend or girlfriend requires you to persuade people and to do so in a convincing way!

Whether you’re trying to find a job or a girlfriend/boyfriend, you will be involved in this game of communication that takes place between all human beings at all times, and that requires us to make use of our minds in order to discover the exact words that we should say in order to persuade people that your way is the right way to proceed, and to accomplish your goals in the right way!

Benefits of understanding.

English is not simply just a means of producing communications that can persuade other people – it is a means of developing understanding and coming to terms with what your goals are.

By reading the right works, you set yourself up to develop advanced understanding and a medium of pursuing knowledge that comprises far more than almost any other linguistic corpus in the world. Moreover, learning English, particularly with respect to developing critical thinking and skills of understanding, will help you to be able to access that corpus in increasingly better ways as you progress forward and develop the ability to comprehend on a greater scale as you move forward in your journey.

By committing to learning English well, you will learn how to read effectively, critically, with insight. English is not simply just a means of producing communications that can persuade other people. It is a means of developing advanced understanding and a medium of pursuing knowledge that comprises far more than almost any other linguistic corpus in the world. Moreover, learning English, particularly with respect to developing critical thinking and skills of understanding, will help you to be able to access that corpus in increasingly better ways as you progress forward and develop the ability to comprehend on a greater scale as you move forward in your journey.Whatever it is that you see and process, you’ll be able to better understand, as you develop better and better habits of critical thinking that will help you move forward, pushing into a realm of new understanding that in turn will inform the interests that you pursue and all the things that you choose to do with your life itself.

And with that in mind, English also allows you to obtain…

Benefits of connectivity

Let’s be totally real here. English, at the end of the day, is a language, and it is the lingua franca of the entire universe. Are you really going to just abandon it and forget completely about what you’ve learned just because you’re not taking an exam? Because it’s really impossible to do so.

Wherever it is that you go and whatever it is that you do, whatever you communicate, read, or speak to other people, you are going to be using the English language.

Therefore, why would you not learn to bring to bear the different types of nuance that you’ve come to be able to understand as a result of learning the English language?

It doesn’t matter where it is that you go, you will find English speakers around the world because there are just so many of us.

Learning how to speak the English language effectively helps give you exposure to so many different types of cultures and ideals that you essentially would be losing out if you were not to understand how to refine your skill, to catch shades in meaning, the variations in the ways that people use words, and the things that you choose to communicate as well.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, these are all things that you can access by developing a great understanding of the English language, and that would be a shame for you to simply just abandon and leave behind.

Learning how to master the English language helps you develop that kind of mastery, not just over the short term, but over the long term, resulting in large amounts of knowledge and understanding that will end up compounding over the course of your entire life.

Are you really going to just let that go after you’ve taken the exam? Simply let it become a single grade in the hallways of your high school memory when you could make it so much more?

I’d encourage you to not let it become like that. English has so many different long-term advantages that you would be remiss in just dismissing them offhand and just throwing them away because you think that there are other more important things to do. By mastering English, you will gain access to an entire world of different possibilities that lie beyond your IGCSE exams, so don’t let those advantages go. Rather, seize them and take them into your life, and you will find yourself with a much richer and much more exciting existence in the days to come, if only you will let that happen.