Hong Kong News

Cohesion in the news

Posted by on November 17th, 2019 | 0 comments | coherence, coherence and cohesion, cohesion, cohesive devices, IELTS, interactive, writing

In this post we look at some cohesive devices used in a recent news report covering the unrest in Hong Kong.

If you’re not sure what is meant by coherence and cohesion, take a look at some other posts on gurueap by following tags relating to coherence, cohesion, and coherence and cohesion!

Instructions

Click on bold words and phrases in the box below to see how they relate to each other. Related words and phrases will appear highlighted, as will their corresponding cohesive devices in the list below the text.

  • Repeating words or phrases here, here and here1,2
  • Classification with examples of items that belong to a class here and here
  • Time expressions to establish chronology
  • Signals to show cause/effect, compare/contrast, etc.
The situation in Hong Kong has become decidedly more serious and more intense in the past week. The sporadic violence associated with small groups of protesters and police has escalated into full-scale battles. There have been two deaths, more arrests, more teargas, more people injured, some critically. Lines have well and truly been drawn and crossed by both sides. The government claims it is in control of the situation but, among the public, there is a widespread belief that the police are being allowed to act out of control. It was the death of a young student, Alex Chow, during a police clearance operation in early November, and the police shooting, at point blank range, of an unarmed protester a few days later, which prompted this turn to violence.

1 Although students are often advised to avoid repetition, there are times when it cannot be avoided without making a text less cohesive (and therefore less coherent) – which can have a negative effect on your IELTS score for CC!

2 Notice that the word ‘police’ is repeated, but it is used in different forms, both as a noun and as an adjective. This kind of ‘repetition’ is good in terms of your IELTS score for Lexical Resource!

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