Editing an Analytical Commentary for Cohesion
A student submits a 600-word analytical commentary on a coffee advertisement. One paragraph reads: 'The ad uses bright colours. This makes it look happy. It also uses a young woman smiling. This appeals to young people. The slogan is short. This makes it memorable.' The teacher's feedback says the analysis is 'feature-spotting' and that cohesive ties are repetitive. The rubric requires 'control of metalanguage', 'cohesive and coherent structure', and 'analysis of how choices position the reader'. The student has one week to redraft and must keep the same evidence.
1. Diagnose the paragraph's problems using cohesion and coherence concepts.
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The paragraph relies on repeated demonstrative reference ('This makes...', 'This appeals...', 'This makes...'), where 'this' points vaguely to a whole preceding clause rather than a specific element. This creates lexical repetition without development and makes the reference ambiguous. There are no lexical chains linking colour, youth and memorability, and no conjunction signalling contrast, cause or addition. Coherence suffers because each sentence is an isolated observation; there is no controlling claim about how the ad positions the reader. The structure is a list of features, not an argument. The problem is not that the sentences are short but that the ties between them are underdetermined, so the reader must infer the logical relations the writer has not supplied.
2. Rewrite the paragraph as a cohesive analytical passage of about 80 words, then explain your choices.
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Model rewrite: 'The advertisement's saturated palette constructs an upbeat, youthful mood, which the smiling young woman embodies and reinforces. Because this figure mirrors the target demographic, readers are invited to recognise themselves in her enjoyment and to associate the product with that pleasure. The clipped slogan then condenses this mood into a memorable phrase, so that the colour, the model and the wording work together to position the audience as carefree consumers.' Explanation: the rewrite replaces vague 'this' with specific referents ('this figure', 'this mood'), builds a lexical chain (mood, enjoyment, pleasure, carefree), and uses conjunctions ('because', 'so that') to make causal reasoning explicit. Each sentence now advances a claim about positioning rather than listing features, improving coherence.
3. The student objects that short sentences are 'punchy' and should stay. How should the teacher respond without simply overruling the student?
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The teacher should separate the stylistic value of short sentences from the problem of weak cohesion. Short sentences can be effective, especially for emphasis, but their value depends on the surrounding ties. The teacher could ask the student to identify what 'this' refers to in each case; if the referent is unclear, the short sentence is not punchy but ambiguous. The student could keep one short sentence for emphasis while supplying explicit links elsewhere. This respects the student's stylistic judgement and teaches the underlying principle: cohesion is about how readers track referents and logical relations, not about sentence length. The redraft should be judged on whether the analysis advances an argument and whether ties are clear, which is what the rubric measures.