FEATURES OF A WELL-WRITTEN TEXT

▣ FEATURES OF A WELL-WRITTEN TEXT

▶ COHERENCE

■ A well-written text exhibits two essential features: it has coherence and it has cohesion. These inherent features of a well-written text facilitate the interpretation of the text during the reading process. While creating the text, the writer invests time and effort to make the text coherent and cohesive; the effective reader takes advantage of these features. However, we must remember that not all texts are necessary "well written," so the interpretation process might be hindered.



■ Coherence is the quality that makes a text conform to a consistent worldview based on one's experience and culture or convention, and it should be viewed as a feature related to all three participants in the interactive process: the writer, the written text, and the reader. The notion of coherence thus incorporates ways and means by which ideas and propositions in a text are presented conceptually.



■ In addition to the possibility of following some conventional format, a text needs to **make sense" to the reader to be fully coherent. This is very much in line with the interlocutory perspective that speakers/writers have the responsibility to make their intentions clear through the text. In the interactive approach to reading, as we have seen, coherence is not only text-based. It is also reader-centered. From the reader's point of view, coherence results from the interaction between text-presented knowledge and text users' schemata or stored knowledge regarding information and text structures.



■ Coherence, therefore, is created by the reader while reading and is partially intratextual and partially extratextual. 



▶ COHESION 

■ Cohesion is an overt feature of the text, providing surface evidence for the text's unity and connectedness. Cohesion is realized linguistically by devices and ties that are elements or units of language used to form a more extensive text (spoken or written). Since cohesion relies heavily on grammatical and lexical devices, it relates to the reader's linguistic competence.



■ Two types of reference are essential in constructing cohesion: endophoric relation, which relates to anaphoric and cataphoric  reference within the text, and exophoric reference, which refers to context outside the text. Exophoric authority plays an essential role in top-down processing, whereas endophoric concern facilitates bottom-up processing. 


■ Cohesion is not to be confused with coherence: A text may be ostensibly cohesive but make no sense (lacking coherence), and a text might lack overt cohesive devices yet be perfectly coherent iſ the ideas or information presented and make logical connections with reality.



■ Coherence in this text is created since both the writer and the reader share knowledge and schemata that relates corkscrews to wine bottles and wine to picnics. The extratextual knowledge, in this case, is imperative for the perception of coherence in the text. Nonnative speakers of English who do not drink wine often find Carrell's short text incoherent.