《硕士博士英语毕业论文写作》Chapter13RevisionStyleandLanguage.ppt

Cohesive Strategies (2) Use of Reference Words Reference words are those that refer back to an idea mentioned previously E.g. Relative pronouns like “this”, “these”, “those”, “such”, and “that”.  Coherence Coherence refers to the unity of ideas. Unity is the quality of adhering to one theme from start to finish, with every sentence and every paragraph contributing to the central purpose and main idea of that paragraph. Strategies of Coherence (1) Using Transitional Tags (2) Repetition of Key Words and Phrases (3) Pronoun Reference (4) Parallelism the most simple, little conjunctions: “and”, “but”, “nor”, “for”, “yet”, “or”, and “so” more complex signals : “however”, “moreover”, “nevertheless”, “on the other hand”. Colloquial Habits in Constructing Sentences 1 Chinese writers often place prepositional phrases that indicate comparison in front of the main idea. Doing so pushes the main idea towards the back of the sentence. e.g. “Compared to dogs, cats are nice.” Instead, one should say “Cats are nicer than dogs.” Colloquial Habits in Constructing Sentences 2 Chinese writers usually preface the main idea by first stating the purpose, condition, location or reason first. The logic behind it appears to be introducing the main idea instead or directly stating it would be too direct and perceived as somewhat offensive. Chinese-English colloquial habit: purpose (beginning too many sentences with “In order to…” and “For the sake of…” ) condition (beginning too many sentences with If and When) location (beginning too many sentences with In, At, and From) or reason (beginning too many sentences with Due to, Because, and Since). Colloquial Habits in Constructing Sentences 3 Overuse of First Person. Third Person is more objective. First Person is so common in Chinese documents (professional or otherwise) that many writers are unaware of this colloquial habit. An exception to using First Person would be if the author wants to emphasize a p