ABSTRACT
Writers come to expect a fair amount of skill and expertise from readers, with regard to such things as filling the gaps left by elided meanings, looking back to find a referent previously mentioned, or carrying a word or phrase forward in the mind until it is referred to a little while later in the text. The nature of the cohesive ties will very much depend on the type of text. In a recipe, for example, some of the cohesion might be provided by numbering each stage in the process. Sometimes, writers delight in omitting cohesive ties, leaving the reader with a lot of detective work to do. This wealth of connectives and cohesive ties can take some time for children to become familiar with in reading, let alone to make use of in their own texts. (For suggestions of further reading on connectives and cohesion, please see the books suggested in the notes for Chapters 6 and 7.)
It would be impossible in two chapters to explore all the highways and byways of English grammar. There are those who delight in arguing over a particular usage or analysing an obscure example. This is to make grammar an end in itself and for some it is a life’s work. In primary schools, I think the task is not to seek out the difficult or the obscure example, but to make clear the basic principles on which text is constructed, in the hope that this will serve the more important ends of meaning making and sharing.
