📝 Cohesion and coherence through lexis 📝

Sometimes we might read a paragraph and feel that something is wrong in terms of CC, without being able to put our finger on what exactly it is. The cohesive devices might be in place, but the paragraph just doesn't read well anyway.

Take a look at this paragraph from an article from "New Scientist." I've removed CC - try to notice where.

📝 Version 1: CC removed

"Conventional wisdom says our innate curiosity is quashed by the tedium of school and then the practical demands of adult life. But there is little hard evidence for that. Instead, curiosity seems to get expressed differently as we mature. We don't use an expansive, exploratory kind of curiosity - we resort to a style geared towards gaining information towards a specific end."

📝 Version 2: Original

"Conventional wisdom says our innate curiosity is quashed by the tedium of school and then the practical demands of adult life. But there is little hard evidence for that. Instead, curiosity seems to get expressed differently as we mature. As we get older, we shift from an expansive, exploratory kind of curiosity to a style more geared towards gaining information towards a specific end."

In my version, the last sentence starts very abruptly and seems isolated. What I have removed is some lexical choices that connect the last sentence to the penultimate one:
- "get older" is your connection to "mature";
- "shift from ... to a style more geared towards" is your connection to "expressed differently."

📝 "Instead, curiosity seems to get expressed differently as we mature. As we get older, we shift from an expansive, exploratory kind of curiosity to a style more geared towards gaining information towards a specific end."

Some other lexical choices that we could use here:
- ... as we mature. With age, ...
- ... gets expressed differently. We no longer ... OR ... is replaced with ...

See, CC is not about pronouns or linkers only. Lexis helps too. 🦋