連貫性(coherence)
連貫性包括意連和形連兩個(gè)方面,前者指的是內(nèi)在的邏輯性,后者指的是使用轉(zhuǎn)換詞語。當(dāng)然這兩者常常是不可分割的。只有形連而沒有意連,句子之間就沒有內(nèi)在的有機(jī)的聯(lián)系;反之,只有意連而沒有形連,有時(shí)行文就不夠流暢。
1)意連
段落中句子的排列應(yīng)遵循一定的次序,不能想到什么就寫什么。如果在下筆之前沒有構(gòu)思,邊寫邊想,寫寫停停,那就寫不出一氣呵成的好文章來。下面介紹幾種常見的排列方式。
A.按時(shí)間先后排列(chronological arrangement)
We had a number of close calls that day. When we rose, it was obviously late and we had to hurry so as not to miss breakfast; we knew the dining room staff was strict about closing at nine o'clock. Then, when we had been driving in the desert for nearly two hours ----- it must have been close to noon ---- the heat nearly hid us in; the radiator boiled over and we had to use most of our drinking water to cool it down. By the time we reached the mountain, it was four o'clock and we were exhausted. Here, judgement ran out of us and we started the tough climb to the summit, not realizing that darkness came suddenly in the desert. Sure enough, by six we were struggling and Andrew very nearly went down a steep cliff, dragging Mohammed and me along with him. By nine, when the wind howled across the flat ledge of the summit, we knew as we shivered together for warmth that it had not been our lucky day.
本段從"rose"(起床)寫起,然后是吃早餐("not to miss breakfast", "closing at nine o'clock"),然后是"close to noon",一直寫到這一天結(jié)束("By nine--")。
B.按位置遠(yuǎn)近排列(spatial arrangement)。例如:From a distance, it looked like a skinny tube, but as we got closer, we could see it flesh out before our eyes. It was tubular, all right, but fatter than we could see from far away. Furthermore, we were also astonished to notice that the building was really in two parts: a pagoda sitting on top of a tubular one-story structure. Standing ten feet away, we could marvel at how much of the pagoda was made up of glass windows. Almost everything under the wonderful Chinese roof was made of glass, unlike the tube that it was sitting on, which only had four. Inside, the tube was gloomy, because of the lack of light. Then a steep, narrow staircase took us up inside the pagoda and the light changed dramatically. All those windows let in a flood of sunshine and we could see out for miles across the flat land.
本段的寫法是由遠(yuǎn)及近,從遠(yuǎn)處("from a distance")寫起,然后"get closer",再到(" ten feet away"),最后是"inside the pagoda"……當(dāng)然,按位置遠(yuǎn)近來寫不等于都是由遠(yuǎn)及近。根據(jù)需要,也可以由近及遠(yuǎn),由表及里等等。