一个段落不是杂乱无章的，而是有机的组合，句子的排列顺序必须合乎逻辑，从一个句子到另一个句子的过渡必须流畅(smooth)，这就是连贯性(coherence)......

 

　　连贯性(coherence)

 

　　连贯性包括意连和形连两个方面，前者指的是内在的逻辑性，后者指的是使用转换词语。当然这两者常常是不可分割的。只有形连而没有意连，句子之间就没有内在的有机的联系;反之，只有意连而没有形连，有时行文就不够流畅。

 

　　意连

 

　　段落中句子的排列应遵循一定的次序，不能想到什么就写什么。如果在下笔之前没有构思，边写边想，写写停停，那就写不出一气呵成的好文章来。下面介绍几种常见的排列方式。

 

　　A.按时间先后排列(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.

 

　　本段从"rose"(起床)写起，然后是吃早餐("not to miss breakfast", "closing at nine o'clock")，然后是"close to noon"，一直写到这一天结束("By nine--")。

 

　　B.按位置远近排列(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.

 

　　本段的写法是由远及近，从远处("from a distance")写起，然后"get closer"，再到(" ten feet away")，最后是"inside the pagoda"……当然，按位置远近来写不等于都是由远及近。根据需要，也可以由近及远，由表及里等等。