Linkers for Coherence & Cohesion
In IELTS Writing Task 2, you need to connect or link your ideas together throughout your essay. This creates cohesion. The reader of your essay should be able to easily follow your ideas from one idea to the next, and to the next, and so on. This is what is called coherence.
The main tools you will use to connect your essay ideas are linking adverbs, or “linkers”, substitution, and referencing. We’re going to look at substitution and referencing another time, so today we’ll focus on linkers, and I’m going to show you, first, how to use them badly, and second, how to use them well in your IELTS writing.
Before we go any further, what are some examples of linking adverbs or linkers, as we often call them?
Well, we have several kinds, which you can see below. As you will notice, there are many linking adverbs and phrases, and they have various uses.
Fortunately, you don’t need to learn all of these, but you should learn one concluding linker to use at the start of your conclusion, and at least two linkers from each of the other categories.
Problems Using Linkers
Now, there are two major problems I see in the way IELTS students often use linkers. One, they don’t use them at all, and the links between ideas are not clear enough. This is often a problem in band 4 or 5 essays. Or two, the opposite, students use far too many linkers and their writing becomes ‘mechanical’ as IELTS examiners sometimes say. Essentially, this means that the writing style is unnatural, and does not flow effectively. This is often a problem in band 6 essays, and actually is one of the reasons why you might not reach above band 7 in your writing. Let’s have a look at an example of this second problem, as this is the problem I most often see in my students’ essays:
Too many linkers
As a result of changes in society it is much harder for people to stay close with their families. For one, in the past, people often lived very near relatives during their whole lives. Consequently, they spent more time with their loved ones. Furthermore, people's lives today are busier than in the past. Thus, they have less spare time to spend with their families. In addition, there are more entertainment options than in the past. Moreover, society has become more individualistic, and people tend to focus more on personal development. In consequence, people tend to have less time for relatives.
Do you see how this many linkers is not natural and breaks the flow? What’s more, do you see how many continuation linkers there are? There are three: furthermore, in addition, and moreover. This is a bad sign as it means the writer has introduced a lot of ideas into the paragraph and probably hasn’t developed them enough. In this case, there are 4 separate ideas in the paragraph and the candidate definitely doesn’t develop them all effectively.
So, you have to find the right balance. In really good essay writing, it is unusual to use more than four or five linkers in a paragraph. You should be particularly careful with linkers for showing continuation such as in addition, furthermore, moreover, and also, because using a lot of continuation linkers is a sign that you have too many ideas in your paragraph, and you are not developing each idea enough.
Now, let’s look at an example of really effective use of linkers.
Really effective use of linkers:
As a result of various changes in society it is much harder for people to maintain close ties with their families than previously. For one, in the past, people tended to live very near relatives during their whole lives, whereas in today’s world this is not the case. These days, people are more mobile and regularly move to different cities or even countries in order to find a better job, take advantage of better education or for some other opportunity. Furthermore, people’s lives are busier today than they were in the past. They have a wide range of work and personal responsibilities, not to mention all of the recreational and personal development opportunities now available. This means that it is even harder to find time for family.
So, what do you immediately see in this example? Well, there’s only 5 linkers in the paragraph. This is the right amount. In addition, I’ve underlined ‘These days’, “They” and “This”. Here, the writer uses “These days” to substitute and link to the previous phrase “in today’s world”, “They” to reference the “people” previously mentioned, and “This” to reference the whole idea in the previous sentence. Excellent body paragraphs like this one, use a mix of linkers, substitution, and referencing to connect from one idea to the next idea.
I hope those examples were helpful. If you would like to do some practise exercises on using linkers in your IELTS Writing, you can go here. Thanks and good luck!
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