How to link ideas in IELTS essays

One of the main criteria for assessing your writing at the IELTS Academic exams is Coherence and Cohesion, which is 25% of your marks. Besides logically organising information and ideas, using paragraphing, you have to ‘use cohesion in such a way that it attracts no attention’. This requirement is taken from the document that IELTS examiners use to score your essay. Cohesion refers to the use of linguistic devices to join sentences together.

Using linking words is a grammatically correct and stylistically effective way to connect ideas and sentences. They are essential for IELTS Writing Task 2, and if you use them, chances are you will get a higher score. However, the examiner will check your range, accuracy and your flexibility of linking words in an essay. Let us look at how the linking words are used and how they add coherence to a sentence.

Why use linking words

Linking words and phrases are the tools that make your text naturally or logically connected. Thus, the reader can easily follow your ideas and understand them. Linking words play a very important role in the text:

• they make your writing clear and connected;
• they show how the clauses/parts of the text are related to each other;
• they help to express opinions, attitudes and purposes;
• they help to add further information, details, examples;
• they point to the conclusions etc.

What linking words to use

Contrast

Use these words and phrases when you need to introduce opposite ideas in your essay. They can also introduce exceptions to the rules:

• however
• at the same time
• although
• despite
• yet

Result

These linking words usually link reasons with results. Use them for the solution essay or any essay where you will have to explain consequences or results of something:

• thus
• as a result
• therefore
• that is why

READ: IELTS Academic essay writing tips and tricks

Explanation / details

When you are giving more details or want to explain your idea further in your essay, use the following phrases:

• this means
• in this way

Reason

If you have to write a cause/solution essay in your IELTS Writing task 2, you will need these linking words and phrases to explain reasons and causes for something:

• due to
• as
• since
• because of
• in view of

Addition

In essays, you have to give a main point, and then support it. If you use these linking words and expressions, the reader (examiner) will know that you are going to present some extra information:

• moreover
• furthermore
• what is more
• in addition

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Condition

Use the following expressions to join a condition and its consequence together. They are alternatives for ‘if’ used in more formal contexts, including academic writing:

• on condition that
• provided that
• unless

Example

When writing your essay, it is good to provide examples to support main ideas. Make sure you use these expressions to introduce examples:

• to illustrate
• for instance
• for example

Now, have a look at the linking words and expressions in the following essay sample, and think about their functions:

As you can see, we have highlighted all the linking words and expressions in the essay above. In the introduction, the writer presents two opposite ideas. In the next two paragraphs, these ideas are developed, explained in detail, and supported by examples. The author of the essay also writes about advantages and disadvantages of an increasing lifespan, and its consequences that depend on different conditions; this means that he or she models different situations. Finally, we can see that in conclusion, the writer explains the reason why this issue is controversial, and why such a trend is impossible to stop or prevent.

In your essay, show a range of linking words and expressions, and try not to repeat them throughout your essay. If you wrote ‘for example’, next time write ‘for instance’. Use the variety of linking words, but be careful, and only use them when they should be used. It’s a bad idea to stuff your essay with linking words or phrases because the use of these devices must look natural.

Using linking words or expressions is not the only way to make your writing cohesive. In our course, you will learn about other means that make different elements of the text hold together well. You will also keep all your strategies and useful tips in the Knowledge Bank so that you could return to them every time you need. With our new online IELTS Grade course, you will be fully-equipped to score high in IELTS Academic.