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Flow and Cohesion

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Our Writing Center gets a lot of students who are concerned about the  flow  of their writing, but this can mean a lot of different things. When we talk about "flow" we mean  cohesion  or how ideas and relationships are communicated to readers. Flow can involve the  big-picture  (how parts of the essay fit together and the way the sequence of these parts affect how readers understand it) and the  sentence-level  (how the structure of a sentence affects the ways meanings and relationships come across to readers). This page has an overview of ways to think about revising the  flow  of an essay on both of these levels.

Big-Picture Revision Strategies

Reading out-loud.

Oftentimes, you can identify places that need some extra attention sharing your writing with a friend, or reading it out loud to yourself. For example, if it's hard to actually say a sentence at a normal conversational pace, this might indicate that there's something you can change about the structure that will make it easier to say (and probably, easier to understand). A few more tips:

• When you read out-loud, make sure to  slow down . If you are talking too fast, you might fill-in gaps or otherwise not notice things you want to change. You also want to give yourself time to process what you're saying  as you say it.
• If there's nobody around, there are also many computer programs that can convert text to speech and read to you, including  Microsoft Word .
• Take notes while you read. While you might want to fix things as you read, if you're worried about flow, it's also good to read your essay all the way through so that you can hear how parts fit together. If you don't want to interrupt your reading, you can take notes by doing things like putting a checkmark in the margins, using a highlighter, or making a list on a separate sheet of paper.

Structure and Sequence

Sometimes issues of flow and cohesion might actually be structural. It's good to reflect on the structure of an essay, the order of the different parts, and how they all fit together. If you want to revise the structure of your essay, consider trying one of the following activities.

Sign-Posting and Transitions

A great way to help readers comprehend the flow of ideas is include things like sign-posts and transitions. A sign-post is basically just language to point out different parts of the essay for readers in order to help them navigate your ideas. For example,  strong topic sentences  are a good as sign-posts because they tell readers what upcoming paragraphs are going to be about.  Transition sentences  can help readers understand how the ideas you were just discussing in a previous paragraph relate to what's coming up with the next paragraph. Here are a couple questions that can help you brainstorm sign-posting statements. After you brainstorm, you can then revise these sign-posting sentences so they fit better with your writing.

• Try starting a sentence by writing "In this paragraph, I will discuss..." After you complete this sentence, you can then revise it to make it fit better with your writing.
• "In the previous paragraph I discuss [purpose of paragraph 1] and this helps better understand [purpose of paragraph 2] because..."
• This paragraph supports my argument because..."
• While I discuss [previous idea or concept] above, I will now talk about [new idea or concept] because..."

Revision on the Sentence-Level

Verbs, or stuff we do.

A sentence seems clear when its important actions are in verbs. Compare these sentences where the actions are in bold and the verbs are UPPERCASE:

Because we  LACKED  data, we could not  EVALUATE  whether the UN  HAD TARGETED  funds to areas that most needed assistance. Our  lack  of data PREVENTED  evaluation  of UN  actions  in  targeting  funds to areas most in  need  of  assistance .

Nominalization

Turning a verb or adjective into a noun is called a “nominalization.” No element of style more characterizes turgid writing, writing that feels abstract, indirect, and difficult, than lots of nominalizations, especially as the subjects of verbs.  

Our request IS that you DO a review of the data.     vs. We REQUEST that you REVIEW the data.    

Try this:  when editing, underline the actions in your sentences.  Are those actions in the form of verbs?  If not, you might try rewriting your sentences to turn those actions into the main verbs in the sentence.

Active and Passive Verbs

Some critics of style tell us to avoid the passive everywhere because it adds a couple of words and often deletes the agent, the “doer” of the action.  But in fact, the passive is sometimes the better choice.  To choose between the active and passive, you have to answer two questions:

• The president  was rumored  to have considered resigning.
• Those who  are found  guilty can  be fined .
• Valuable records should always  be kept  in a safe.
• Because the test  was not done , the flaw  was not corrected .
• The weight given to industrial competitiveness as opposed to the value we attach to liberal arts   will determine  our decision.  
• Our decision  will be determined   by the weight we give to industrial competitiveness as opposed to the value we attach to the liberal arts .

Try this:   We need to find our passive verbs before we can evaluate whether or not to change them.  While you’re editing, try underlining all the “to be” verbs, since these are often paired with other verbs to make passive constructions.  The verbs you’re looking for are: am, are, is, was, were, be, become, became.  Once you’ve identified these verbs, check to see if they are necessary, or if the sentence would be clearer or stronger without them.  Example:  “There is one explanation in the story…” vs “The story explains…”

Writing is more coherent when readers are able to make connections across sentences and paragraphs. On the sentence level, this can include when the last few words of one set up information that appears in the first few words of the next.  That’s what gives us our experience of flow.

• Begin sentences with information familiar to your readers.  Readers get that information from two sources:  first, they remember words from the sentence they just read.  Second, readers bring to a sentence a general knowledge of its subject.  In a paper on black holes, for example, readers would find references to “astronomers”  familiar, even without prior mention.
• End sentences with information that readers cannot anticipate.  Readers prefer to read what’s easy before what’s hard, and what’s familiar and simple is easier to understand that what’ new and complex.  

Compare these two passages:

Try this:  While editing, check for these words: this, these, that, those, another, such, second, or more. Writers often refer to something in a previous sentence with these kinds of words. When you use any of those signals, try to put them at or close to the beginning of the sentence that you use them in.

Here are some tips to help your writing become more precise and cut out extra words.

• Delete what readers can infer.  This can include redundant categories like “period of time,” “pink in color,” or “shiny in appearance.

• Can you make sense of the negatives in this sentence?

Except when you have failed to submit applications without documentation, benefits will not be denied.

This handout contains excerpts from Joseph M. Williams'  Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace ( New York: Longman, 2000).

Writing Cohesive Texts: Improving Flow in Academic Essays

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Home » Literacy Lines » What are Cohesive Devices and how do they affect comprehension?

What are Cohesive Devices and how do they affect comprehension?

I was recently developing some PowerPoints and activities for a comprehension training session about the role that text structure plays in reading comprehension. One of the related topics that is unfamiliar to many teachers was Cohesive Devices (sometimes called Cohesive Ties , and also known as anaphors ). I thought I’d devote this post to explaining cohesive ties and how they might affect reading comprehension, especially for younger students or English language learners.

Cohesive devices are words or phrases used to connect ideas between different parts of text. There are three main types of cohesive devices:

• Example: Jim went out to the playground. He played on the swings.
• Example: There was a lot of food, but she only ate the bread .
• Example: Jim played on the swings. Later , Jim played ball.
• Example: Mary was late, so she took the bus. Mary was late because she took the bus.

Cohesive devices affect comprehension because they help readers integrate information between sentences in a text. The pronoun, synonym, or transition word is tied to a previous word, phrase or clause (the antecedent ). Many students, even skilled readers, never consciously think about authors’ use of cohesive devices. It is helpful for teachers to draw attention to this kind of text structure, especially for students who have difficulty comprehending a series of sentences that include cohesive ties. Children with poor reading comprehension make more errors on questions that can only be answered if a pronoun has been correctly resolved. They are less likely to supply the appropriate anaphor in a cloze task. For example, “Steve gave his umbrella to Andrea in the park because ___ wanted to keep dry.” (Carlisle & Rice, 2002; Cain & Oakhill, 2007) Also, poor comprehenders’ difficulties are particularly pronounced when there is intervening text between the anaphor and it’s antecedent.

Look at the two examples below. The cohesive ties are linked to their antecedents with arrows. Notice how there can be multiple cohesive ties within a single paragraph!

Instructional Suggestions

As a means of drawing students’ attention to cohesion, have them identify all the words that “stand for” other words, phrases, or a clause in a short, familiar passage from material students are reading. For young children, many of the read aloud texts that teachers use to develop vocabulary and comprehension include examples where the author has used pronouns, synonyms, and transitions to connect sentences. For good readers, an activity such as this may be all that is necessary to encourage greater attention to the connections between sentences. The following are some recommendations for students who have difficulty understanding cohesion (Maria, 1990):

• Have students match the cohesive tie with its antecedent. There are several ways to do this. Students may draw arrows from the cohesive ties to the words they replace, write the antecedent above the cohesive tie, or write the same number over words that are linked. Some students may benefit from applying one of these techniques as they read.
• Have children read a passage and answer questions that require comprehension of cohesive ties.
• Delete pronouns from a passage, and have students fill in the blanks.
• Give students a passage in which names and other sentence components have been unnecessarily repeated. Ask them to substitute cohesive ties for the repetitious information.
• Example: Joe and Laura went to the beach. He played in the water while she looked for shells. Afterwards, they had a picnic lunch.

In other instances, children may need to draw on background knowledge and reasoning skills to determine the most probable antecedent of a pronoun. In the following example, it more likely refers to the mall than to the bank since John was able to conduct his business at the bank: John went to the mall after he deposited some money in his account at the bank. It was closed.

References:

Cain, K. & Oakhill, J. (2007). Reading comprehension difficulties: Correlates, causes, and consequences. In K. Cain & J. Oakhill (Eds.) Children’s comprehension problems in oral and written language . New York: Guilford Press. pp. 48-49

Carlisle, J.F. & Rice, M. S. (2002). Improving reading comprehension: Research-based principles and practices. Baltimore, MD: York Press. pp. 129-130

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18 Comments

Thank you for the detailed information.

Thanks for sharing a comprehensive guide on comprehension. This will help English language learner to know about the connectors. I enjoyed reading this article.

Thanks for sharing such knowledge

thanks to use such a simple method.

Thanks for sharing this knowledge.

Thank you for this article. Having gone to school in the early 60’s, we learned this from a textbook. The teacher didn’t have to find articles like yours to realize that this very important concept is forgotten! We need English Language textbooks back, even /especially for grade school.

This was very helpful, thank you.

Your explanation is clear and informative. Thanks.

So simplified discourse with a lot of things to learn. Thank you

Hello, when I think of skills in Scarborough’s Rope would this go under the sub category of language structures because it involves syntax and semantics?

Yes, it is part of the language comprehension part of the reading rope.

Is there a book, lesson plans, or curriculum for teachers to present this to students? Thank you!

Chapter 8 in Nancy Hennessy’s book “Reading Comprehension Blueprint” includes suggestions for teaching cohesion.

Thank you! I was having difficulty clarifying my goal and this piece helped me write it in more detail.

Thank you very much this was very helpful

Very very helpful. Thanks for the post.

What a great, compressed explanation. The color coding at the paragraph level of instruction makes it practioner-friendly. Sorely needed for many of our students on the spectrum. Thank you!

Your insights are always spot-on. Keep up the great work!

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How to use cohesive devices effectively

A guide to linking and cohesion in ielts writing..

Updated: December 2023

One of the most important skills for getting a good score in the IELTS writing exam, is the way cohesive devices or linking devices are used. In the marking criteria for task 2 essays and Writing task 1 reports, Coherence and Cohesion accounts for 25% of your marks. So it is important to have an essay that flows naturally and is easy for the reader to understand. A key component of this is cohesive devices, however, use them correctly and sparingly.

In this lesson we will look at:

1. what cohesive devices are. 2. how they are marked in the exam. 3. examples of cohesive devices. 4. faulty use of cohesive devices. 5. example sentences with cohesive devices..

If you prefer, you can watch the video below

What are cohesive devices?

These are often called by different names such as : Linkers, Discourse markers, Transitional words, Signposting Language or Connectors. These are words like “However” “For example” “To Conclude” “Also” “In addition” “Therefore” “Similarly” and so on. However, they need to be used correctly and effectively and many IELTS students have trouble with their use.

Here are 2 examples from an essay about environmental issues.

1. The government should tackle the issue of river pollution, in addition , the problem of factory emissions has to be resolved. 2. The government should tackle the issue of river pollution, however , the problem of factory emissions has to be resolved.

In the first example the student has given extra information . We can also use another linker such as ‘ additionally, also, and, furthermore’

In the second example the meaning is slightly different because there is a linker which shows contrast . The second part of the sentence puts emphasis on the issue of factory emissions and that they need to be tackled or resolved first.

This demonstrates that you shouldn’t just memorise them. Practice using them in your essays and get feedback on coherence and cohesion.

How are they marked in the Exam?

Click to see the marking criteria.

Click here for the PDF to the marking criteria from the British Council.

• Band 5 : “makes inadequate, inaccurate or over use of cohesive devices”
• Band 6: ‘ Uses cohesive devices effectively but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical.’
• Band 7 : “uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under/over-use
”
• Band 8 : “manages all aspects of cohesion well”

Use them sparingly

The problem is that some students either over use them or they use them incorrectly. They often put cohesive devices in every sentence or every 2 sentences thinking that this will impress the examiner. In fact this technique is going to cause problems with your essay and could lead to a band 5 or 6 in coherence and cohesion.

Band 7 or 8 essays show that cohesive devices are used effectively. Interestingly, if you look at most Band 8 or 9 essays there are not that many cohesive devices, but when they are used they are very effective. It is not necessary to have them all over the essay. Just one or two per paragraph is fine . Cohesive devices are also very important to use in Writing task 1 especially when describing a process and sequencing.

Examples of Cohesive devices

Here is a list of linkers and cohesive devices, but I don’t recommend memorising them, you should practice using them in your writing first. Remember not to over use these.

Example of faulty use

The marking criteria for Band 6 says:

‘ Uses cohesive devices effectively but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanica l.’

Can you spot the faulty cohesion in the example below?

Despite of the dangers of eating too much junk food, people are still consuming these types of food and risking their health. In addition, there is a growing number of people turning to healthy eating these days, so that many more are becoming vegetarian. On the other hand, junk food is tasty so many people are eating it.

In the above example the candidate has made a mistake with ‘Despite of’ , it doesn’t need ‘of’ after Despite. Also ‘in addition’ is wrongly used, this is faulty use. It would be better to say ‘However’ ,also the word ‘so that’ just doesn’t seem to fit well here. Cohesive devices are faulty and overused in this paragraph. ‘Mechanical use’ means that they are unnatural or seem to be memorised. This is why you should not memorise sentences and just plug them into your writing. For example: ‘As outlined in the above essay I agree with the view put forward’   This sentence looks odd and seems memorised..

Example sentences with good cohesive devices.

• Crime is increasing in big cities in the developed world. To illustrate this , robberies have risen by 35% in London since 2008. (giving an example)
• The quality of air in most big cities is getting worse, in particular, cities such as Beijing and Delhi have had real issues with air pollution over the past 10 years. (Emphasizing and giving an example)
• Global warming is a big concern for the world. In addition, sea levels pose a threat to low lying coastal areas. (addition)
• There are certainly advantages to fast food such as low cost and convenience. On the other hand , there are health issues that must be considered, namely heart disease and diabetes. (contrasting and giving an example)
• One parent families need financial support from the government, additionally, educational support should be part of that.  (addition)
• Many company employees have been working more and more overtime in recent years due to the fear of them losing their jobs. Consequently, the health and wellbeing of company workers has become a big concern.  (cause and results)
• In my view, public transportation should be made cheaper to motivate people to take the train or bus to work. (opinion)
• Shopping online is very convenient. Moreover , it is cheaper than most high street shops.  (addition)

Notice the punctuation used here, ‘Moreover’ should be used to begin a new sentence.

Key Point: Remember not to overuse these as the essay will end up sounding unnatural if the reader reads it aloud. Here is a paragraph from an essay about internet shopping. Notice how I have used cohesive devices sparingly.

‘One main advantage of purchasing online is that it is much cheaper than buying from high street shops. This means that buying items such as books, clothes and household goods is much more cost effective if consumers get them on the internet because of the wide range of shopping sites. To illustrate this , a recent report in Business weekly magazine stated that since 2018, the number of shoppers making purchases on Amazon has risen considerably due to low costs and free delivery.’

In the paragraph above there are only 2 cohesive devices to help with cohesion. This is a natural way to use them.

Leave a comment below if you have any questions.

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Cohesive Devices: Your Ultimate Guide to Effective IELTS Writing

Introduction.

Cohesive devices, sometimes called linking words, linkers, connectors, discourse markers or transitional words, are one of the most misunderstood and misused parts of IELTS Writing.

Cohesive devices are words like ‘ For example ‘, ‘ In conclusion ‘, ‘ however ‘ and ‘ moreover ‘. Together with coherence, cohesion provides 25% of your marks in both parts of the Writing test. However, most students have not been taught how to use them effectively.

This post will look at how and, more importantly, when we should use them.

What are cohesive devices?

Cohesive devices tell the reader what we are doing in a sentence and help to guide them through our writing. They signal to the reader the relationships between the different clauses, sentences and paragraphs.

Let’s look at two examples below.

The public transport in this city is unreliable and it’s cheap. The public transport in this city is unreliable but it’s cheap.

The sentences above have two cohesive devices: ‘and’ and ‘but’. Both give the reader different signals and change the meaning of the sentence.

The first sentence tells the reader that ‘it’s cheap’ is being added to the previous information; however, the second sentence tells the reader that they are giving a contrasting opinion to the first part of the sentence by using the word ‘but’.

In other words, the second sentence says, ‘it’s unreliable (which is bad), but the good thing about it is it’s cheap, so I don’t mind using it.’ Simply using the word ‘but’ conveys that whole message without needing to say it literally.

This makes our message more succinct and our writing easier to read. But does that mean we should use as many cohesive devices as possible?

Overusing Cohesive Devices

The biggest mistake many students make is to use cohesive devices in nearly every sentence.

If you look at the IELTS Writing Marking Criteria, it states that a Band 7 ‘ uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under-/over-use ‘. This is typical of a student who knows the meaning and how to use cohesive devices but thinks that using them as much as possible will get them a high mark.

However, using them too often leads to students using them incorrectly. It is stated for Band 5 that ‘ makes inadequate, inaccurate or overuse of cohesive devices’ . In my experience, most students get a Band 5 in this category for this reason. They think that using them as much as possible will get them a high mark, but don’t consider the meaning and how each of them should be used in a sentence.

Band 8 and 9 students tend to only use cohesive devices when necessary and use them appropriately and effectively, i.e. correct meaning and grammar. In fact, many students have criticised Band 9 answers because ‘they don’t have enough discourse markers’. Take a look at the extract below from an academic journal (The Power of Human Rights by Stephen C. Ropp).

This extract is about 200 words long. How many cohesive devices can you see?

Most IELTS students will not be able to produce writing to this very high standard, but you should remember that you don’t get extra marks for lots of cohesive devices; the most important thing is using them accurately (grammar) and appropriately (meaning).

Meaning and Grammar

The next problem students have is learning long lists of cohesive devices and not learning the meaning of each word or how it should be used in a sentence. If you use the wrong word, it confuses the reader, and this lowers your mark for both coherence and grammar. It is better to use no word than use a word incorrectly.

My advice is to not learn long lists of words. The list below is more than you will ever need, and learning more than this will probably confuse you or take up time that could be used to learn something else. In a 250-word essay, you might give 2-3 examples at the most, so why would you learn 10 different ways to give an example? You only have one conclusion, so it seems like a waste of time to learn 5 different ways to do this.

Learn just the words you need and learn them 100%. By 100%, I mean that you know exactly what that word means, when it should be used in a sentence and how it should be used in a sentence. Until you know all of this 100%, don’t use it.

Finally, don’t try to use very complicated words and expressions if you are not already comfortable with the simple terms. Being able to use ‘ and ‘ or ‘ but ‘ effectively is much better than trying to use more complicated words incorrectly. Again, look at some academic texts or good IELTS sample answers; simple words are used more often than not.

How to Improve

You can’t simply learn a long list of words and then hope you can use these correctly in an essay. That would be like Ronaldo telling you how he scores so many goals and thinking you can do the same thing by just listening to him.

Also, you can’t look at just one example sentence and hope to learn everything you need to know about that word.

If you want to improve, do the following :

• Reading is the number one way to learn new words. Good writers read a lot; it’s that simple. Pick a topic you are interested in and read a little every day. 20 minutes is enough. Note down any cohesive devices and how they are used in each sentence.
• Check the meaning and grammar of each word on sites like the British Council or BBC . You will find lots of explanations there and example sentences.
• Practice using these and then have your writing checked by an experienced IELTS teacher .

If you do the following, you will slowly learn how to use cohesive devices effectively. I wish there was a faster way, but like most things in life, hard work and practice is the best and only solution.

Below is a list of more cohesive devices than you will ever need to do well on the IELTS Writing test.

If you want to see how I use them in sample IELTS answers check out our model answers for Writing Task 1 and Writing Task 2 .

I hope you found this article useful. If you have any questions or comments, join the conversation on our Facebook page .

For more help with IELTS, please check out IELTS Preparation- The Ultimate Guide .

About Christopher Pell

My name is Christopher Pell and I'm the Managing Director of IELTS Advantage.

I started IELTS Advantage as a simple blog to help 16 students in my class. Several years later, I am very humbled that my VIP Course has been able to help thousands of people around the world to score a Band 7+ in their IELTS tests.

If you need my help with your IELTS preparation, you can send me an email using the contact us page.

Final Drafts

Cohesion: what do people mean when they say my writing doesn’t “flow”, before you read.

Write 750 to 1,000 words in response to this prompt, keeping in mind that you’re going to be working with this piece of writing extensively in the coming days—not only in this chapter but in other chapters related to style:

As a public university that receives substantial support from the state legislature, the U has an obligation to serve the people of the state of Utah. However, there can be disagreements on what that service means. On one hand, it can mean admitting as many Utah residents as possible in order to increase the state’s population of college-educated citizens. On the other hand, it can mean increasing admission requirements to fulfill the U’s position as the “flagship” university in the state. Where do you come down?

Cohesion, or “Flow”—An Overview

Unfortunately, teachers may not always be explicit about what they mean—just that it doesn’t “read” or “sound” right or that the ideas don’t progress from one to another. This chapter is about what “flow” actually means and how to make sure your writing does it.

By “flow,” most readers mean what grammarians and linguists call cohesion —the property of a text to hold together at the level of sentences and paragraphs. Of course, cohesion is good in any communication medium, and each medium can present challenges for it. If you’re sending text messages back and forth to a friend and the network sends them out of order, the result can be confusing: you might have written “thank GOD” in response to some piece of news, but your friend might not have gotten your message until after she texted “gotta go.” Oops. If you’re speaking to someone on a train or bus and something outside the window catches your attention, you might say something about it, and the other person might say, “wait—what?”

But in both those cases, you can quickly and easily clear up the confusion. Speech and texting are more or less synchronous media: that is, they involve people communicating at the same time and often in the same (virtual) space. Writing, however—in the traditional sense, anyway—is different, because it’s asynchronous . It also requires an important trade-off. Writing has worked well for a long time as a communication technology because it’s relatively easy to distribute. Someone using writing to communicate doesn’t have to move from place to place: she may simply write something down and send it. However, to use a metaphor from very current communication technologies, writing has low bandwidth compared to other media. If someone is speaking to you, you can infer meaning from words themselves but also from vocal inflections, facial expressions, hand gestures, posture, and even from how close the other person is to you. You can’t do that when you write and read. So, writers and readers can send and receive on the cheap, but they carry a burden of making their words work extraordinarily hard.

This idea has a very clear implication for your own written arguments—an important enough implication that we’d say it pretty loudly if you were standing right in front of us. But, since this is writing, we’ll use boldface: just because an argument you’re making is clear in your own head, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically clear to people who are reading the written version of your argument . That’s one of the reasons it’s a good idea to circulate the writing you do to others before you turn it in for a grade or circulate it in high-stakes situations.

Fortunately, the to-do list for “flow” is relatively short. Throughout Englishlanguage writing, it turns out that there is a small number of strategies for achieving cohesion. These strategies help writers follow a key principle for communicating with readers as effectively as possible on the assumption that they’re not looking over their readers’ shoulders pointing out what they really need to know. That principle is called the given-new contract . This contract implies that you as a writer will start your projected readers with something relatively familiar and then lead them to less familiar material. It’s an idea that is simple to state, but it’s powerful, and it works at different levels of a document. At the level of overall document design, consistent visual items on each page (page number location, headings, “white” space, fonts) help create a familiar visual field that works like a container for whatever new information is coming next. As you read earlier in this book, a lot of a writer’s job in an introduction, after all, is orienting readers so that they’re at least familiar with the broad topic before the writer gets specific—with an argument, for example. But the contract helps sentence-level cohesion, as well. It’s very helpful to readers if you create a cycle in which you try to put “given” information at the start of sentences and shift “new” information to the ends, and then recycle the “new” information as “given” information in sentences that come up. The principle of end emphasis helps here: readers tend to latch more onto how sentences end than onto how they begin. Skilled writers know this is often the case, so they’ll reserve end-of-sentence slots for new or challenging information, since they know they often have a little more of their readers’ attention at those spots anyway.

The given-new contract and the concept of end emphasis are a little tough to explain in abstract terms, so here’s an example followed by some analysis. We’ve numbered the sentences to help make the analysis clear.

1 This textbook is freely circulable under the terms of a Creative Commons (“CC”) license. 2 CC is a nonprofit organization that helps content creators, such as textbook authors, share their products in more diverse ways than traditional copyright allows. 3 While typical copyright restricts others from using an author’s work unless they have the author’s express consent, CC allows authors to pick and choose which restrictions to apply to their work by using one of several free licenses. 4 For example, this book is available via an “Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike” agreement: adopters of the textbook may use it free of charge and may even modify it without permission, but they must agree not to try to sell it or share it with others under different licensing terms.

Each sentence in this passage shows our attempt to honor the given-new contract. Here’s how:

• The first sentence introduces the term “Creative Commons” near its end. We’re assuming that you may not know (much) about CC, so we’re trying to exploit end emphasis to introduce it here very early in the paragraph.
• This sentence immediately recycles CC and defines the term more fully. The sentence ends with the important (and “new”) idea that CC allows for a wider range of options than copyright.
• Now, the passage explains in a little more detail the point it just made about copyright restrictions and goes on to clarify the contrast with CC, ending with the “new” information that CC allows authors to choose from several licenses.
• Not surprisingly, the next sentence shows what the previous sentence introduced by giving an example of a relevant CC license.

In addition to using the principle of end emphasis, writers who honor the given-new contract frequently use several other strategies.

Stock transition words and phrases

Many writers first learn to make their writing flow by using explicit, specialpurpose transitional devices. You may hear these devices called “signposts,” because they work much like highway and street signs. When steel boxes weighing 2 tons and more are rolling around at high speeds, it’s important that their operators are repeatedly and clearly told exactly where and when to go with as little ambiguity as possible.

Here’s a list of stock, generic, all-purpose transition words and phrases, organized by their basic functions. Keep in mind that there are differences among these that can make a difference and that determining what those differences is is beyond the scope of this book. It’s a matter of experience.

To compare : also, in the same way, likewise, similarly

To contrast : although, and yet, but, but at the same time, despite, even so, even though, for all that, however, in contrast, in spite of, nevertheless, notwithstanding, on the contrary, on the other hand, regardless, still, though, yet

To give examples or intensify : after all, an illustration of, even, for example, for instance, indeed, in fact, it is true, of course, specifically, that is, to illustrate, truly

To indicate place : above, adjacent to, below, elsewhere, farther on, here, near, nearby, on the other side, opposite to, there, to the east, to the left

To indicate time : after a while, afterward, as long as, as soon as, at last, at length, at that time, before, earlier, formerly, immediately, in the meantime, in the past, lately, later, meanwhile, now, presently, shortly, simultaneously, since, so far, soon, subsequently, then, thereafter, until, until now, when

To repeat, summarize, or conclude : all in all, altogether, in brief, in conclusion, in other words, in particular, in short, in simpler terms, in summary, on the whole, that is, to put it differently, to summarize

To show cause and effect : accordingly, as a result, because, consequently, for this purpose, hence, otherwise, since, then, therefore, thereupon, thus, to this end, with this object in mind

As we just told you, avoiding ambiguity in academic and professional writing is important. But it’s not as important as avoiding it on highways, in factories, or around high-voltage equipment or explosives. In those contexts, lots of signposts with lots of redundancy are vital. In many writing situations, you can expect your readers to pick up other useful clues for cohesion, so it’s somewhat less important to use a lot of these “stock” or generic transition words. In fact, if you overuse them (for instance, in an essay in which your first paragraph starts with “first,” your second paragraph starts with “second,” and on and on), it can get annoying.

If you’re old enough vaguely to remember the Schoolhouse Rock series, you might remember the episode about pronouns (“he,” “she,” “her,” “him,” “you,” “we,” “they,” “it,” “one,” “this,” “that,” and some others) and how they can stand for nouns, even if the nouns have long names. The idea is that pronouns make speaking and writing more efficient. But you may not have learned that pronouns are at least as powerful as cohesive devices. Since pronouns work by referring back to nouns that have previously been mentioned, they can help writers carry the ideas their nouns represent across sentences and paragraphs.

You may have been told to limit your use of pronouns or even avoid them altogether. This is bad advice, but it’s understandable: pronouns work very well when they clearly refer to their antecedents, but they can create significant comprehension problems, misdirection, and vagueness when they don’t.

Contrary to a lot of advice novice writers get, repetition is effective. For example, as you’ll learn later in this book (or now if you want to read ahead, of course), many rhetorical strategies that are thousands of years old and that exist in several languages use repetition. It’s a time-honored way to signal importance, create a sense of rhythm, and help audiences remember key ideas. But repetition gets a bad reputation because it can become redundant. (Yes, that sentence used repetition to get its point across. It’s no accident that it had a lot of “r”s.)

Repetition can involve individual words, phrases, or grammatical structures. When you repeat similar structural elements but not necessarily the words themselves, you are using parallelism , a special variety of repetition that not only helps cohesion but also helps you to communicate that similarly important ideas should be read together. When sentences are written using non-parallel parts, it’s certainly possible for readers to understand them, but it creates work for the reader that usually isn’t necessary. Compare these sentences:

Student writers should learn to start projects early, how to ask for advice from teachers and peers, and when to focus on correcting grammar. Student writers should learn to start projects early, to ask for advice from teachers and peers, and to figure out when to focus on correcting their grammar.

See the difference? The first sentence is comprehensible: the commas, for example, let you know that you’re reading a list. But the extra adverbs (“how” and “when”) get in the way of the sentence’s clarity. And that problem, in turn, means that it’s hard to see clearly how each item in the list relates to the others. In the revised sentence, though, it’s a lot clearer that each of the three items is something student writers should “learn to” do. That relationship is made clear by the repeating grammatical pattern:

Student writers should learn

• to start projects early
• to ask for advice
• to figure out when to focus on grammar

Here’s an example of some writing that uses a variety of cohesion strategies. We know it well because one of us wrote it. It’s a short essay, written for a broad academic audience in a U publication, about the current state of the English language. To clarify the analysis that follows, we’ve underlined a few of the transition devices.

Teaching (and Learning) Englishes

University Writing Program

I teach English-language writing, and I’m a native speaker of the English language. Being a native speaker might seem to be an excellent basic qualification for my job: at the very least, it should necessarily make me the model of English usage. However, it actually makes me very unusual.

According to The British Council, approximately 1.5 billion people around the world use English. Roughly 375 million of them are like me: they have learned English since birth, and most of them live in countries like the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand that are traditional English-language centers.

That still leaves over a billion English users. 375 million of those people live in countries that were British colonies until the middle of the last century, such as Ghana, India, Kenya, and Nigeria.

But the largest number of English speakers—50% of the global total—are in countries that were not British colonies and that don’t have much of a history with English. Count China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea among them. So, most English speakers aren’t where we might expect them to be. In addition, they’re not using English in ways we might expect, either, which helps explain why I’m referring to them as “users” and not “writers” or “speakers.” Most people who use English around the world do so in specific circumstances in order to get very specific things done. Many Indians, for instance, might use English in publications and to transact business over the phone, Hindi in a government office, Gujarati at the store, and maybe one of several other languages at home.

What does this mean for my teaching and research? People and information move around globally more so now than ever, and that movement makes diverse uses of English feed back into the US. As students at the U (and the U is not alone) become more culturally and linguistically diverse, I often have as much to learn from them as I have to teach them.

This short example uses each of the cohesion strategies described above:

• Overall, the example attempts to honor the given-new contract. It starts on familiar territory—or at least, with an attempt to orient the reader very quickly to the writer’s personal approach. And it also makes a statement about the writer that the reader likely intuitively agrees with: namely, he’s a native speaker of English, which makes him well qualified to be an English teacher. But the first paragraph ends with a surprising claim: being a native English speaker means being unusual. Here, then, the writer starts with what’s comfortable but then uses end emphasis to reinforce the “new” information at the end.
• The writer does use several stock transitions: in fact, one of them —“however”—helps introduce the surprising sentence at the end of the introduction by clearly signposting something different or unexpected. And, as another example, the fourth paragraph starts with “but,” which signposts another transition to information that contradicts what comes before. (You may have been told never to start sentences with conjunctions like “but” or “and.” It turns out that it’s generally fine to do that. Just be aware of your readers’ preferences.)
• Pronouns appear to be the most common cohesion device in the essay. At the start of the third paragraph, for example, “that” stands in for the statistic in the previous paragraph, which would be hard to write out all over again. But “that” also carries forward the sense of the statistic into the next paragraph. And “those people” carries the statistic forward to the next sentence. (Really, “those” is actually an adjective that modifies “people,” but it’s enough like a pronoun that we’re handling it like one here.)
• Repetition is also common in this essay. Words are repeated—or at least, put very close to other words that are very similar in meaning. “English” and “British colonies” clearly help tie together the third and fourth paragraphs. And sentences show parallelism. See, for instance, paragraph four: “So, most English speakers aren’t where we would expect them to be. In addition, they’re not using English in ways we might expect, either.”
• Identify at least three other specific cohesion devices used in the example essay. Be prepared to say what kind of device it is and what effect it has on your reading. Also be prepared to suggest what would happen if it weren’t there.
• Re-read the 750-1,000 words you wrote before you read this chapter, paying particular attention to cohesion. Now, revise it to improve its flow.
• Open 2010. Authored by : Jay Jordan. Provided by : University of Utah. Located at : https://utah.instructure.com/courses/324133/files/44665618/download?wrap=1 . Project : University Writing Program. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Image of mirrored building. Authored by : Ian Muttoo. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/4HWFQg . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of stone archways. Authored by : Paolo Dallorso. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/78Y6C4 . License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Image of mahjong tiles. Authored by : elPadawan. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/egHTTg . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

Linking Words (Transitional Expressions)

Table of Contents

Introduction, what are linking words, why are linking words important, examples of linking words in english, 1. expressing addition, 2. expressing contrast, 3. expressing cause and effect, 4. expressing purpose, 5. illustrating or exemplifying, 6. time and sequencing, 7. re-phrasing, 8. introducing alternatives, 9. comparing, 10. ananalyzing, 11. summarizing.

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A Guide to Cohesive Devices

Six tools to create cohesion & coherence.

Reference, substitution, cohesive nouns, ellipsis, lexical chains, conjunction . . .

Obscure names for processes common in everyday speech and indispensable for good writing.

Simply explained, with examples .

When we write an essay, there are several points we want to make and an overall idea we hope to get across to the reader. We use grammatical and lexical tools to make all the points come together and form one understandable whole. We want the whole to fit logically together to make our point.

If we succeed and the reader understands our meaning because what we wrote sticks together well, our essay has coherence .

The parts of a text don’t go in just any order; there are certain ways sentences and paragraphs connect with each other to fit properly. The tools, or devices, we use to link all these parts into a meaningful whole create cohesion – they work like glue sticking together pieces of a picture. There are six main types of cohesive devices.

1. Reference

Despite obscure names like anaphor and cataphor , reference means just what it sounds like, referring to something mentioned elsewhere in a text. We do this all the time when we speak. “The dentist has an opening tomorrow at 2:00. He will see you then.” Who is “ he ”? What is “ then ”? If someone told you only the second sentence, it wouldn’t make much sense (and, if your tooth hurt a lot, you might get a bit angry), but together with the first sentence, the meaning of the second is quite clear. Just like your mother is clear when she says, “ The wastebasket is full. Please empty it .” If you ask her, “ Wait, what do you mean, ‘it’? ” she won’t think you are being funny, and she won’t believe that you don’t understand. We use pronouns and other special words to refer back to things – people, places, times, etc. – with such frequency that these patterns are quite familiar, even unnoticed. Look for this linkage of words to earlier mentions of things when you read, and you will start to understand how cohesion works.

Reference is used to create cohesion in several different ways. If your father walks out and sees you standing by the car, which is wrecked, and says “ Did you do that ?” he’s making a reference to something outside the text (here, a situation) that is obvious to both of you, the speakers. 1 He didn’t have to say first, “ Oh, look, the car’s been wrecked. ” You probably won’t want to tell him so, but he’s just provided an example of exophora . On the other hand, if you make a statement to the police about the wrecked car, and you say that you came downstairs in the morning, saw that the car was wrecked, but didn’t see anyone around, and the policeman asks, “ So, what time did you come down and notice this ? ” he’s using endophora , because “ this ” refers to the fact that the car has been wrecked, something you explicitly said, and it’s an anaphoric , because the reference is to something earlier, although, again, you probably won’t want to point out these interesting grammatical facts to the policeman just then. The diagram that follows shows how these ideas fit together.

Definite pronouns and determiners are usually what we use to refer back to people, objects, and situations that we’ve mentioned earlier in a text, e.g., she, they, it, those, that .

No one seemed to want the last piece of cake.   It sat on the plate for days getting stale. Finally, late last night, when John came home tired and hungry, he ate it , only to have Susan scream at him this morning for having finished it .

Anaphoric reference is really a form of substitution, replacing one word or phrase with another, usually shorter, way of saying the same thing. To find these anaphoric references in a text, look especially for pronouns, demonstratives, and adverbials like the following: 1

personal pronouns (subjective or objective forms): I, you, we, he, she, it, they, one, him, her

possessive personal pronouns : mine, yours, ours, hers, its, theirs (or their determinative forms: my, your, our, her, its, their, one’s, often paired with a noun that refers back to something mentioned previously)

demonstratives & other determiners : this, these, that, those, some, any, both, enough, neither, none, half, etc. (often functioning as pronouns in anaphoric constructions)

place and time adverbials : here, there, then

comparatives : another, more, fewer, same, different. equally, likewise, similarly

2. Substitution

Whereas reference is often described as a link of meaning between words (because we understand the reference only in relation to its antecedent), substitution is described as a grammatical link that allows us to replace a noun or noun phrase, a verb or verb phrase, or an entire clause, when we say something about the same item or topic elsewhere in the text. 2 Why substitute one phrase for another? This may be for reasons of style, for instance, to avoid repetition, or we may want to clarify or define our meaning more precisely. Substitutes are often a more general word in the former case, and a more specific, or technical, phrase in the latter. Almost any word or phrase might function as a substitute, but there are some common patterns that can help us find substitutions. Words like one , some , or any often work as more general substitutes, while technical terms may fit in to replace a description of what they mean:

I don’t have change for the meter . Do you have any ?      (more general)

Clarence arrived just as I was making coffee , so I asked him if he ‘d like some .      (more general)

After the initial votes for student council have been counted, the three students with the most votes make speeches. Each candidate speaks for ten minutes, then the final votes are cast .    (more specific/technical)

Other patterns include using adverbials like so and thus to replace larger units – objects, complements, or whole clauses – and using a form of the verb “to do” to replace a longer verbal phrase or clause.

It was terribly cold outside, so the others went inside . Eventually, I did too.

3. Cohesive Nouns

Cohesive nouns are nouns that summarize what came before or what is to follow. For example, if I come home and find water all over the floor, a steady flow coming out from under the sink, and it takes me hour to find a night plumber who will come, plus a few more hours to have the pipe fixed and clean up the mess so I only get to sleep at 3:00 a.m., and, not surprisingly, I oversleep and arrive late to class the next morning, I might apologize by explaining what happened in a much shorter way. I might just say that I had a “problem” which made me late. “Problem” in this case refers back to the whole long, unhappy story described above. Often, the very use of such a word characterizes what will follow, making it easier for a reader or listener to predict what’s next. So, if you come into class a few minutes late and say, “ So, there was a problem . . . .,” I already know that what follows will probably be a sad story about unfortunate circumstances which made it impossible for you to do your homework or arrive on time.

4. Ellipsis

So, if “problem” is a short way to talk about the whole situation, ellipsis is even shorter. Ellipsis is when you leave out words that are understood. Wait, you may say, how can leaving words out make things more clear? But we do this all the time. “ He can’t swim but I can. ” What can I do? I can swim – that is quite clear and, in fact, it would sound rather awkward to say “ He can’t swim but I can swim .” This sounds like a child’s speech – children only learn ellipsis as they become more linguistically mature. The omission can cover a great deal more just a word or phrase; whole sections of sentences, often the predicates or verbal parts, may be left out because they are clear between speakers or writer and reader. Sometimes this absence is even a form of emphasis. Look for this when you read, and you will understand more of the writer’s meaning and tone.

5. Lexis (Lexical Chains)

Sometimes words come bound up like a pile of presents one atop the other; once we open one, we have a very good idea what the others will be. For example, if, at your wedding, you receive twenty matching boxes of various sizes and the first one is a plate, you can guess the others are likely to be matching bowls, saucers, and perhaps a serving platter or two. In the same way, once I say “wedding” you know from experience that certain other words are likely to follow, like “bride”, “groom”, “reception”, “flowers”, “dress”, “honeymoon”, “cake”, etc. These words are linked into a chain of meaning so that one helps you understand the others; they are a lexical set .

Pairs or groups of words have a more specific linkage of meaning, such as a part-to-whole relationship, called meronymy , (e.g., branch , leaf , and bark are all parts of a tree ), or a category/subcategory relationship, where the category is called the superordinate and the subtype a hyponym , (e.g., the general word tree covers many specific types like pine , oak , and birch ). You likely know some other examples, such as words that mean the same thing being called synonyms, (e.g., health / wellness ), and those that mean the opposite, antonyms , ( health/sickness ). We use these lexical relationships in speech because they make what we say much easier for others to understand. In writing, words like these tell us how parts of a text are linked.

Lexical linkages are often essential to an essay’s structure. For example, if an author talks about “costs”, we expect negatives to follow in the text. If the author then talks about “benefits” we’ll expect positives to come next. Our expectations shape our perceptions different ways: they make the whole text easier to understand and they also subtly influence our evaluations. For example, a ‘cost/benefit’ contrast can make items seem to fit into one box or the other, and we may adopt the author’s categorizations. Lexical relationships can be powerful tools when wielded by a skilled writer. Not only can an author use lexical connections to shape our judgments, she can guide the way we reason. A structure like the ‘cost/benefit’ contrast described above encourages us to quantify and add up items on one side as against the other.

As a writer, using lexical relationships to link sentences, paragraphs, and the whole text together will help you make your points clear and your arguments persuasive. As a reader, spotting these lexical connections will reveal methods of persuasion and authorial biases.

6. Conjunction

This is what links those positives and negatives described above into a contrasting relationship. Let’s say I list several items as “ costs “, but then start my next sentence with “ however “; you already know that I am going to change direction and tell you why all those costs don’t add up to a total negative. This is one of the first methods of cohesion we’re taught explicitly when we learn to write. We’re told to use phrases like “ because ”, “ moreover ”, “ firstly ”, “ secondly ”, “ therefore ”, “ in addition ”, and similar expressions to link our clauses, sentences, or paragraphs together in an organized way that makes their relationship to each other clear to our readers. This is sometimes referred to as signposting because these linkages show where the text is going. Used in this sense, “conjunction” refers generally to the structural relationships among parts of the text rather than specifically to the words called “conjunctions” in a grammar book (i.e., and, but, or , etc.).

When we talk about conjunction as a cohesive device, we mean ways to relate two clauses, sentences, or paragraphs together into a functional relationship. The relationship can be additive, adversative, causal, or temporal. For example, one clause may be the reason for the other:

He finished the pizza because he was hungry .

This could have been two separate sentences, but since they have a cause-effect relationship, we can link them together with “ because ” (an actual conjunction) to make this relationship more clear. Likewise, if an author gives several reasons why watching TV can be bad, and organizes them into a kind of list by starting paragraphs with “ First of all ” then “ Secondly ” (adverbs), then “ The third negative feature ” (a noun phrase), all three of these paragraph starters are examples of conjunction as a cohesive device. They work by linking pieces of text together so that while you are reading, you can follow along and see the relationship of one part to the next. In this example, the paragraph starters show us that the facts within each paragraph are to be added to a list supporting one main point, as the author builds a case against TV watching by adding up all the bad things it can do.

In a well organized essay, the author usually tells us about the list (or other structure) at the outset. For example, these paragraph starters might refer back to the phrase “ several serious drawbacks ” in the first paragraph, where the author promised to describe the pros and cons of TV watching. Whether we are persuaded often depends upon the extent to which the author kept these initial promises by the end of the essay.

1 For the moment, we will leave aside the concept of deixis, or references to the speaker’s personal, situational, or temporal locus, to which parts of discourse may refer. Deixis and anaphora sometimes overlap, but for purposes of understanding cohesive devices, at the moment we can simplify matters by focusing only on the latter. See note 2 for more on this.

2 Halliday and Hasan (1976) described the contrast between reference and substitution as semantic versus grammatical relations between the linked sections of text, and Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) offer the idea of a semantic versus a “lexicogrammatical” relation, (635). Importantly, however, Halliday and Hasan noted the overlap of these categories:

The classification of cohesive relations into different types should not be seen as implying a rigid division into watertight compartments. There are many instances of cohesive forms that lie on the borderline between two types and could be interpreted as one or the other . (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, 88)

For our purposes, the six categories above are a good starting point to understand cohesion in texts, but many important overlaps and subtleties are not covered in this short guide, and entire discussions are omitted, for example, the relationship of deixis to anaphora as mentioned in note 1, above. For more on this latter topic, see Stirling and Huddleston’s (2016) extensive treatment of the subject.

Halliday, M.A.K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English (R. Quirk, Ed.). Longman Group Limited.

Halliday, M.A.K., & Matthieson, M.I.M. (2014). Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed.). Routledge.

Schmolz, H. (2015). Anaphora Resolution and Text Retrieval: A Linguistic Analysis of Hypertexts . Walter de Gruyter GmbH.

Stirling, L. & Huddleston, R. (2016). Deixis and Anaphora. In R. Huddleston and G. Pullum (Eds.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (1449-1564). Cambridge University Press.

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Cohesive Devices in IELTS Writing – Types, Tips, and Examples

Updated On Jul 18, 2024

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Table of Contents

What are cohesive devices, types of cohesive devices, examples of cohesive devices, tips for using cohesive devices, why coherence and cohesion matter in ielts writing, example essay using cohesive devices, also, check:.

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Cohesive devices, also known as linking words or connecting words, are an important part of academic writing. Using them properly helps organize your ideas and create logical connections between sentences and paragraphs. This improves the flow and coherence of your writing, which is necessary to get a high score on IELTS Writing . In this blog, we will look at the meaning and types of cohesive devices, examples of how to use them, and tips to employ them effectively in your IELTS essay writing.

Cohesive devices, also known as ‘Linking Words’ are words or phrases that link different parts of a text together and allow it to flow logically. They help show the connection between ideas acting as a connector by signaling additions, contrasts, cause and effect, and other relationships. For example, words and phrases like ‘however’, ‘therefore’, ‘in addition’, ‘for example’, ‘to conclude’ etc. are connectors/linking words for writing . Using them properly makes your writing more coherent and easier to follow.

There are several types of cohesive devices that can be used in both IELTS Writing as well as linking words for IELTS Speaking :

• Reference words: Pronouns like ‘it’, ‘this’, ‘that’, and ‘which’ refer back to something already mentioned.
• Substitution words:  Words like ‘do’, and ‘one’ that replace a noun.
• Conjunctions:  Words like ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘so’ that join clauses.
• Repetition:  Repeating keywords and ideas across sentences and paragraphs.
• Synonyms:  Using different words with the same meaning.
• Antonyms:  Contrasting words and ideas using opposites.
• Collocation:  Using words that commonly go together.
• Discourse markers: Phrases like ‘in conclusion’, and ‘on the other hand’ that organize text.

Here are some examples of how different types of cohesive devices can be used in IELTS Writing Task 2 :

• Referencing:  Smoking has many health risks. This habit should be avoided.
• Substitution:  Doctors advise patients to exercise daily. Doing so improves health.
• Conjunction:  Smoking causes cancer, and it also increases the risk of lung disease.
• Repetition:  Daily exercise helps us stay fit. Exercise also reduces stress levels.
• Synonyms:  Doctors advocate physical activity. Exercise has many benefits.
• Antonyms:  Some people love jogging daily. Others dislike running intensively.
• Collocation:  She played a starring role in the movie. Her performance was praised.
• Discourse Markers:  However, smoking remains common despite its risks. Therefore, more education is needed.

Here are some IELTS exam preparation tips for using cohesive devices effectively:

• Don’t overuse them. Using too many can make writing seem unnatural.
• Be consistent. Don’t jump between different devices randomly.
• Use a variety. Relying only on basic conjunctions like ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘so’ is repetitive.
• Choose devices appropriately. Use contrasting words for opposing ideas, and linking words for related ideas.
• Pay attention to order and placement. Put them at the right spot in a sentence or paragraph.
• Vary length. Alternate between single-word devices and longer phrases.
• Check for grammar. Make sure the device fits correctly in the sentence structure.

Using cohesive devices properly is key to getting a high band score for Coherence and Cohesion in IELTS Writing which carries 25% weight in the IELTS Writing test criteria. The IELTS band score states that a high-scoring essay should use ‘a range of cohesive devices appropriately’ while a low-scoring one has ‘little or no cohesion’. So mastering cohesive devices can significantly impact your writing score.

The sample IELTS Academic essay given below shows how cohesive devices can be used to logically link ideas and improve coherence:

Some people think sports help society, while others argue they are a waste of time.  In my opinion , sports offer benefits like health, socializing, and stress relief but  they can also  lead to injuries and obsession in some cases.

On the one hand , participating in sports provides exercise which improves fitness.  Moreover , sports like football, cricket, and hockey build teamwork as they require cooperation.  Another benefit   is that  sports offer a way to unwind and manage anxiety.  However, on the other hand , sports carry risks like career-ending injuries.  Furthermore , becoming consumed by sports fandom negatively affects work and studies.  Although  sports have advantages,  in certain situations  they can be detrimental.

In conclusion , sports are beneficial for society if practiced moderately but harmful if taken to extremes.  Therefore , a balanced approach is necessary to utilize their advantages and avoid downsides. The key is moderation.

This essay uses cohesion and coherence in paragraph writing with examples. A variety of cohesive devices like referencing words (this, they), conjunctions (but, moreover), discourse markers (In conclusion), repetition (sports), synonyms (fandom/obsession), antonyms (advantages/detrimental), and collocations (career-ending injuries) are used to organize the ideas logically and make the writing more coherent.

Check out:  IELTS Writing Task 2: Coherence & Cohesion (Tricks for BAND 8)

Learning to use cohesive devices properly is an important skill that can improve your IELTS Writing score by making your essay flow better. Start by learning the main types of devices and examples of how to use them. Pay attention to using an appropriate variety and following the tips above. Refer to sample essays to see how devices are used in context. With practice, using cohesive devices will become second nature and boost your writing coherence.

For more help with the IELTS Writing test, check out our  IELTS Writing Task 1  and Writing Task 2 tips and sample answers. Also, solve these  IELTS Writing practice tests .

Take a look at our IELTS Grammar Workbook

• Top 10 IELTS Grammar Books
• Ultimate Guide to Synonyms for IELTS Writing
• Adverbs for IELTS
• Advanced Grammar for IELTS with Comparison
• Emphatic structures exercises and inversion 
• Advanced Grammar for IELTS: Modal Verbs (1)

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Raajdeep Saha, an MBA graduate in Marketing from IMT Ghaziabad and holder of a BCA degree from The Heritage Academy, boasts three years of experience as a Senior Content Marketing Specialist. His focus lies in crafting persuasive content for IELTS, CELPIP, and TOEFL. Simultaneously, he's an accomplished author and poet, with his published work, "OUSHQ," showcasing his literary prowess. He seamlessly marries his marketing acumen with creative storytelling, making him a versatile professional of both corporate and artistic distinction.

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Types of Cohesive Devices

Cohesive devices are sometimes called linking words, linkers, connectors , discourse markers, or transitional words.

Cohesive Devices are words or phrases that show the relationship between paragraphs or sections of a text or speech.

Cohesive devices are words like ‘ For example , ‘ In conclusion , ‘ however ‘ and ‘ moreover ‘.

In this post, you will learn more about the different types of cohesive devices and how to use them in sentences correctly

Table of Contents

Examples of Cohesive Devices

What are some types of cohesive devices, what are the different types of cohesion, methods of cohesion with examples, #1 anaphoric reference, #2 cataphoric references, #3 exophoric reference, #4 tense agreement, #6 substitution, how to improv e.

Let’s look at these two examples below:

• Netflix has many movies and shows  and  it is only $9.
• The Christmas tree is natural  but  it is expensive.

As we can see in the sentences above,  and  it is used to add something to the previous statement,

In the second sentence, we can see how something positive and negative is said about Christmas. We know that because the word  but  is used to contrast ideas.

There are many examples of cohesive devices, they can be grouped according to their function.

If you want to  show similarity , you can use cohesive devices such as:

If you want to  introduce an item in a series , you can use:

If you need to compare , you can use cohesive devices such as:

For emphasizing, you can use cohesive devices such as:

If you need a full list of cohesive devices, have a look at my  Full List of Cohesive Devices by Category 

Cohesion  is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it meaning.

There are two main types of Cohesion, grammatical cohesion, and lexical cohesion.

• Grammatical cohesion is based on structural content.
• lexical cohesion is based on lexical content and background knowledge

These are methods of cohesion, their definitions, and examples:

Anaphoric Reference means that a word in a text refers back to other ideas in the text for its meaning. 

For example:

‘I went out with Jo on Sunday. She looked awful.’ ´She` clearly refers to Jo, there is no need to repeat her name. 

Cataphoric reference  means that a word in a text refers to another later in the text and you need to look forward to understanding

When he arrived, John noticed that the door was open.

Exophoric reference refers to an idea outside the text. This is a reference to world knowledge shared by the reader

For Example

” The Prime Minister responded quickly to the threat. Here we are expected to know who the Prime Minister is”

Tense agreement  refers to the way that writers use tenses to make a text hang together

“She knew then that he… “had found her letter” is a logical ending to the sentence. We are not surprised to see past perfect after simple past in a narrative sentence.”

Linkers  refer to words or phrases that describe the relationship between ideas in the text

“And, but, therefore, first of all”

Substitution  or  Ellipsis  refers to replacing words, or leaving them out– this is how writers reduce repetition in a text

“Now we’re finishing our essays. I know you want to go out, but before you can do that, please finish. ‘do that’ avoids the repetition of ‘go out’. Instead of repeating ‘finish our essays’ ‘our essays’ is dropped from the sentence”

You can’t simply study a long list of cohesive devices and then hope you can use them correctly the next time you have to write an essay.

Also, you can’t look at just one example sentence and hope to learn everything you need to know about that word.

• Reading is the number one way to learn new words. Good writers read a lot. Pick a topic you are interested in and read a little every day. Note down any cohesive devices and how they are used in each sentence.
• Check the meaning and grammar of each new cohesive device you find during reading on sites like the Cambridge Online Dictionary

Manuel Campos

I am Jose Manuel, English professor and creator of EnglishPost.org, a blog whose mission is to share lessons for those who want to learn and improve their English

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Cohesive AI Review: Is This AI Writer Better Than ChatGPT?

Cohesive review.

Cohesive Review: The Bottom Line

Cohesive is a ChatGPT alternative that aims to make prompt creation effortless. Cohesive’s suggested search will turn your ideas into words if you don’t know how to ask the AI what you want. Cohesive also has a team messaging platform that allows you to collaborate with your team on articles and marketing copy you’re working on. In short, if you’re a freelance writer, marketer, copywriter, or any form of content creator, Cohesive will benefit you greatly. It’ll help you write higher-quality content in a shorter time frame, and you can repurpose your content into videos and audio files.

• The AI can read your article back to you
• You can communicate with your team inside the dashboard
• The suggested search feature makes prompt creation easy
• You access hundreds of different AI writing templates
• Cohesive can integrate with almost any tool you’re using
• Cohesive isn’t as interactive as ChatGPT
• It doesn’t have a mobile app yet
• Plagiarism scanners will sometimes flag the AI’s outputs as plagiarism

Discover our insightful Cohesive AI review that profiles the pros and cons of this AI writing tool for creatives and decide if it’s worth the hype.

Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, hundreds of new AI writing applications have popped up. I’ve tested almost all of them and some are great, others I suggest steering clear of. One of the best AI writers that I’ve been using a lot lately is Cohesive AI. I signed up because they offered AI voice generation, which helped me edit my articles and spot errors I might’ve missed if I was proofreading myself. 

However, I started digging deeper and found that Cohesive has a few more hidden features that tools like ChatGPT don’t have. So if you’re researching Cohesive and want to know if it’s a good option, this review is for you.

What Is Cohesive AI?

Cohesive ai pricing, freelance writers , corporate teams, marketers and copywriters, how does cohesive work, ai voice generation, template runs, prompt creation, cohesive is more rigid than chatgpt, cohesive doesn’t offer a mobile app, plagiarism checkers will sometimes flag your work, cohesive review criteria, why you can trust me.

Founded by Hemesh Singh while living in San Francisco, Cohesive is a ChatGPT alternative allowing you to generate 200 types of copy, including entire blog posts, YouTube video scripts, Instagram captions, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn posts.

You can even paste existing text and ask the AI to expand, summarize, or rephrase it. From here, integrate Cohesive into your social media platform of choice, and Cohesive will export its responses for easy publishing.

What sets Cohesive apart from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots is that you can communicate with your team inside the dashboard. Think of it as ChatGPT and Slack put together. This feature makes it much easier for me to collaborate with my editors, strategists, and fellow writers.

Cohesive offers three price plans, one of which is free. This free plan is generous, allowing you to produce unlimited words, 15 template runs, 20 images, and one minute of AI voices. However, if this isn’t enough and you want to upgrade to the paid plan, you can choose between these options:

• The creator plan costs $15 per month
• The agency plan costs $30 per month

With the creator plan, users can generate up to 150 template runs, 100 images, and 90 minutes of AI voice generation. You can also integrate Cohesive with five applications and collaborate with your team.

The agency plan has all these features, but you get more outputs. You can create 300 monthly outputs, 200 AI images, and 240 minutes of AI voice generation. As well as this, you can integrate Cohesive with 30 applications of your choice.

The free plan is best for getting a feel for the platform, while the creator plan suits solopreneurs and small teams, and the agency plan is tailored around large organizations or startups scaling rapidly.

What Is Cohesive AI For?

After using Cohesive AI to learn how to write a good introduction for an essay , an outline, or to create AI voices, it could empower the lives of professionals, including:

• Freelance writers
• Corporate teams

If you’re a freelance writer and find ChatGPT a bit limiting, Cohesive can benefit you. After testing both platforms, I noticed Cohesive’s outputs are more in-depth.

When you log into your dashboard, you’ll find over 150 different templates that you can use to generate content quickly. In the example below, I asked Cohesive to write a hook for a social media ad about machine learning:

As you can see, the output is short yet high-quality, and you can prompt the AI to expand, summarize, or edit its previous output in a certain style. 

Cohesive also has a creator and agency plan perfect for teams. It’s almost like ChatGPT and Slack combined. You can use the AI to generate content, edit it, and collaborate with your team to get feedback on outputs. I’ve tested countless AI writers and Cohesive is the first one I’ve come across that offers this level of collaboration. Check out our guide on Slack Grammly integration .

Cohesive’s writing templates are tailored around the needs of copywriters, marketers, and anyone else who writes sales copy on a regular basis. For example, you can generate:

• Facebook Ads
• Landing pages
• Sales pitches 
• Customer surveys

If you’re part of a brand that uses both blog posts and YouTube videos to interact with audiences, I highly suggest utilizing the AI voice feature to repurpose your blog posts into YouTube videos. The AI voices sound surprisingly human, and the entire repurposing process only takes 20 to 30 minutes.

To start, head to Cohesive.so and sign up for a free plan. You don’t have to enter your credit card details; you can easily log in with your Google or Gmail account. Cohesive will ask you a few questions about your AI writing needs, and once you’ve answered them, you’ll land on your dashboard.

Simply click on the template you want, whether it’s the full blog post generator or AI image generator, and enter a prompt like you would with ChatGPT. Select generate, and Cohesive will give you an output within a few seconds. 

If there’s something about the output that you’d like to change, prompt the AI further, and it’ll tailor its next output around your feedback. I ask Cohesive to generate an article about large language models in the example below. This is what the AI produced:

While this is a good first try, I feel like the introduction is a bit thin; I want to add more context. So what I’ll do is head to the introduction section, right-click, and select continue writing. After I prompted the AI to expand the introduction, this is what it gave me:

This looks great. But there’s one section I’d like the AI to touch on a bit more, and that’s the future of language models heading. I’ll do the same thing I did with the introduction, and after a few seconds, the AI expanded upon this section.

Next, I want to add images because you can’t publish an article without some visuals. So I’ll right-click on areas where I want Cohesive to add pictures and the AI will import pictures from Unsplash that are relevant to my article.

But before I publish this piece, I want to share it with my editor. So I’ll click the share button in the upper-right-hand corner, type the email address of my editor, and provide editing access.

As my editor makes changes, I’ll be able to view it in real-time, almost like in Google Docs. Cohesive version control gives me full control over edits, and I can reject or accept each one based on its quality. Check out our Grammarly vs. Google Docs review !

The feature that caught my eye was the AI voice generator. It allows you to generate AI voices that sound similar to a human’s, which is perfect for YouTubers and video marketers.

All you have to do is select the voice option on your home screen, choose a voice you want to use, and paste your text into the prompt box.

When I compared Cohesive to other AI voice generation platforms, I found that Cohesive offers a wider range and more natural-sounding voices. You can even choose between voices in various languages such as Spanish and French.

I’m a big fan of this feature because it simplifies my editing process. When I proofread my article out loud, it’s difficult to spot errors because my brain ignores them. However, with Cohesive, I can paste my work into the application and when it reads my article back to me, it’s super easy to spot errors. What is content editing? Find out in our guide!

I like that Cohesive offers templates for various types of content, such as blog posts, Facebook Ads, Instagram captions, LinkedIn posts, blog introductions, song lyrics, Amazon product descriptions, and more! Get paid to write blog posts by checking out our guide!

For example, I was writing an article about deep learning a few weeks ago, but I struggled with writer’s block and couldn’t come up with an introduction, even after 20 minutes of brainstorming. So I went to my Cohesive dashboard, chose the blog post option, prompted the AI to generate a catchy introduction, and this is what it came up with:

When I use ChatGPT, I know what I want to create, but it’s still challenging to put it into words. Sometimes I’ll ask a question, but because my wording could be better, the AI produces outputs that make no sense. Creating prompts is so complicated that there’s even a specialized field called prompt engineering that involves getting what you want from an AI in an efficient way. 

Fortunately, this isn’t a problem with Cohesive because it suggests prompts you might be looking for, similar to Google’s suggested search. In the example below, I wanted to ask Cohesive to create a headline for me, and before I even typed my entire prompt, this is what is suggested.

As I entered my prompt, the suggested search kept updating me with potential inputs. So if you’re looking for an AI platform that makes prompt creation easy, Cohesive is a better option than ChatGPT.

Areas For Improvement

During the testing phase, I compared Cohesive to other AI writers and found a few areas where it fell short:

• Cohesive is more rigid than ChatGPT
• Cohesive doesn’t offer a mobile app
• Plagiarism checkers will sometimes flag your work

ChatGPT offers a chatbot interface where you can enter prompts and the AI will reply with relevant responses. However, the main drawback to Cohesive is that it relies too much on its templates. You can’t ask for things that fall outside the parameters of these templates.

For example, I’ll sometimes ask Cohesive to write an article introduction for me, but because there isn’t an article introduction template, Cohesive will notice the word “article” and write an entire article.

The same applies if you’re asking the AI questions. In the example below, I asked Cohesive how much it’ll cost to start a SaaS business, and the AI produced a 2000-word article:

This makes Cohesive an impractical option if you’re looking for a more interactive chatbot that’ll understand the nuance of your prompts. So if you want an interactive experience, ChatGPT is a much better option. Read our ChatGPT review.

Cohesive doesn’t offer a mobile app. So if you’re like me and prefer working on your phone occasionally, Cohesive might not be your best choice. They’ll probably launch a mobile app within a few years, but for now, you’ll have to stick to ChatGPT’s mobile app.

After I pasted Cohesive’s outputs into Grammarly’s plagiarism checker, I noticed that it’d sometimes flag the outputs as plagiarism. Although it’s usually just one or two sentences and not entire walls of text, it is annoying to fix all the time. 

There are many different types of plagiarism to look out for, but unfortunately, there isn’t an AI writer that guarantees zero plagiarism, so this is something to watch out for when editing your copy.

When I tested Cohesive and compared it against other AI chatbots to see how it could benefit the lives of writers, I used this set of criteria:

Ease of use: The first thing I looked at was how easy to use Cohesive’s dashboard is. I considered that the prompt creation of ChatGPT was quite difficult, so I was looking for an easier-to-use alternative.

Accuracy: Next, I analyzed the most important factor; accuracy. I ran multiple tests for this, asking the AI to generate articles, ads, and images. I compared these outputs to those of ChatGPT and other AI writers.

Affordability: I didn’t want Cohesive to break the bank, and since a massive part of the Cohesive audience is freelance writers on a budget, affordability was the third criterion I looked at.

Additional features: I reviewed any other features that Cohesive offered that most AI writers don’t, such as integration and AI voices.

I’ve been in the freelance content and copywriting industry for five years, writing software reviews, comparison posts, listicles, how-to guides, you name it. This experience gave me a solid foundation on which I based this review. 

Before I wrote this review, I played around with the features on the dashboard, like the AI writer, image generator, team chat, AI voices, and integrations. I even pasted the first draft of this article into Cohesive and asked the AI to read it back to me so I could spot errors. Read our Article Forge review to learn more.

Looking for more? Check out our guide to marketing for writers !

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Tracking Tropical Storm Hone

By William B. Davis ,  Madison Dong ,  Judson Jones ,  John Keefe and Bea Malsky

Hone was a tropical storm in the North Pacific Ocean Wednesday morning Hawaii time, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory .

The tropical storm had sustained wind speeds of 50 miles per hour.

Where will it rain?

Flash flooding can occur well inland and away from the storm’s center. Even weaker storms can produce excessive rainfall that can flood low-lying areas.

Typically, storms in the North Central Pacific that have wandered in from near North America keep their original names, as determined by the World Meteorological Association. Storms are given a traditional Hawaiian name when they form in the Central Pacific.

Storms often come close to Hawaii and affect the weather, but a direct landfall of a named storm on a Hawaiian island is rare since the land area is relatively small. Even a brush from one of these storms can cause problems. In 2020, Hurricane Douglas didn’t make a direct hit on the islands, but it produced damaging winds.

Warm water is pushed east during years with El Niño, a large-scale weather pattern in the equatorial Pacific. That brings warmer water closer to Hawaii and provides a breeding ground for storms to form in the Central Pacific.

El Niño also increases the number of named storms in the Eastern Pacific by reducing the amount of wind shear in the region. Wind shear — a change in wind speed and/or direction with height — tears apart storms and can keep them from intensifying or even developing.

This year, La Niña (the opposite of El Niño) will most likely form during the season, decreasing the number of named storms in the Central Pacific.

Sources and notes

Tracking map Tracking data is from the National Hurricane Center. The map shows probabilities of at least 5 percent. The forecast is for up to five days, with that time span starting up to three hours before the reported time that the storm reaches its latest location. Wind speed probability data is not available north of 60.25 degrees north latitude.

Wind arrivals table Arrival times are generated from a New York Times analysis of National Hurricane Center data. Geographic locations use data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Natural Earth. Time zones are based on Google. The table shows predicted arrival times of sustained, damaging winds of 58 m.p.h. or more for select cities with a chance of such winds reaching them. If damaging winds reach a location, there is no more than a 10 percent chance that they will arrive before the “earliest reasonable” time and a 50 percent chance they will arrive before the “most likely” time.

Radar map Radar imagery is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via Iowa State University. These mosaics are generated by combining individual radar stations that comprise the NEXRAD network.

Storm surge map Storm surge data is from the National Hurricane Center. Forecasts only include the United States Gulf and Atlantic coasts, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The actual areas that could become flooded may differ from the areas shown on this map. This map accounts for tides, but not waves and not flooding caused by rainfall. The map also includes intertidal areas, which routinely flood during typical high tides.

Satellite map Imagery is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Japanese Meteorological Agency via the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.

Precipitation map Data for multi-day forecasts or observed rainfall totals are from the National Weather Service. The 1-day forecast is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.