Students are often disappointed with their IELTS score, wondering why after all the studying they’ve done, they did not receive the IELTS band score 7 they needed.
Here’s where Pass IELTS Higher can help – by teaching you easy ways to improve your English techniques for the IELTS Test.
5 Reasons to use Linking in IELTS Writing and Speech
One way to improve your IELTS band score is to use linking in your writing and speech. Here are 5 reasons why:
- Linking your ideas from sentence to sentence within each paragraph gives your writing a more complex and sophisticated feel to the examiner.
- Linking words or phrases help you to build a logical argument or thread in your assignment by joining one statement to another. An assignment without these words reads like a series of unrelated statements with no flow.
- Transitions and link words perform an important function in writing. They signal to the examiner the direction the writer is taking.
- They are used to link the flow of ideas in your writing, guide your examiner towards the next stage of your argument and link paragraphs together.
- They can be used to show; addition, time, location, comparison, contrast, clarification, summary and conclusion. Further, they can be used to emphasise a point or introduce a result.
Examples of linking words and phrases
Respective examples for the list in the last bullet above include:
- another
- currently
- in the background
- simultaneously
- conversely
- in other words
- on the whole
- consequently
- for this reason
- therefore.
There are many more examples and IELTS candidates would improve both their writing and speaking if they were to develop a wide range for use in the IELTS Test.
IELTS Test examiners do assess use of linking words
The key aspect of using this technique is that it allows the IELTS examiner to assess your piece of writing according to the criteria of the higher bands, one such criterion being the use of link words.
So using them will definitely improve your band score.
My suggestion would be to learn them in a set of 10. This will probably be enough to see you through either task one or task two. Learning more of them would be even better.
Do this and you can then relax more, knowing that you are making the best possible attempts to obtain that all important band seven.
Having drawn your attention to this technique, it would now be sensible if you were to go away and write an IELTS task one or a task two and submit through our IELTS writing assessment service, in which you can show that you have read and understood the blog and could use linking expressions profitably in your next IELTS exam.
Finally, with all this in mind, how many linking words and phrases can you see in the above piece of writing?
To your IELTS success,
James
P.S. If you like the hints, tips and techniques that we provide on this site, sign up here to learn more about our IELTS Test intensive preparation course for the Academic Module.
i want more information regarding the speaking part, i need a 7 band score. could you please help me out.thank you very much.
Thank you for your question Celina. Your interest in our site is appreciated.
In the first instance try looking at these posts. They were written by both us and IELTS candidates and should be helpful to you – and anyone else looking to improve their speaking test band scores:
https://www.passieltshigher.com/category/ielts-speaking
Regards,
James
Hi there,
I think linking words are either important in seaking and writing.
I shall tray to remember them and to be able to use them more often in my daily conversation.
Your website is very helpfull.
Hi Nerton,
Thank you for your kind comment. I agree!
Regards,
James
Hi,
Thanks so much for all tips, these are useful. I tell you I took two times the IELTS General Training exam, eventhough I have not get my score, these must be at least 6 poitns in all modules. My questions is How can I do in order to improve writing and speaking skills?
Thanks for your comment Jose.
You don’t mention what your previous scores were but generally speaking your performance will improve with a wider range of vocabulary and a stronger ability to paraphrase English sentences.
As you have recognised, practise is the key to success. The more practise you do the better you will be.
You have already started to understand how to improve your writing performance by using our writing service (for which, thank you) and I would suggest that you continue to do this for more questions. That way we can provide individual advice to you. Aim to complete about 20 practise essays. That will help you a lot.
We are about to make a speaking assessment service available to our website visitors and this would enable you to understand how you might improve that too.
Continue to read the tips here on the website for all the aspects of IELTS – reading, writing, listening and speaking – other students have found these very useful.
Finally, we have just completed a very low-key launch of an online coaching course which includes: webinars, 57 lessons and 3 x individual writing and 2 x speaking assessments each week. It was low key because we wanted to make sure it all worked as expected.
I’m not sure when your next IELTS Test is but I would certainly consider enrolling for that course. Write to me if you’d like to know more.
Regards,
James
I am really satisfied with what I have found here, and I would appreciate as many tips as possible. Great thanks.
Thank you for your kind words Minoo. I think you will find a lot of free tips here on the website and in our Twitter and Facebook sites. Regards,
James
hey,
James i’m going to give my 1st ielts test. I really feeling nervous about ielts..what would i do to improve my writing n speaking ?
Please help me out.
Thanks u.
Hi,
Thank you for your question. Please take a look at the information provided on speaking and writing at the links. They will help you get started.
James