I nte r nati o nal e n g LI s h lan g uag e testi n g syste m

to grow skilled worker numbers worldwide.

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IELTS Academic Task 2: How to write at a band 9 level

31

2.2

C

oherence

 

and

 c

ohesion

What does coherence mean?

Coherence is the ability of a written piece of work to be understood by the reader.

What does cohesion mean?

Cohesion is the manner in which a written piece of work links its ideas to create clear 

relationships and logical progressions between them.

The Coherence and Cohesion portion of the candidate’s mark is a measure of how 

clearly an essay’s ideas are communicated and how fluently these ideas work togeth-

er. Coherence is most readily achieved by employing short, grammatically correct 

sentences that are concise and to the point. Cohesion can be achieved by using link-

ing words or phrases, often called ‘cohesive devices’, to create relationships between 

the various sentences and paragraphs in the essay. Combining concise sentences 

with cohesive devices is a controlled way to produce more complex sentence types 

with accuracy. Almost every sentence in an IELTS essay should have a linking word of 

some sort. In fact, the only sentence that can omit linking words is the background 

sentence in the introduction paragraph, as there is no sentence preceding it that can 

be linked to!

The introduction paragraph written last chapter has several linking words in it. 

Here, they have been identified in red:

The use of technology is increasing rapidly in the modern world. Growing technologi-