Simon’s ielts writing task 2

Posted by 
Simon
 in 
IELTS Writing Task 2
 | 
Permalink
 | 
Comments (23)
 

---

Compiled by Diyorbek Hayitmurodov ielts-simon.com Page 200 
Wednesday, January 10, 2018 
IELTS Writing Task 2: instead of 'firstly, secondly, finally' 
Whenever I write a paragraph using 'firstly, secondly, finally', people ask me whether there are any 
better alternatives to these linking words. 
For example, here's a comment that someone wrote below last week's 
lesson
: 
"Is there another way to state firstly, secondly and finally? My teacher told me these are already 
overused."
The simple answer:
The easy answer to this question is yes. There are plenty of other words that we could use instead of 
'firstly, secondly, finally'. 
Click here
to see some examples. 
The deeper answer:

Remember that I use 'firstly, secondly, finally' almost like a 
label
, to identify a particular type of 
paragraph (one with a topic sentence and three supporting ideas). It's fine to change the linking 
words, but the paragraph style should stay the same. 

It is 
not
true
that examiners consider 'firstly, secondly, finally' to be "overused". These are just simple 
linking words that do a useful job. Most linking words (e.g. and, but, because, while, if) are very easy 
and very commonly used, but we still need them. 

You won't get a higher score by using bigger linking words that seem more impressive. For example, 
there's nothing difficult or impressive about the word 'moreover'. Why waste your time looking for 
more original linking words if they don't exist? 

If you want a really high score, read 
this lesson
about 'band 9 linking'. 

Instead of worrying about linking, spend your time working on 'topic vocabulary' (like the list of 
phrases 
here
). This is what will impress the examiner.