Linking words and band 7: when cohesion helps and when it costs you

The most misread line in the Writing band descriptors sits at band 6, Coherence and Cohesion: "uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical". Candidates read the band as a shortage of linking words and respond by installing more — Firstly… Moreover… Furthermore… In addition… However… In conclusion — one per sentence, like fence posts. That essay hasn't moved toward band 7; it has manufactured the exact mechanical cohesion the descriptor names. Band 7's wording is the tell: "uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under-/over-use" — over-use is called out as the characteristic fault, and band 8 is defined by the devices not drawing attention to themselves.

The underlying truth: linking words don't create logic; they announce it. If two sentences genuinely stand in a consequence relation, a reader often needs no therefore to feel it. If they don't, no therefore can force it — and a connective gluing two unrelated sentences together is precisely what "faulty" means. Examiners are trained to notice when the signage disagrees with the road: moreover introducing a point that isn't additional, however fronting a sentence that contradicts nothing. Cohesion is one of four equally weighted criteria, and what band 7 requires across all four shows where it sits in a full graded essay.

The cohesion band 7+ actually rewards

The devices that read as sophisticated are the quiet ones:

• Referencing — this, these, such, the former — especially this + summary noun: "Cities are widening roads to ease congestion. This approach treats the symptom…" The noun (approach, trend, assumption, trade-off) simultaneously points backward and interprets, which is cohesion and argument in one word. It is the single highest-yield habit on this criterion.
• Substitution and ellipsis — "Some governments subsidise childcare; others do not" — cohesion through grammar rather than signposting.
• Lexical chains — the topic's vocabulary recurring in varied forms (commute → journey to work → time spent travelling) so paragraphs hold together by meaning. This is where Cohesion and Lexical Resource pay each other — what Lexical Resource rewards at band 7 covers the vocabulary half, including which words are worth repeating.
• Given-before-new ordering — each sentence opening with something the reader already knows and closing with the new point. Most "my essay sounds choppy" problems are ordering problems, and no connective fixes them.

A useful audit for your own drafts: delete every sentence-initial connective, reread, and reinstate only the ones whose absence genuinely loses the logic. Strong paragraphs typically keep two or three per paragraph — concession markers (although, however) and genuine pivots earn their place; moreover between self-evidently related sentences rarely does.