Linkers for the CAE Exam | Blair Exam English

One of the areas of English that you need to both know and use to do well in the Cambridge Advanced Exam (CAE) is linkers. You'll frequently see or hear them used in both the Reading/Use of English and Listening parts of exam, and it will improve the score you receive if you not only use commonly used ones, but also more advanced/less commonly used ones correctly in both the Writing and Speaking parts as well.

To help you improve both your knowledge and use of these advanced linkers for the Advanced exam, read this article. By doing it you'll not only learn some advanced linkers (by doing two quizzes) you'll see and can use in the exam, but you'll understand how to use these linkers correctly.

But to do this, you'll first need to know what linkers do.

What a linker does

Linkers are words or phrases which connect different parts of a sentence or different sentences together. For example:

The tennis match was cancelled DUE TO THE FACT THAT it was raining.

In the above sentence, "due to the fact that" links the two clauses of the sentence ("The tennis match was cancelled" and "it was raining") together.

Linkers show what the relationship is between the two parts. In the above example, "it was raining" is the reason why the match was cancelled. This is the reason why " due to the fact that " is used here because it is a linker that is used to give a reason for why something happened.

They can show different types of relationships

Linkers are used to show a variety of different relationships between the parts of a sentence. For example, in the two sentences below the linkers are not used to give a reason:

EVEN THOUGH it was raining, I still went for a walk in the park.

I play football every week. AS WELL AS football, I also play tennis every week.

In the first sentence, the linker "even though" is used to show a contrast/contradiction (because people don't normally go walking in the park when it is raining). While in the second, "as well as" is used to add additional information to a statement you have made (that you play tennis in addition to football every week).

And in addition to (which is another linker) linkers that give a reason, show a contrast/contradiction or are used to add extra information, there are other types as well. Like those that are used to say what the result of an action is (e.g. "so"), to say what the purpose of an action is (e.g. "to") or to say that there is conditional relationship between two actions (e.g. "if I am tired, I go to bed").

Now look at the below example sentences and guess what type of relationship the linkers (which are in bold) in each is used to show:

Type of linker quiz

1. Along with not eating too much fat, you can also do more exercise to get fit.

2. He still did it,inspite of my warnings that it would be very dangerous.

3. Though I was very tired when I got back from work, I went out and met my friends.

4. I went to bed at 10pm on account of the fact that I had only slept 4 hours the previous night.

5. She was fired from her job, owing to the fact that she had repeatedly arrived late.

6. In spite of the fact that she is in a lot of debt, she bought the new iPhone.

7. I had to catch a flight at 6am the following morning, nevertheless, I went out and met friends in the evening.

8. I spent a fortune on my new house. Consequently, I am not going to be able to come away with you this weekend.

9. You earn as much money as I do, still you expect me to pay for everything.

10. Aside from being important for your physical health, it also helps your mental well-being as well.

11. He doesn't really like sweet things, even so he still ate the cake.

12. I didn't want to say anything before as I thought you wouldn't be happy if you found out.

13. He didn't buy the car cos it cost more than he thought it would.

14. Owing to the snow, tonight's football match has been postponed.

15. She organised the festival so as to raise awareness and money for homelessness in the city.

16. Supposing that I had told you before, would you still have come?

17. I didn't think that he'd want to come out, on account of him having an exam the next morning.

Followed by different grammatical structures

In addition to being used to show the type of relationship two parts of a sentence have (or two different sentence have), linkers are also followed by different types of grammatical structures. You can see this in the below two sentences that use the linkers "due to the fact that" and "due to":

The tennis match was cancelled DUE TO THE FACT THAT it was raining heavily.

The tennis match was cancelled DUE TO the heavy rain.

The meaning of both the linkers and the sentences is the same. However, with " due to the fact that " it is followed by a clause (something that includes both a subject ("it") and a verb ("was raining")), whereas with "due to", it is followed by a noun phrase ("the heavy rain"), a grammatical structure that doesn't include a subject and its verb.

So some linkers are what are called "conjunctions" (they have to be followed directly by a clause), while others are "prepositions" (they have to be followed directly by a noun or noun phrase). This is important to remember if you are going to use them correctly in your speaking or writing.

Remember that a clause normally has to contain both a subject and a verb. If it doesn't include a subject (the thing that does the action), then it very likely that the verb is being used as a noun.

Below you will find a quiz with the same 17 sentences you looked at earlier. Now you are going to decide for each linker whether they are a conjunction (followed by a clause) or a preposition (followed by a noun or noun phrase):

Preposition or conjunction quiz