In written English, linking devices help your reader to see and understand the relationship between your clauses, sentences, or paragraphs. Linking devices can be conjunctions, phrases, or adverbs, and can signal a variety of meanings and relationships, including cause/effect, time sequence, similarities, contrast, examples and explanation. In this unit, we will focus on linking devices showing cause/effect relationships.
Cause
Here are some common subordinating conjunctions used to express cause:
- Because
- As
- Since
These words begin a dependent clause; in other words, they must be followed by a subject and verb. This dependent clause can begin the sentence or come after the main clause:
- Because more and more children are using smartphones in class, the school changed its policy.
- The school changed its policy because more and more children are using smartphones in class.
Here are some other common linking devices used to express cause:
- Because of
- As a result of
- Due to
Because these phrases contain prepositions, they are followed only by nouns / phrases. They cannot be followed by a clause:
- Because of increased smartphone usage, the school changed its policy.
- The school changed its policy because of increased smartphone usage.
- Because of more and more students are using smartphones in class, the school changed its policy.
Effect
Here are some common linking devices used to express effect:
- Therefore
- As a result
- Consequently
These are conjunctive adverbs. They are used to connect two independent clauses or two related sentences:
- More and more students are using smartphones in class; as a result, the school changed its policy.
- More and more students are using smartphones. As a result, the school changed its policy.