Cohesion in Progress

Conversely, because, for example, however, thus, therefore, above all, on the other hand, alternatively: these are words that create cohesion in texts. Linguists refer to them as ‘connectives’, ‘linking words’ and ‘signal words’. They are the cement in texts and help the reader understand how parts of texts are interrelated, thus giving them a better grip on the text as a whole.

The connectives you will find in Cohesion in Progress occur in abundance in the assignments that go with the texts of Dutch national exams VWO reading comprehension English. They can all be found in the VWO exams for English of 1999-2023 (resits included).

Although a number of words and phrases in this booklet may not fall under the connectives category, they have been included because of their high frequency in VWO reading comprehension assignments.

The words and phrases, their translations and example sentences are in the first part of this book. The second part consists of 21 exercises, in which the student will find sentences on a level comparable with VWO exam texts and assignments. They aim to familiarise the student with these words and phrases in context so that they will need to look up as few of these as possible – and consequently save time – when sitting the exam. The third and last part of the book is an English-Dutch glossary.