The connectors that lift a TCF/TEF Canada writing score

The connectors are where a lot of TCF and TEF Canada writing goes quietly wrong. A candidate learns that connecteurs logiques raise a score, so they scatter them through a text and expect the marks to follow. What actually happens is that the essay fills with words that announce an addition and nothing else, and a marker reads a list where an argument was supposed to be.

Connectors do lift a score, but only the ones that name a real relation between two ideas. The rest are decoration, and decoration is easy to spot. This post is a working set: the connectors worth drilling, where each earns marks, and a single test that tells a load-bearing connector from a filler.

Why do most connectors do nothing?

Because they only signal that more is coming. De plus, en outre, par ailleurs, aussi at the head of a sentence: each says something is being added, which the reader had already worked out from the fact that you kept writing. Stack three of them and you have an enumeration, never a demonstration. The marking grids on both exams separate coherence, your plan, from cohesion, the way your sentences are stitched together, and filler connectors fail both. A text can be full of them and still go nowhere.

Here is the test. Take any connector in your draft and delete it. If the meaning of the sentence is unchanged, it was decorating, and you can cut it without loss. A connector that carries a relation cannot be removed without the sentence losing its logic, and those are the ones you want.

Which connectors actually earn marks?

The ones that commit you to a verifiable logical relation. A short, deliberate set will carry an argumentative text further than a dozen used vaguely.

That last one is quietly powerful. Aligning three arguments without saying which matters most produces a list; closing with et surtout signals your judgement, and the CEFR treats highlighting the significant point as B2 behaviour, not a flourish.

How many connectors does one text need?

Fewer than you think. A two-hundred-and-fifty-word argument needs four or five, placed exactly where a reader might otherwise lose the thread: at the turn between your position and your first argument, at the concession, at the move from the concession back to your line. The point is placement, not quantity. A connector dropped where the logic was already obvious is wasted; one placed at a genuine hinge does the work of a whole linking sentence.

A related habit helps more than any list: open a paragraph by stating its idea, then develop it with a reason and an example, rather than opening with De plus and hoping the connector supplies a structure the paragraph does not have. The connector marks a relation; it cannot invent one.

Which connectors carry a concession?

The most valuable ones, because conceding a point and then answering it is the single move that separates an opinion from an argument, and the CEFR places the ability to introduce a counter-argument at B2. If your target is around NCLC 7, this is exactly the band you are writing for. The connectors to drill are bien que and quoique (both taking the subjunctive), même si (taking the indicative), certes… mais, and il est vrai que… reste que. Note that several of these double as subjunctive triggers, which means they earn marks twice, once for structure and once for range; the post on the subjunctive covers that overlap in detail.

A worked pair shows the difference. Weak: Le télétravail est pratique. Aussi, il est écologique. (Working from home is convenient. Also, it is green.) Strong: Le télétravail réduit les trajets quotidiens, et surtout il allège un trafic que les villes n'arrivaient plus à contenir. (Working from home cuts daily journeys, and above all it eases traffic that cities could no longer contain.) Same length; the second names a relation and a priority instead of stacking two flat claims.

Which connectors show cause and consequence?

Cause and consequence are where a lot of arguments quietly collapse, because candidates reach for the same two words, parce que and donc, and never vary the relation. Both are fine, but they are blunt. Car gives a reason as an afterthought, useful when the cause is secondary to the claim. Dans la mesure où gives a cause while quietly limiting how far it holds, which reads as far more controlled than a flat parce que. On the consequence side, c'est pourquoi and si bien que both link an effect to a cause you have already established, and faute de quoi announces what happens if your reader ignores you, which is a useful way to end a persuasive letter with a stake rather than a summary.

The point is not to use all of them. It is to notice, when you write donc, whether the consequence really follows from something you proved, or whether the connector is doing the proving for you. A consequence connector placed after an unearned claim does not hide the gap; it advertises it.

How do you make connectors stick?

Write something that forces them. An opinion paragraph with a concession in it cannot avoid bien que or certes… mais for long, and a comparison of two viewpoints cannot avoid en revanche or alors que. Then check, honestly, whether the connectors you used actually carry a relation or only announce one, using the deletion test on every single one. That check is easiest on marked work, which is what the expression écrite practice in the TEF writing guide and the live tiers of the TCF Canada course is built around: a connector that survives deletion is doing its job, and one that does not is quietly telling a marker you had nothing to link.