Two Words Most OET Candidates Never Use (and Should): The Precision Vocabulary Fix

Here are the two words: has since. Read that sentence again — chances are you already know both words, you use “has” and “since” constantly in your OET letters, and you still never put them together. That gap is the whole story of OET writing vocabulary precision: the problem usually isn’t unknown vocabulary, it’s known words you never learned to combine, so you reach for a longer, vaguer workaround instead. “Has since” is a two-word linking phrase that reports what happened after a stated event, and it is one of the most efficient upgrades available to a candidate who already writes correct present perfect sentences but never uses this particular shape of one.

Watch the full breakdown: Two Words Most OET Candidates Never Use covers the “has since” construction with worked examples from real referral and discharge letters.

What is OET writing vocabulary precision, and why does “has since” matter?

Vocabulary precision in OET writing isn’t about reaching for rarer words. It’s about choosing the construction that carries the exact meaning the case notes give you, in the fewest words that still carry it. Most candidates preparing for OET Writing spend far more time learning new clinical terms than they spend learning how to link two events they already know how to describe individually. “Has since” sits in that second, neglected category: both words are elementary, but the combination is a specific grammatical tool that most candidates simply never acquire, because nobody explicitly teaches it as its own pattern.

The result is predictable. A candidate who can write “Mr Osei was started on lisinopril in March” correctly, and can separately write “he has developed a persistent dry cough” correctly, still doesn’t know how to join the two ideas efficiently — so they default to a new sentence, a repeated date, or a filler connective. None of those choices are grammatically wrong. All of them are less precise than the two-word alternative that says the same thing.

What does “has since” actually do in a sentence?

“Has since” attaches to a clause that follows a reference to an earlier, dated event, and it reports something new that happened at some point between that event and now — without needing to name the exact date of the new development. The structure is: [dated event], and [subject] has since [past participle].

Example: Mrs Ahmed underwent a total knee replacement on 14 March and has since regained full weight-bearing mobility.

Notice what the sentence is not doing. It is not saying Mrs Ahmed regained mobility on a specific date — the case notes may not even specify one. It is saying that the recovery happened at some unstated point after the surgery, and that it is still true today. That is precisely the information a receiving clinician needs, delivered without a single unnecessary word.

”Has since” vs. “since” for duration: the confusion that stops candidates using it

This is the exact point where most candidates get stuck, so it’s worth being precise about the difference. Our guide to past simple vs present perfect in OET letters covers the duration use of “since” — marking an open time frame that runs continuously up to now, as in “she has had lower back pain since her last review.” That “since” attaches to a state that has not stopped.

“Has since” is a different job entirely. It always follows a reference to a completed, dated event, and it reports a discrete new development that came after that event — not a continuous state running from it. Compare the two side by side:

The tell is structural, not semantic: duration “since” attaches directly to an ongoing state with no dated event named before it. “Has since” always sits right after a clause that already named a completed, dated event, and it introduces what happened next. Once you can spot which shape the sentence needs, the choice stops being a judgement call.

Why candidates avoid “has since” even when it fits perfectly

Ask a candidate to describe two clinical events in sequence, and watch what they actually write. The pattern is consistent: a completed first sentence, then a second sentence that restates the connection explicitly — “After this, the patient developed a rash” or “Following the procedure, she experienced some swelling” — or, worse, two independent sentences with no linking device at all, leaving the reader to infer the sequence themselves.

None of these are ungrammatical. But they cost words a two-word phrase would have saved, and “after this” and “following the procedure” are exactly the kind of generic connective phrasing that reads as padding once an examiner has seen it a dozen times in a marking session. “Has since” is not just shorter — it is the construction native and expert writers reach for automatically in this exact situation, which is part of why its absence is noticeable under the Language criterion’s assessment of grammatical range.

”Has since” and cohesion: a linking device, not just a tense choice

“Has since” does double duty as a cohesive device between two ideas, which puts it in the same family of tools covered in our guide to connectors and cohesion in OET writing — but it works differently from a conjunction like “however” or “furthermore.” Those connectors sit between two full sentences and signal a logical relationship (contrast, addition). “Has since” is woven into the grammar of the second clause itself; it doesn’t just signal that a new idea is coming, it carries the temporal relationship inside the verb phrase. That is a more compact form of cohesion than most candidates use, and examiners reading for range under Language notice the difference between a letter stitched together with “however” and “in addition” throughout, and one that varies its linking devices, including grammatically embedded ones like “has since.”

Using “has since” without overusing it

Like any specific construction, “has since” only helps if it appears where it genuinely fits — a dated event, followed by a later development that is still relevant. It is the wrong tool in at least two situations:

1. When there is no prior dated event to attach to. If the letter opens directly with the patient’s current presentation and no earlier reference point has been established, there is nothing for “has since” to follow. Use plain present perfect instead: “Mr Ali has developed increasing shortness of breath over the past week.”
2. When the new development is not still relevant. “Has since” implies current relevance, the same logic that governs present perfect generally. If the development itself has already resolved and finished, past simple is correct instead: “He developed a mild rash the following day, which resolved without treatment.”

A useful self-check before you submit: find every place your letter uses “and then,” “after this,” or “following that” to connect a dated event to a later development. For each one, ask whether the later development is still relevant now. If it is, try rewriting the sentence with “has since [past participle]” in place of the filler connective, and check that the sentence still reads correctly and says the same thing in fewer words.

Why this single construction earns its place in a 200-word letter

OET letters run to roughly 180–200 words, under both the Conciseness & Clarity criterion and the practical constraint of the exam’s time limit. Every clause you can compress without losing information gives you room elsewhere — for the clinical detail that actually determines Content marks, or for the recommendation the letter exists to deliver. “Has since” is one of a small number of two-to-three word constructions that reliably compress a full clause’s worth of meaning into a single verb phrase, alongside tools like passive voice for agentless actions and relative clauses for embedded detail. Learning it is a one-time investment that pays out in every letter afterward, because the pattern — dated event, then “has since” plus a new development — recurs constantly in referral and discharge writing.

The honest limit of learning vocabulary from a list

Vocabulary precision like this doesn’t come from memorising a list of “good phrases to use.” It comes from recognising the exact structural situation each phrase solves — which is why “has since” only becomes usable once you can identify a dated event followed by a later, still-relevant development, the same way “discussed with” only becomes automatic once you stop thinking about it consciously. Practising with real case notes, not isolated example sentences, is what builds that recognition. Our free Grammar Checker is a reasonable first pass for catching basic tense errors in your own drafts, but it won’t tell you where a whole clause could have been a single two-word phrase instead — that judgement call is exactly what our OET writing correction service has been trained on across more than 11,000 letters corrected since 2014, flagging not just what’s wrong but where a more precise construction was available and unused. If you’re comparing options before booking a correction, our pricing page lists turnaround times and pack sizes from a single letter upward.