Brian Davis

EDRG 4020

Dr. Lund

April 3, 2003

Connectives: Focusing on Words That Support Cohesion and Inference

Connectives are words that link sentences together. They help the reader to understand relationships between and among people, time sequences and events in paragraphs. Connectives aid in comprehension and inference by helping students see how the parts of a sentence relate to one another.

The steps in teaching connectives are:

Identifying text rich in connectives

The teacher reads text that will be read by students and takes note of sentences with connectives. The teacher prepares questions that will help determine student understanding of connectives.

Asking questions to determine students’ level of understanding

The teacher asks the questions they prepared from the text. The teacher is looking to see if students understand the meaning the connectives give. The teacher takes note of students who don’t understand so direct teaching of connectives can be taught to them.

Planning and implementing direct teaching of connectives

After identifying students who need instruction the teacher may use one of the following methods to teach connectives.

Connective cloze – Prepare sentences with connectives putting a blank where it would go. Students fill in the blank with the right connective.

Sentence combining – Students are given sentence strips with short sentences and connective words. The students combine two sentences by using a connective.

Identify and label connectives – Students are given a paragraph and label the connectives. The teacher reviews and discusses the chart of connectives with students. They use that chart to label the connectives appropriately.

Reviewing connectives in reading

After direct instruction of connectives, the teacher reviews the relationships of connectives as needed. The chart of connectives is left on display to remind students about inferring connections, identifying relationships between sentences and supplying implicit connectives in text.

Connectives Chart

Type Causality Concession Condition Contrast Conjunction Disjunction Location Manner Purpose Time

Key Words because, so, consequently but, although, however, yet if…then, unless, except in contrast, similarly, (comparative adjectives) and, in addition to, also, along with or, either…or there, where in a similar manner, like, as in order to before, always, after, while, when, from now on

Example John went to school because he had a test. John went to school, but he didn’t want to! If John passes the test then he will be promoted. John sings well; in contrast, his dancing is awful. John went to school along with Mary. Either John went to school or he went to the game. John went to school, where he took a test. John was elated to pass the test as he had been worried about his knowledge of the topic. John went to school in order to take a test. Before John takes the test, he will review the materials.