See you next time

Connectors are a really important tool in writing. They define the relationships between events. If word groups and simple sentences are the building blocks of meaning, then connectors are the mortar which lets you build a house out of them.

More than that, connectors can be heaps of fun. One cool word game is just to take two sentences that seem completely unrelated and swap different connectors in and out. What wild combos can you come up with?

"I made the team" and "the octopus was angry" joined with different connectors: and, but, because, as if, while

So cool, right? Right...?

See you next time!

Grab any random paragraph and highlight the connectors. What happens if you swap segments around? What if you change the connectors?

Try looking for connectors in different kinds of texts (stories, essays, news articles, internet forum threads, and so on). Do you notice any differences in the kinds and number of connectors being used?

Where did the snippets come from?

We drew from a lot of different texts to get snippets for this lesson. Here are the two we used as examples for the checkpoint piece.

Bridging cultures and good causes with music by Claudia Kalb is an article from the May 2021 issue of National Geographic. The article is about the collaboration between environmental organisation the Sea Change Project and internationally acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Cover of The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is the memoir of her childhood, and is an account of poverty, dysfunction, love, and resilience.

Connectors and an introduction to complex meaning