Teaching Middle-School Students About Connective Words 

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Amy Crosson (University of Pittsburgh) and Nonie Lesaux (Harvard Graduate School of Education) suggest ways for middle-school teachers to help students understand connective words. Here are some commonly used connectives: although, however, meantime, meanwhile, moreover, otherwise, therefore, though, unless, until, whenever, yet.

And here are some academic connectives: albeit, alternatively, consequently, conversely, despite, eventually, finally, in contrast, initially, likewise, nevertheless, nonetheless, previously, specifically, ultimately, whereas, whereby.

“Sometimes referred to as ‘signposts’ or ‘glue,’ connectives are important because they link ideas and information within and between sentences,” say Crosson and Lesaux. “[They] clarify how readers should understand the relationship between ideas they have already encountered in a text and also orient readers to upcoming information.” There are four types of connectives:

• Additive – for example, “During the summer, my mother works in an outdoor food market. In addition, she works at a farm.”
• Temporal – for example, “Put on your socks before you put on your shoes!”
• Causal – for example, “I was late to school because I missed the bus.”
• Adversative – for example, “Sonia still thinks of Maria as her best friend, even though they fight all the time.” 

Connectives increasingly crop up in middle-school textbooks and other reading materials, and understanding them is especially important to reading academic material. But connectives are challenging because their meaning is abstract and difficult to define. 

How important are connectives to comprehension? Skilled readers with extensive background knowledge can make sense of text without connectives, say Crosson and Lesaux. But for young readers with little background knowledge, connectives are very helpful. In the middle grades, students need explicit instruction about the “cueing” function of connectives and should learn the meaning of common and academic connectives. This is especially important for low-SES students and English learners, whose vocabularies are less well developed. 

Crosson and Lesaux’s research found that it was a mistake to teach connectives in isolation; instruction should be embedded in interesting and important content and vocabulary. Common connectives should be taught in the upper-elementary grades, and academic connectives in middle school, using the same principles for vocabulary teaching used with other academic words:

• Teach connectives in students’ reading and writing of both narrative and informational texts. 
• Ask probing questions when an unfamiliar connective is encountered – for example, “Hmm. It says, ‘Other people are against the act, notwithstanding the need for safety and security. They think wiretapping violates a person’s right to privacy.’ What do you think the author means when she says that other people are against the Protect America Act, notwithstanding the need to be safe and secure? What do you think she’s saying there?”
• Think of synonyms – for example, but or despite in place of notwithstanding. 
• Generate examples in a more familiar context – for example, using notwithstanding in these sentence starters: “I decided to download the new version of Angry Birds…” or “The Yankees are my favorite baseball team…” 
• Encourage students to use connectives in their own writing. 
• Try sentence combining as a steppingstone to using connectives, taking advantage of free online resources like www.readingrockets.org/strategies/sentence_combining and www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/connectives. 
• Plan ahead to introduce students to connectives they might not use otherwise – for example, adversative connectives like nonetheless and whereas in persuasive essays. 

“Connectives: Fitting Another Piece of the Vocabulary Instruction Puzzle” by Amy Crosson and Nonie Lesaux in The Reading Teacher, November 2013 (Vol. 67, #3, p. 193-200); 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/TRTR.1197/abstract; the authors can be reached at acrosson@pitt.edu and lesauxno@gse.harvard.edu. 

From the Marshall Memo #510