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7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

anyone know a good link where i can find information on the proper use of the different coordinating conjunctions (but, for or, nor, yet, so, and...)

i've given some exercises to my students, to join two independent clauses with a comma and the correct coordinating conjunction, but the text i'm using doesnt seem to explain in which situations to use which conjunction.

many thanks. 7969

Leon Purvis · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 1:37 pm Post subject:

Purdue University's online writing lab has just about everything you need to teach English at all levels. I've used it for seven years both in China and in the States. This is just the handouts site. There's a lot more on the site which covers paper formatting in all styles (APA, AP, Chicago, Turabian, MLA, etc.) and almost everything you can think of.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/

7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

M109A3 · Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Posts: 99

I LOVE the conjunction junction song from the mid '70s! It's a classic. I'm 40 and still sing along with it!

A Token of My Extreme · Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 76

One question you may get asked when teaching students about coordinating conjunctions is whether or not it is grammatically correct to use them at the head of a sentence. For these words do appear at the beginning of sentences. But why start a new sentence with a conjunction that has the main function of splicing independent clauses into a single sentence? And many will argue that they can be used at the beginning of a sentence as a conjunction. And they don't seem to understand how this is confusing to students under the general definition of a coordinating conjunction, that being to join two independent clauses into a single sentence with the scope of a conjunction's function being limited to linking ideas inside sentences. Nor do they mention that these words often take on other roles different from that of a conjunction. So there is a lot of confusion about the junction where a conjunction is to function. But these coordinating conjunctions words, and many other conjunction words, can be used also as connector words, which refer back to a previous sentence or idea. So considering their role to be that of a connector word may be a better explanation of there use at the beginning of sentences.