Teacher Discussion Forums

I have to write an assignment for my TESOL Grammar class. I have to write a page about:

"structures expressing contrast and concession (with conjunctions, prepositions and transitions)"

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what this means. Where should I start looking?

Thank you so much.
Adrian

Hiya Adrian, I'm not gonna give you much help (even if I were capable of doing so) because I don't want to encourage you to be lazy; besides I honestly think you can often gain more by sitting with and investing time in getting to know whatever grammar book(s) you've bought (right?!) than from the internet (although the net's obviously good when you have some REALLY obscure term like "paremiology" to look up!).

So, that should be the first thing you should do - look up "conjunctions" in a grammar book to get some idea of which words are conjunctions; the better (more functionally-oriented) grammars (e.g. Swan's "Practical English Usage" or the COBUILD Grammar) will soon tell you what the types and uses of conjunctions are. You might find COBUILD's English Guide 9: Linking Words (by Sylvia Chalker) very useful...sorry if this advice seems too patronizing...

Anyway, you should maybe as a minimum be aware of coordinating vs. subordinating conjunctions...changes in clause order are called for...and subordination can sound a bit formal/written (to me); also, statements don't even need to be explicitly joined or signposted...the links between them can often be inferred...but your trainers probably don't want you straying too far into "informal" English and into (spoken) "fragmentary" evidence!

I am not quite sure what "transitions" are...discourse markers, perhaps? I'll look them up later maybe...