Teaching MLs How to Transition between Sentences

A MiddleWeb Blog

This article is part of a series for English language development teachers, drawing on the new book by Tan Huynh and Beth Skelton, Structured Success for Experienced Multilinguals. See the entire series here.

The case for sentence-to-sentence organization

Just like sentence variety, organization is one essential feature of academic writing.

However, organization is often taught by having students use paragraph-to-paragraph transitioning. This approach is too cognitively difficult for students just learning to write academically.

Instead, I propose a more accessible approach: teaching students to make sentence-to-sentence transitions. Fortunately, there are several types of sentence-to-sentence transitions that develop experienced multilinguals’ ability to transition between ideas.

Transition with Time (Beginning, Middle, End)

Since people are used to recounting events in casual conversations, time-based transitions are an effective way to ease multilinguals into sentence-to-sentence transitions.

In this approach, time markers (e.g. First, In the beginning, Then, After, Finally) serve as transitions between sentences. Before teaching students these transitions, we have students recount an event from the text we are studying in chronological order in a numbered list. The numbering helps students sequence from the first event to the last.

Here’s an example using some events in Chapter 1 of Island of the Blue Dolphin:

1. Karan and Ramo gather roots on Ghalas-at Island.
2. Karan sees a ship in the distance.
3. Ramo runs off to alert the other villagers.
4. The villagers come to the shore to watch the ship come closer.
5. The Aleuts and Captain Orlov arrive on the shores of Ghalas-at.

Now that the events have been numbered, I teach students to remove the numbers and replace them with time-based transition words one event at a time. Additionally, we add more context to the time-based transition words to connect them to the rest of the sentence.

This activity is not simply about directly copying, pasting, and inserting the time-based transitions from the numbered list of events. Writing time-based transitions requires students to make connections between the events and the time transition words they want to use. Continuing the example from above, it would look like this:

• In the beginning of Chapter 1, Karan and Ramo gather roots on Ghalas-at Island.
• Then, Karan sees a ship in the distance.
• After seeing the ship, Ramo runs off to alert the other villagers.
• When the villagers hear Ramo’s news, they come to the shore to watch the ship come closer.
• Once the villagers reach the cliff overlooking the shore, they observe the Aleuts and Captain Orlov arriving on the shores of Ghalas-at.

Time-based transitions teach multilinguals that to successfully recount in chronological order, we have to think about the sequence of events and use words that move the reader from one event to the next so they can comprehend the flow of the events.

Transition with However, Additionally, Therefore (HAT)

Multilinguals like to start their sentences with But, And; So. While this is perfectly acceptable in social language, academic writing requires different transition words. This is a perfect starting place for multilinguals to learn to transition academically between sentences.

In reality, when multilinguals use But, And or So to start sentences, they are actually transitioning between ideas effectively, granted that their structure is grammatically incorrect. Therefore, this is a wonderful teaching opportunity.

Whenever I see But, And or So used, I give students three options: However, Additionally, Therefore. I ask students which one of these words would be best to replace But, And or So.

For example, if a student writes these two sentences: “Ramo runs to get the villagers. But Karana stays hidden in the bushes to avoid being spotted,”  I ask students which HAT word (However, Additionally, Therefore) would best replace the word But. They play with the different words and arrive at However being the most appropriate word. I would repeat this process for future opportunities when And and So are used at the beginning of the sentence so that students can learn to transition with Additionally and Therefore.

Transitions with WEST BUNDAI

Building on my previous article about writing complex sentence structures – “Unlock Academic Writing One Sentence at a Time” – I use subordinating conjunctions as transitions. To make it easier for students to remember the most commonly occurring subordinating conjunctions, I place them in the WEST BUNDAI acronym:

• W: While, When, Whether
• E: Even though, Even if
• S: Since
• T: Though
• B: Because, Before
• U: Until, Unless
• N: Not only…, but N + also + VD
• D: Despite
• A: Although, According to, After
• I: If, In addition to

Teaching students to use WEST BUNDAI conjunctions as transitions requires the Structured Quick Write protocol, set up like this:

• Prompt:
• Part 1:
• Part 2:
• Combined Sentences:

The prompt provides the writing task and instructions on which transition to use. The different parts scaffold how to incorporate text-based details. Additionally, the mini questions in Part 1 and 2 are designed so that ideas are sequenced logically. Finally, the Combined Sentences part is the result of sequencing the sentences in a logical order and transitioning between the two ideas cohesively.

An example using Chapter 3 of Island of the Blue Dolphin would look like this:

• Prompt: Describe the disagreement between the Ghalas-at residents and the Aleuts. Write two sentences. In Sentence 2, make sure to start with Since
• Part 1: What did the Aleuts promise?
• Part 2: What happened in reality?

A hypothetical response from students would be:

• Part 1: The Aleuts agreed to splitting their profits equally with the Ghalas-at tribe.
• Part 2: The Aleuts only gave a small share of their profits to the Ghalas-at tribe.
• Combined Sentences: The Aleuts agreed to splitting their profits equally with the Ghalas-at tribe for the permission to hunt sea otters around the island. Since the Ghalas-at were not given half of the profits as promised, they felt betrayed and fooled by the Aleuts.

I teach students that their Combined Sentences can have additional information not present in Part 1 and 2. Adding details provides context for the transition to make sense.

Conclusion

When I was in middle and high school, I can remember my loving teachers directing me to colorfully created posters with all the possible position transitions organized into a careful chart. I was supposed to use these in my writing. However, none of my teachers actually walked me through the process of transitioning between ideas at the sentence level.

I hope that with this article, I have shared an effective, easy-to-implement process to teach multilinguals organization skills by building transitions between two sentences. May what once seemed so confusing to me be clear and possible for your multilinguals!