“Never start a sentence with a conjunction!”
Have you ever heard this mantra?
Or have you ever said it yourself?
I confess I’m guilty as charged.
There were times I’d try ANYTHING to get my students to understand something in the moment.
But…the problem with that little conjunctions jingle I just mentioned is that it’s about as accurate as old wives’ tales like “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mama’s back,” or “Spilling salt is bad luck.”
Because sometimes you actually SHOULD start a sentence with a conjunction.
That’s why teaching this rule to kids can do more harm than good.
Yet sadly it’s still repeated a lot today, and so are a lot of other inaccurate pieces of linguistic information.
Students with language disorders are already confused enough.
We don’t need to make matters worse by telling something that isn’t true in the interest of getting the “right” answer in the moment.
Instead we should be striving to help them get a deeper understanding of the way language works so they can actually have a chance to thrive in school.
But we won’t be able to do that if we don’t have an understanding of those skills ourselves.
In my last two posts I’ve been quizzing you to see how well you understand some of the key parts of sentences you’ll need to study with your students to boost their language comprehension skills.
In the first post I shared why syntax is so important to your students’ academic success, and how to explain simple terms like “sentence”, “clause”, and “phrase”.
In the second post I shared how to explain more different sentence types, like simple, compound, and complex sentences.
So today, we’re going to dive right in to part 3 of the “Syntax IQ” series and put that old “conjunctions” wives’ tale to rest.
Without further ado, we’ll get right to it.
Today I’m going to quiz you on coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions…and for the bonus question I’m going to challenge you to explain the difference between a dependent clause and independent clause.
We’ll wrap it up by talking about the truth about conjunctions, and why sometimes they CAN come at the beginning of the sentence.
Syntax IQ Part 3: The conjunctions
Question #1: What is a coordinating conjunction?
Do you know that fancy acronym you can use to help you remember?
You may know what I’m talking about if you’d read the ultimate guide to sentence structure.
Here’s how you can explain it to your students:
Question #2: What is a subordinating conjunction?
No neat little acronyms for these because there are tons of them, but I give you a list of examples in this free e-book.
If you’re not sure what this is or how to explain it to your students, I explain it here:
Question #3: What’s the difference between a dependent clause and an independent clause?
I know we talked about clauses in part 2, but now we’re really applying those concepts at a different level.
We also need to know the parts of a complex sentence if we’re going to be nerding out on syntax with our students and giving them that deeper level of understanding.
I demonstrate how to do that in this video:
And finally…I’m going to add an additional bonus question here.
Question #4: When CAN you start a sentence with a conjunction (and when did people start telling kids a “rule” that isn’t true)?
I’ll answer the second part of that question first.
People started with the “don’t start a sentence with a conjunction rule” as an attempt to simplify things for students learning to identify a complete sentence.
It makes life a lot easier when you have a go-to saying you can repeat over and over again to remember a rule.
But the problem with this one is that its only true some of the time.
It’s true that you don’t want to start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction.
I actually break that rule in my blog all the time because I write in conversational language…but sentences that start with coordinating conjunctions like “so”, “and”, or “but” technically aren’t complete sentences.
However, we CAN start a sentence with a subordinating conjunction when it’s part of a subordinate clause in a complex sentence.
For example, “Because we were tired, we decided to go to sleep.”
Since this is such a difficult rule for our students to grasp as it is, we owe it to them to walk them through all the pieces.
You’ll be surprised to see what your students can do when you give them the chance.
If you liked this article and want to take the first two parts of the “Syntax IQ” quiz, you can take part 1 here and part 2 here.
To take your syntax IQ to the next level so you can give your students the skills they need to become skilled comprehenders, get the Ultimate Guide to Sentence Structure for SLPs.
In this guide you’ll learn:
- The hidden culprit behind unexplained “processing” problems that’s often overlooked.
- The deceptively simple way to write language goals; so you’re not spending hours on paperwork (goal bank included).
- The 4 sentence types often behind comprehension and expression issues and why they’re so difficult.
- An easy-to-implement “low-prep” strategy proven to boost sentence structure, comprehension, and written language (conjunctions flashcards included).
You can get your free copy here.
