Does anyone have a good list of connecting words? I need one. Or better, we can make one here. What happened was that as our kids in DPS got older with TPRS/CI, we all realized kind of together that we had created writing monsters. They could write so well because they had heard so much language input (listening, reading) that they had the deeper constructs of language in the wiring of their brains and, even if everything wasn’t spelled correctly it communicated the idea, which is the essence of language. I might add that neither do grammar trained kids write any more correctly, but their writing seriously lacks the flow of the sound of the language. It is stilted, awkward sounding, and shitty even in the best students. That is the main difference in the quality of writing between TPRS/CI trained kids and grammar trained kids – the latter don’t exhibit flow of genunine L2 sound.
But what happened was that Diana started pointing out to all of us that we needed, for our spring exit exams, to ask kids even in level one to write stories. Before, they saw one static image and wrote ten unrelated sentences about it. Now, I am getting my level one kids to write stories with twenty verbs in them from a series of image frames. (I am doing so against my own wishes because I think writing has no place in levels one or two except the occasional dictation or freewrite – it might be ok but it takes so much time away from listening and reading that it is not good.)
So the kids need access in their minds to lots of connnecting words. So let’s make one. I’ll start the list:
alors – so
donc – therefore
après – after
ensuite – next
puis – next
d’abord- first
pendant que- while
maintenant- now
tout-à-coup- right away
le matin- in the morning
l’après-midi- in the afternoon
le soir- in the evening
la nuit- at night
soudain – suddenly*
*see https://benslavic.com/blog/?s=soudain+girl
So when this list is complete the kids will have the ability to express a sequence of ideas, which is necessary for them to write a story. My reasoning is that if I put up a poster of these words in about December of level 1, when they start writing, and have this list up on the wall all year for level 2 and 3 kids, they will have them ready to go for their writing on the spring district exit writing exam, which as I said in DPS is a set of panels that they make up a story about using 12 or 15 sentences according to the rules poster found on that posters page on the TPRS Resources page as mentioned above. I have that poster up in the room as well.
OK send them in as comments below. I want this to be a long list. Once the list is done, I’ll publish it here, make a category for the list for easy access, if you can call a list of hundreds of categories easy to access, and make a poster for the posters page here found on the TPRS Resources page.