Wednesday, September 10, 2008
transition words are the devil?
up until about 6th grade, transition words were encouraged by my teachers so that my paragraphs would flow properly. then at the start of middle school, transition words were for elementary kids and they made papers weaker. so it has been over 5 years and i constantly avoided using these words. while i was writing my essay, i found it hard to connect all the aspects of my personality. competitiveness doesnt go with the inability to plan. through my teacher conference, i was told transition words are useful if used in moderation, which allowed me to show contrast between my topics. why do teacher tell us one thing only to have another teacher in the future tell us the opposite?
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2 comments:
IWANTANA, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), few things in life are an exact science, even if they purport to be. Teaching, writing, even medicine are no exceptions. Probably, your middle school teacher knew you would try harder to use original transitions if he/she forbade them altogether. I, however, am not so hard-line. The occasional "while" to introduce a dependent clause is o.k.. I don't want rules to stand in the way of creativity, especially if forbidding the old stand by transititions make you too uptight to attempt to be creative.
Because teachers want us to try and think outside the box, dig it? ;)
Our earlier teachers gave us a decent enough base- just a general idea of how to create a smoother essay. As we got older, they decided that we can stand on our own two feet, or write with our own unique transition words. They just forgot to tell us about their decision.
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