of ideas across phases and stages of text. They are, therefore, usually found at or near the beginning of paragraphs. In text 9.15, the connective ‘on the other hand’ links the two phases which form the arguments stage in a relationship of contrast. The connective ‘therefore’ links this stage with the concluding reinforcement-of-thesis stage.
Text 9.15: extract from ‘Utopias should be taken as serious manifestos of their authors’ beliefs’, an exposition by Rosie, Year 11
Stage/phase ‘Utopias should not be taken seriously’ Arguments
Text 1
Voltaire’s Candide has no pretensions about being a serious text. He uses exaggeration as a technique of expressing this ... Text 2 On the other hand, Thomas More’s Utopia is often misconceived
as exactly that—a manifesto of its author’s beliefs ... Reinforcement
of thesis
Therefore, as the textual and contextual evidence shows, utopian texts should not be taken as serious manifestos of their authors’ beliefs but instead as a satirical comment on society.
Text connectives can also be found within paragraphs to show the developing relationship between ideas. In the following paragraph from her exposition, Rosie employs text connectives to clarify (‘in particular’) and contrast (‘however’) ideas about one of the techniques used in Candide.
Text 9.16: extract from Rosie’s exposition on ‘utopias’
Another technique Voltaire employs within the text is his use of irony. Certain phrases in particular, such as ‘they entered a very plain house, for the door was nothing but silver, and the ceiling was only of beaten gold’, show this irony clearly. However, the entire plot line could be seen as ironic. The exaggeration of the characters’ trials, together with its heroes’ incredibly naïve attitudes, creates both irony and ridicule. The text, taken on its own, could only pass as a very badly written novel and never as a serious manifesto of its author’s beliefs.
In linking sequences of text, text connectives serve a very similar function to the conjunctions which join clauses together (see chapter 3). The main difference is that text connectives are concerned with the way stretches of text are organised across sentences, phases and stages of text, rather than with events within sentences. The following examples show the difference between the relationships formed by conjunctions and text connectives. In text 9.17, text connectives ‘fi rst’, ‘second’ and ‘fi nally’ organise the reasons which have been included within this text. For this reason, text connectives are often called ‘internal conjunctions’.
Text 9.17: adapted extracts from Kevin Rudd’s Apology speech
There are three reasons why the Australian Government needs to apologise to the Stolen Generation. First, universal human decency demands that the nation now step forward to right a historical wrong … Second, the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening well within the memory of many sitting members of parliament … Finally, it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation—and that value is a fair go for all.
Building word sets to create lexical cohesion is not only important for increasing the rhetorical effect of texts, but can be a valuable way of expanding vocabulary, especially for ESL students.
Supporting students to build different kinds of word sets, and particularly class- to-member and whole-to-part relationships, is an effective way of developing skills of analysis. This will help students to break down larger topics into relevant subtopics to organise well-crafted text responses and expositions.
Text connectives
Another set of resources for holding a text together are text connectives. Text connectives make the development or sequence of ideas explicit for the reader, by providing signals about the logical relationships that exist between the sentences and paragraphs in a text. For example, in the following extract from an exposition written by an elderly adult to his local council, the writer has linked background events in a contrastive relationship, using the connective ‘however’.
Recently I made application to have a tree removed on my property. However, the application was refused for various reasons, which I know are quite valid.
Text connectives link parts of a text in many different ways. Derewianka (1998) lists six important functions of text connectives. These are exemplifi ed in table 9.3.
Clarifying Showing cause/result in other words for example for instance to be more precise in particular in fact that is to illustrate so then therefore as a consequence/ consequently as a result for that reason due to accordingly because of this Indicating time Sequencing ideas
then next afterwards at the same time in the end fi nally soon after a while later previously until then fi rst(ly)/fi rst of all to start with/to begin second, third, fourth ... at this point
briefl y
to summarise/sum up fi nally/a fi nal point in conclusion
given the above points
Adding information Condition/concession in addition also furthermore and besides along with above all as well moreover similarly/equally in the same way
in that case on the other hand otherwise on the contrary however anyhow/anyway nevertheless even so despite this at least besides though yet despite this Table 9.3
At this meeting, leaders have to put it on their agenda to make the rules governing international trade fairer for all. Will this happen? Only time will tell.
And the world will continue moving along, the way it does currently, after the clocks strikes midnight on 31 December, heralding in a new year.
But the international community must ask the question, will the MDGs have a relevant place in society next year?
The prominence of text connectives expressing relationships of addition and concession used in text 9.19 helps Lewis to tie his ideas together into a refl ective evaluation of the year’s events. While the more spoken-like text connectives (e.g. but, and, along with all of this) used by Lewis are appropriate in the relatively less-distanced mode of a blog, more written-like connectives would be expected in an academic essay.
Exercise 9.9
Rewrite the sentences in text 9.19 which begin with ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘along with all of this’. Use some of the more written-like choices from table 9.3.
While the text connectives discussed above play an important role in making relationships explicit, overuse of these resources can make the connections or ‘seams’ in the text too obvious. In most of the texts we have chosen as models for secondary school English, writers and speakers also indicate their logical relationships inside the clause, within noun groups. For example, in the original version of Kevin Rudd’s Apology speech, the third reason for making the apology is introduced not by a text connective, but by the adjective ‘further’, which modifi es the abstract noun ‘reason’.
There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation.
Expressing logical relationships with noun groups is another kind of grammatical metaphor, which we introduced in chapter 4. This kind of grammatical metaphor is called ‘logical metaphor’. In chapter 10 we will discuss the important role logical metaphor plays in the development of literacy throughout the secondary school years. In text 9.18, however, the underlined conjunctions organise events in real time,
external to the text. These conjunctions are thus also known as ‘external conjunctions’.
Text 9.18: adapted extracts from Kevin Rudd’s Apology speech
Nanna Nungala Fejo remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp just outside Tennant Creek ... But then, sometime around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men ... After government policy changed, the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches ... She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then to Croker Island. Meanwhile, her brother was sent to a Catholic mission ... Finally, Nanna Fejo was united with her brother although her mum had died years before.
As is illustrated in these texts, some conjunctions can act as text connectives (e.g. fi nally) and can be used to connect ideas between, as well as within, sentences (e.g. but then, meanwhile, fi nally). For this reason it is often diffi cult to distinguish conjunctions from text connectives, especially within narrative and spoken-like texts. Note, for example, in the extract from the Apology which follows Nanna Fejo’s story, Kevin Rudd uses the conjunction ‘and’ to introduce a new idea into his text rather than to tell us what happened next in real time.
The stockman had found her again decades later, this time himself to say, ‘Sorry’. And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him.
While it is not always necessary to make a clear distinction between the grammatical resources of text connectives and conjunctions, it is very important to make explicit the text connectives which are valued in more written-like expositions and text responses. A general rule of thumb is that conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘then’, ‘but’ and ‘so’ are used to link events within sentences in written expositions and text responses, and should not be used at the beginnings of sentences. However, in speeches and narratives, strategic use of these conjunctions in sentence opener position can give emphasis to events and ideas.
Exercise 9.8
Lewis has used a variety of text connectives in one post of his TakingITGlobal blog (text 9.19), which evaluates progress towards eradicating poverty. This text has been divided into five phases. Circle the text connectives and identify the relationships which are made between the phases of text. You may want to refer to table 9.3.
Text 9.19: extract from a TakingITGlobal blog posting by Lewis
In 2005, we’ve all witnessed the rise of the worldwide MakePovertyHistory movement, the global call to action against poverty and the G9 Summit, along with the UN Millennium +5 Summit.
Along with all of this, we have seen the rise of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into the international agenda.
But now, after that fateful UN Summit, are the MDGs dead? There is one more meeting this year critical to the MDGs, and that is the WTO Summit in December.
140 Working Grammar
Implications for English teaching
The resources that we have focused on in chapters 8 and 9 are textual resources, which work to stitch together the various pieces of a text into a cohesive whole. In these last two chapters, we have provided a systematic overview of how these textual resources work grammatically, offering a tool kit for teachers as they help students create and appreciate how well-crafted texts, either written or spoken, hang together. Many English teachers already use some of the cohesive devices outlined in these chapters, explicitly teaching the use of reference and lexical cohesion, for example.
However, the complexity of organisational structures increases dramatically in the texts students are expected to read and write as they progress through the years of secondary English. Students who are not experienced with identifying the increasingly more sophisticated ways in which the parts of well-crafted texts are stitched together will greatly benefi t from explicit teaching of the textual resources we have introduced in chapters 8 and 9. This teaching will be even more effective when it is based on systematic principles, such as that various forms of presenting and tracking reference can vary according to audience and purpose. We saw this when we explored how Lewis, in his written blog, and Barack Obama, in his inaugural address, used ‘forward-pointing’ reference (i.e. the anticipating ‘it’ or ‘this’) to signal to their various audiences that important information was about to be provided.
We also saw how Kevin Rudd’s Apology speech used text connectives subtly, but powerfully, to draw the logical relationships between his various contentions. Students benefi t from knowing that various forms of text connectives indicate more or less explicitly the logical relationships between clauses, sentences and paragraphs, depending on the text’s audiences and purposes. With this knowledge, students can deliberately choose to make explicit the logical connections (e.g. fi rst, second etc.) between various stages of their texts or fi nd more implicit ways to make the connections or ‘seams’ less obvious.
Chapters 3 to 9 have explored how varying sets of grammatical resources work to make a text’s structure coherent (textual resources), while building a particular experiential world (experiential resources) and a particular relationship with its audience (interpersonal resources). With this comprehensive and systematic tool kit of grammatical resources, students can more effectively build the narrative, persuasive and response worlds of secondary English, negotiate appropriate relationships with their imagined audiences, and organise the parts of each of their texts into a coherent, well-crafted whole. Students can also be shown explicitly how to use this tool kit to identify the experiential, interpersonal and organisational structures used by other speakers and writers, and to evaluate their effectiveness. We again invite you to adapt the pedagogical strategies modelled throughout these chapters as you support your own students’ development and appreciation of such texts.
In conclusion, it is important to stress that, as outlined in chapter 2, these grammatical resources work simultaneously to build a text’s meaning. So far, we have examined these in isolation from each other. In the fi nal chapter, we will look at how students at various stages of development draw on these systems simultaneously in their writing of response texts.
Throughout this book, we have considered how English teachers and their students can benefit from a view of grammar as a set of resources that help people express and exchange knowledge, attitudes, feelings and opinions in well-crafted texts. We are confident that the knowledge of language built by working through these chapters has deepened your understanding of how the subject of English achieves its powerful and multifaceted purposes. Because of our focus on examining grammatical resources within the context of texts used in the secondary English curriculum, we are also confident that the tool kit we have presented will allow teachers to better support their students in building a rich yet flexible repertoire for creating, appreciating and critiquing texts.
In this last chapter, we explore further how knowledge of grammatical resources might help teachers track their students’ development during the secondary years of schooling. Focusing on student development will enable teachers to:
review key grammatical concepts and the three areas of meaning or meta- functions—the experiential, interpersonal and textual functions of language explore how resources from each of the metafunctions interact to achieve particular purposes and to respond to changes in context
examine how texts produced by students at higher levels draw on a greater repertoire of language choices and demand more linguistic tools than those at earlier levels.
In the fi rst part of the chapter, we will focus on the patterns of linguistic resources in student texts at different developmental levels of subject English. We will initially explore key areas of development in the early secondary years and then the more complex grammatical resources needed in the senior years.