ABSTRACT
Using connectives creatively Using a variety of connectives is one surefire way of improving a pupil’s test scores
(parroting and the OCR Syndrome notwithstanding). However, while connectives
tend to be lumped together grammatically, they require us to do quite radically
different things within our imaginations. To understand the concept of meanwhile
for example we need to make a spatial leap in our heads and be able to do ‘big
chunk’ overview thinking . . . ‘The car crashed through the fence and came to halt,
teetering precariously on the cliff edge. Emily opened her eyes and let go of the
steering wheel, hardly daring to breathe. Meanwhile back in the city Jeff listened to
her voicemail message telling him she was going to visit her lawyer.’ Visually it’s a
sudden change of scene. If the following sentence in our nail-biting story was ‘Yet
even as Jeff realised that Emily was leaving him, his thoughts drifted back to the
summer before, when everything had seemed so perfect between them.’ Now we
need to make a temporal leap as well.
