ABSTRACT
Think back to a time when you’ve told or written a story: you probably didn’t simply list a serious of disconnected actions with no transitions between them. Instead, you likely used “transitional language”; words and phrases that establish a connection or relationship between events and ideas. The Common Core State Writing Standards emphasize the importance of this concept to narrative writing, and Standards W.3.3.C, W.4.3.C, W.5.3.C, W.6.3.C, W.7.3.C, and W.8.3.C highlight its significance. In this chapter, we’ll investigate the following: what “including transitional language” means; why this concept is important to effective narrative writing; a description of a lesson on this writing tool; and key recommendations for helping your students include transitional language in their own narratives. While doing so, we’ll examine how published authors incorporate transitional language into their works, and explore what makes their uses of this concept so effective.
