What a marker is for
Eight markers. Match each to the relation it announces.
Four extracts
A · From a research summary
Households in the study sent an average of eleven per cent of monthly income to relatives elsewhere. This proportion was stable across income levels, which the authors describe as their least expected finding.
Such stability is difficult to reconcile with a purely economic model of remittance behaviour. It suggests instead that the transfers function as an obligation rather than as a surplus, and obligations do not scale with income.
B · From a personal essay
My mother left Ceará at nineteen with a bag and an address written on the back of an envelope. The address turned out to be a bakery, not a house, and the woman who ran it took her in for three weeks.
Those three weeks are the whole of what I know about how she arrived. Everything after them is documented — the job, the room, the second job — and everything before them is a town I have never seen.
C · From a column
Cities are usually defended as engines of opportunity. That defence is accurate and incomplete: opportunity is what a city offers to somebody who can already afford to be in it for six months without earning.
Six months is the real barrier, and it is not a barrier of talent or of willingness. It is a barrier of savings, which is why the people most often described as unwilling to move are in fact the people least able to fail at it.
D · From a strategy document
A regional mobility framework has been developed. Stakeholder engagement was undertaken across four workstreams. Furthermore, alignment with national priorities has been ensured.
However, delivery timescales remain under review. Moreover, resource allocation will be confirmed following the spending settlement. In conclusion, the framework provides a platform for future work.
Seven statements. Decide which extract each is true of. An extract may be the answer more than once.
A The research summary
B The personal essay
C The column
D The strategy document
1. Joins its sentences by turning the previous claim into a noun phrase.
2. Uses the most connectives and is the hardest to follow.
3. Repeats a concrete number and builds the second paragraph out of it.
4. Has almost no connectives and needs none.
5. Concedes that a common defence is correct before limiting it.
6. Contains no human agent in any sentence.
7. Defines what the writer does not know as sharply as what they do.
Extract D is the warning. It has five connectives in six sentences and no chain at all: no sentence begins with anything the sentence before it introduced, and no sentence has a person in it. The markers are doing the only work being done, and markers cannot join what is not connected.
Three ways to open a sentence with something old
How the chain is actually built
| Device | Example | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Repeat the word | …for six months. Six months is the real barrier. | Column — plain, strong, slightly emphatic |
| Rename it as a noun phrase | …was stable. Such stability is difficult to reconcile… | Research summary — the academic default |
| Point at it | …took her in for three weeks. Those three weeks are… | Personal essay — this, that, those, such |
Say it, don’t read it. A discourse marker takes its own intonation unit, with a small break after it: However, ⟋ delivery timescales remain under review. Said without that break, it stops being a signpost and becomes an ordinary adverb.
Which is why a marker in the middle of a clause is quieter: That defence, however, is incomplete concedes more gently than However, that defence is incomplete. Position is volume.
Four sentences have been removed from a fifth extract. Put each one back where it belongs.
Almost every study of return migration finds that people intend to go back much earlier than they do. [1]
The gap between intention and departure is usually explained by money. [2] What changes is not the balance but the number of things attached to staying: a lease, a school, a job that would be hard to explain leaving.
[3] Each of them is reversible on its own and almost none of them is reversible together, which is a different problem from a financial one.
That difference matters for policy. [4] A scheme aimed at the second has to address a dozen small commitments that nobody lists as reasons.
Joining without signposting
Seven gaps. Some need a marker; more of them need a link back to what has just been said.
People intend to return much earlier than they do. is usually explained by money, and for two or three years that explanation holds. it stops working, because what changes is not the balance but the number of commitments attached to staying. accumulate quietly: a lease, a school, a job. is reversible on its own; almost none of them is reversible together. is a different problem from a financial one, and it needs a different answer. A grant addresses the first. second needs somebody to deal with a dozen small things nobody lists as reasons.
Seven sentences. One error each — markers, packaging or reference.
1. Furthermore, however, the situation is complicated.
2. The remittances, they are stable across income levels.
3. In conclusion, the framework provides a platform for future work. — in the middle of an argument
4. Moreover, the study found the opposite. — this contradicts what came before
5. This is why the people are unwilling to move. — this has no clear referent
6. Nevertheless, the results were consistent with the hypothesis. — nothing has been conceded
7. In my country it has many people who move for work.
Repair the strategy document
Task card · Pairs · 12 minutes · Writing then speaking
Rewrite extract D so that it holds together — without adding a single connective.
Six minutes rewriting, six comparing with the pair beside you.
- Delete every connective first. Read what is left.
- Put a person or an organisation in each sentence, so that something is doing something.
- Make each sentence begin with something the sentence before it introduced.
- Add back at most one connective, and only where you can say what relation it marks.
What you will find. Once the agents are restored and the chain is built, most of the connectives have nothing to do. The original was not badly connected because it lacked markers; it had markers because it was badly connected.
How many survived
Two questions.
1. How many of the five connectives did your rewrite need?
2. What made the biggest difference?
Markers label joints
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What holds a paragraph together?
2. What does a marker in mid-clause do, compared with one at the front?
Next. The markers themselves, function by function — including the four that learners use interchangeably and that are not interchangeable at all.