3rd Class English Conjunctions CONJUNCTION

Historical Preview

In 1980, there was a finding made that conjunction ?and? takes the role of other conjunctions. People use it more often in place of other conjunctions.  

LEARNING OBJECTIVES 

• understand what conjunctions are. 
• learn some important conjunctions.
• learn the usage of conjunctions.

QUICK CONCEPT REVIEW

A conjunction may be called the glue in the sentence as it join words, group of words or sentences. It is a word you can use to combine words or sentences together. The most common conjunctions are and, but, or, so.

In your daily life you will find conjunctions all around you. All you have to do is observe. Let me give you some examples.

• When you go to a restaurant with your parents, the waiter would ask for your choice: mango shake or banana smoothie?
• When you are not well and you go to the doctor's clinic, he would advise you to: take the medicines regularly and drink plenty of water.
• You go to a grocery shop and ask the shopkeeper to give you: one bread, one packet of butter and a dozen eggs.
• You tell your mother that you will either have a chocolate cake or a pineapple cake for your birthday.
• Your teacher instructs you in the class: You may read a book or draw something but there should be no noise in the class." All these are instances of conjunctions being used in our day-to-day life and you will certainly agree that they occupy an important position. Right?  

SOME IMPORTANT CONJUNCTIONS ARE

Do you know that conjunctions are also very helpful in making your writing interesting? This can be done by combining two or more shorter sentences into one longer, more interesting sentence.

• Example: Pam bought three pencils. She lost two of them.
• You can combine them as: Pam bought three pencils but she lost two of them.
• For lunch I ate a sandwich. I ate potato chips. I ate a cookie.
• You could also write this as: For lunch I ate a sandwich, potato chips and a cookie. Doesn't that sound better!  

Conjunction Chart

Some more conjunctions to remember:

For, and, Nor, But, Or, Yet and So

AND          joins two similar words or sentences.

BUT           is used in an unlike situation.

SO              means 'for this reason'.

WHILE      means 'at the same time as'.

BECAUSE means 'for the reason that'.

IF                means 'on the condition that'.  

PLAY TIME

You can play this between three or more friends. You are required to sit in a circle. The first child will whisper a conjunction into the second child's ears. The second child will think of another conjunction and whisper the two conjunction to the third child. The third child will now think of another conjunction, add it on to the previous two and whisper it to the fourth child. Thus the game will increase till the last child is reached who would say it aloud. If anyone forgets or drops a conjunction he/she quits and the game continues with the other player.