Monday 15 June 2026 · 16:15–17:45
1L01. What an LLM is. Prompts, tokens, context windows.
L02. Plagiarism, paraphrase, voice.
L03. Genres. Topics and controlling ideas.
L04. Macro structure — IBC, IMRaD, CARS.
L05. Revision with AI.
L06. Audience, purpose, style, flow.
L07. Outlining and drafting.
Today (L08). Connectors, punctuation, and the review prompt.
2Connectors (transitions, linking words) let you move smoothly from one idea to the next, and signal the relationship between them.
They do three jobs at once:
Flow is not decoration. The connector tells the reader how two ideas fit together.4
The grammar of the connector decides the punctuation.
| Type | Examples | Punctuation |
|---|---|---|
| Coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS) | for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so | comma before it |
| Subordinating conjunction | although, because, since, while | comma (if the clause comes first) |
| Sentence connector (adverbial) | however, moreover, therefore | semicolon or full stop; comma after |
FANBOYS = for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. Synthesised from the Howard CC handbook, §5.5, and Swales & Feak, p. 38.
5File sharing is easy and risk-free, so it keeps growing.
(coordinating — comma before)
Because file sharing is easy and risk-free, it keeps growing.
(subordinating — comma after the first clause)
File sharing is easy and risk-free; however, the law is catching up.
(sentence connector — semicolon before, comma after)
The meaning barely changes. The punctuation is what keeps it correct.
6| Sequence | first, next, then, finally |
| Addition | furthermore, moreover, in addition |
| Comparison | similarly, likewise |
| Contrast | however, on the other hand, nevertheless |
| Cause / effect | therefore, thus, consequently, hence |
| Conclusion | in summary, in conclusion |
These are not all of even the most common connectors — collect new ones as you read.
7Start in the handout. Choose the level that fits you:
B1/B2 Zemach, pp. 58–60
Classify connectors, then complete and join sentences. (Exercises 9–12)
C1/C2 Swales & Feak, pp. 37–42
The linking-words table, then add the punctuation and supply the connectors. (Tasks 18–19)
Work at your own pace. Compare with a neighbour when you finish a task.
8Punctuation does not just tidy a sentence. Sometimes it is the only thing that makes the sentence mean anything at all.
Here are thirteen words in a row. Where does the punctuation go?
Johnny where Jenny had had had had had had had had had had had the teacher's approval
9The scene: a grammar test. The task is to use the past perfect.
So the sentence is really comparing two answers: had against had had. Once you mark which "had"s are being quoted, it untangles.
"had had" is a real, correct repetition — the past perfect of have — but it often feels wrong to learners. See the Wikipedia entry on the "had had" sentence.
10Johnny, where Jenny had had "had had", had had "had";
"had had" had had the teacher's approval.
The quotation marks (or a colon) do the work the bare words could not.
11You have just spent a lesson making your own writing clearer.
The next step is asking an LLM to help you check it — without letting it rewrite your voice.
That instruction is itself a piece of writing: a review prompt.
Writing prompts that do not rewrite is key to Assignment 4 and the exam. We will practise it today using grammar-checking prompts.
12Review prompts get the LLM to tell you where you make mistakes. It will enthusiastically hand you a corrected version — but then it is no longer your voice. So you must instruct it not to rewrite.
A worked example prompt is in your handout, page 9.
It does three things:
https://zsl-13.boldra.com/l8/revision-prompts
14Submit by Monday 29 June 2026, 16:15:
More information in the handout.
15See you next Monday — L09: Paragraph structure and grammar.
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