All About Conjunctions in Speech Therapy

Hi friend!

This post is a quick overview of conjunctions and why they're important for tackling comprehension and expression goals in speech language therapy.

A conjunction is a word that connects parts of a sentence together.

There are different kinds of conjunctions:

• Coordinating conjunctions

• Subordinating conjunctions

• Correlative conjunctions

• Conjunctive adverbs

Why should we utilize conjunctions in speech therapy

Before we jump into conjunctions, let's back up one step to identify why we need to be supporting syntax skills in our therapy sessions.

Syntax refers to the rules for how words are arranged to build sentences.

Understanding syntax helps students make sense of how sentences are constructed, which directly supports their ability to comprehend language at the sentence level.

Comprehension at the sentence level is a foundational skill. If a student can’t understand individual sentences, it becomes much harder to understand larger chunks of language—like paragraphs, stories, or classroom instruction.

“The inability to comprehend key sentences in a text will undermine finding the main idea, drawing conclusions, making inferences, or answering many comprehension questions” (Balthazar & Scott, 2024).

Students also need to use complex syntax that allows students to engage across genres, including narrative, expository, persuasive, procedural, and conversational discourse.

“Investigations of both speaking and writing in these genres reveal reduced sentence length, fewer sentences with two or more clauses, less embedding depth, less noun phrase elaboration, and more frequent grammatical errors” (Balthazar & Scott, 2024).

So, now that we’re all on the same page about the importance of syntax, let’s look at one of the key building blocks for formulating compound and complex sentences: conjunctions!

Conjunctions are key components to target when supporting syntax skills, because they have an impact on goals like:

🌟 Produce grammatically correct sentences with 2+ clauses

🌟 Utterance expansion

🌟 Responding to wh- questions (e.g. Why did the house break? The house broke because....)

🌟 Formulating compound sentences

🌟 Formulating complex sentences

🌟 Retelling stories, narrative generation

🌟 Summarizing

COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS

A coordinating conjunction is a word that combines two words, phrases or sentences.

Using coordinating conjunctions:

• helps to present information succinctly

• supports summarizing skills

• makes what you say less choppy

• shows relationships between thoughts, ideas, actions, people

Coordinating conjunctions are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. You can remember these (and help your students to remember them) with the acronym FANBOYS.

• For - explains why

• And - to make two similar points, to connect two items

• Nor - to make two similar negative points

• But - to show contrast

• Or - to provide an alternative

• Yet - to show contrast in spite of something

• So - to show the result of something, to explain or give a reason for something

SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS

A subordinating conjunction is a word or phrase that combines one independent clause and one dependent clause.

Using subordinating conjunctions:

• provide an explanation

• communicates time

• gives more information about the sentences main idea

• provides a cause and effect relationship

• changes the time and place of 2 clauses

There are many subordinating conjunctions: after, although, as, as if, because, before, how, if, since, than, though, unless, until, when, where and while.

correlative CONJUNCTIONS

Correlative conjunctions are conjunctions used to illustrate how two words or phrases within a sentence relate to each other.

Correlative conjunctions always come in pairs. Here are some common ones:

CONJUNCTIve adverbs

Conjunctive adverbs are transition words or phrases. Conjunctive adverbs are also called connective adverbs or linking adverbs.

Here are some common conjunctive adverbs and their purposes or uses:

• Addition - additionally, also, besides, furthermore, moreover

• Consequence - consequently, accordingly, therefore, thus

• Comparison - alternatively, similarly, likewise

• Contrast - if not, however, nevertheless, otherwise, conversely

• Emphasis - certainly, definitely, indeed, of course, naturally

• Clarification - for example, for instance, namely, i.e., notably

If you're looking for ideas on how you can target conjunctions using books in literacy-based therapy sessions, check out this blog post.

I hope this has been helpful! 😊

References

Balthazar, C. H., & Scott, C. M. (2024). Sentences Are Key: Helping School-Age Children and Adolescents Build Sentence Skills Needed for Real Language. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 33(2), 564-579. Link.