Teaching about co-ordination

Why is it important to know about co-ordination for teaching English at KS3?

English teachers should help pupils to control their use of co-ordination so that they can write effectively for particular purposes. For example, in the same piece of writing co-ordination might be used to move narrative action forward, with subordination being used to note the causes and effects of the narrative action.

The 1999 National Curriculum for English at KS 3& 4 says:

Writing: Language Structure

Pupils should be taught the principles of sentence grammar and whole-text cohesion and use this knowledge in their writing. They should be taught:

  • the structure of phrases and clauses and how they can be combined to make complex sentences [for example, co-ordination and subordination]

What are pupils quite good at and what do they need to develop in this area at KS3?

Good at …

By KS3 most pupils use co-ordination confidently and generally accurately, and do not need to be encouraged to use it more often; indeed they may make too much use of it and need to be taught other ways of putting ideas together, e.g. using subordination.

The strengths of a KS3 writer in handling co-ordination can be seen in the following example. The co-ordinating conjunctions have been highlighted.

It was the 15th May 1991 and I was camping with some mates. Paul & George whent out fishing and I stayed and keept an eye on the tents, just in case.

We have been camping before but never with this much troble. It’s always been really good fun. So far in 3 day’s we have lost all of our food, and clean water. Last night we heard some kind of growl but we thort nothing of it and whent to sleep. But today we have found large foot-prints. We think it might be George sleep walking, but he said he did’t go out.

Tonight we are going to set some trap’s so we can catch the person or thing that keep’s on making these foot prints.

This writing has the following strengths, which are probably widespread at KS3:

  • All the three main co-ordinating conjunctions are used: and, but and or, and the choice of meanings is appropriate in each case.
  • Co-ordination is used to link grammatical units of all sizes:
    • single words:

      Paul and George,

      person or thing;

    • phrases:

      our food and clean water

    • clauses:

      it was the 15th May 1991 and I was camping with some mates.

  • Sophisticated combinations of co-ordinations within co-ordinations are used, as in the second sentence.

 

Paul & George whent out fishing and I stayed and keept an eye on the tents, just in case.

Paul & George whent out fishing and I stayed and keept an eye on the tents, just in case.

 

  • The possibilities of ellipsis which are available in co-ordination are used well, e.g.

 

I stayed and

I kept an eye on the tents

 

we thought nothing of it and

we went to sleep.

 

We have been camping before but

we have never been camping with this much trouble,

 

Need to develop…

  • Punctuation is a major area of weakness, as it does not always reflect the grammatical patterning. For example, in our text the comma is misleading in:

 

So far in 3 day’s we have lost all of our food, and clean water;

 

The comma promises a clause rather than a mere noun phrase as the second part of the co-ordination. The reader might expect, for example,

 

So far in 3 day’s we have lost all of our food, and clean water is becoming increasingly difficult to find.

 

    • Subordination or co-ordination? KS3 pupils may use co-ordination where subordination would have been more effective. For example:

      Paul and George went out fishing and I stayed and kept an eye on the tents.

      Although common sense fills in the relationships among the events without difficulty, the continuous repetition of co-ordination makes the writing monotonous. This sentence could easily have been made grammatically more varied through the use of subordinating clauses, e.g.

While Paul and George went out fishing, I stayed to keep an eye on the tents.

  • Unmatched lists. When three or more items are co-ordinated, the co-ordinated parts should all match each other. (This is explained in the unit.) Even mature writers sometimes fall down on this with non-matching co-ordinations such as:

 

He was cold, wet and just wanted to get home.

 

 

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