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GCSE Gramática

Tips to increase complexity: Linking words

You don't realize when you are speaking English, but the chances are that both the vocabulary and the structures you are using are pretty complex and I would bet that you can produce fairly long sentences easily, for example:

Compare these two answers to the question What did you do last weekend?

Answer 1:

I went shopping and I went out with my friends.

Answer 2:

On Saturday morning, as usual, I went shopping to the supermarket with my parents. Later on that day I went out with my friends, however the cinema was closed and we had to go to the park instead, where we played rugby.

There is no doubt that if you or I were given the task to award marks for the best reply, we would both go for number two, yet many students are content with giving answers like number one instead.

You may think it's hard to come up with answers like number two in Spanish, but it doesn't have to be. All you have to do is familiarise yourself with some words that are guaranteed to boost the marks you get both in your written and your spoken Spanish, for example:

Adverbs: muy, bien, mal, mucho, poco, siempre, nunca, mañana, ayer and, of course, normalmente, generalmente etc. Basically anything ending in -mente.

Conjunctions: y, pero, sin embargo, aunque, porque, que, por lo tanto, para que, etc.

You can start learning some very useful words and expressions by playing this matching game.