The Relationship Families as One Wheel

A transition question is never really asking you to memorize a list of words. It's asking what relationship holds between two sentences, and there are only nine shapes that relationship can take: addition, contrast, cause-effect, concession, example, elaboration, sequence, comparison, and emphasis. Picture them as spokes on one wheel. Addition and elaboration point the same direction the first sentence was already going. Contrast and concession reverse that direction. Cause-effect moves downward, from reason to result. Example and emphasis branch off to support a claim already made. Sequence and comparison sit sideways, ordering or matching rather than pushing the logic forward or back.

Once you see the arrow, sorting words is fast. 'Moreover,' 'furthermore,' 'in addition' all sit on the forward spoke. 'However,' 'nevertheless,' 'on the other hand' sit on the reversed spoke. 'Therefore,' 'thus,' 'consequently' sit on the downward spoke. 'Granted,' 'admittedly' sit on the concession spoke, which looks like contrast but yields a point before pushing back. Twenty connectors sorted this way takes under two minutes, because you're sorting nine buckets, not twenty individual meanings.

Some words, like 'still' or 'then,' sit on two spokes depending on context, and only the surrounding sentences settle which one. This is exactly how the companion skill - building a sentence from notes to hit a stated goal - works: a stated goal picks one correct shape out of several possible true sentences, the same way the relationship between two sentences picks one correct family out of nine. Nail the arrow first, and the right word almost chooses itself.