Introductory words in English carry the same meaning as in Russian. They play a supporting role, but our speech without them would become more impersonal and poor.
Introductory words allow:
- Express your own or collective attitude: unfortunately (unfortunately), (unfortunately), to tell the truth (to be honest).
- Order your speech: well (so, well), therefore (hence), in addition (besides).
- Indicate the probability of the event: probably (probably), surely (for sure).
- Indicate the source of information: in my opinion (in my opinion), in my view (from my point of view), as to be said (they say), as someone said (as someone said).
- Buy time, give yourself a pause to think about the following words: among other things (among other things), by the way (by the way), at all (in general), in other words (in other words).
Of course, the list of functions that introductory words can perform can be continued. In any case, with their help, you make your speech more rich, specific and consistent. It is very useful to know the introductory words for those who are going to take exams in Englishlanguage. They will not only help you win a few seconds during a monologue, but also make your written essay more logical and coherent.
How to distinguish introductory words in English from other parts of speech?
It's not always easy. There are service words, the meaning of which may overlap with the meaning of the introductory words. For example:
Finally I could visit my mother-in-law.
I had a holiday and decided to visit parents or at last my mother-in-law.
In the first example, finally is equivalent to "after everything", therefore, it is a function word. It cannot be removed from a sentence without losing its meaning. In the second at last can be omitted. The proposal will become less personal, lose the connotation of regret (you can visit your mother-in-law, but you don’t really want to), but will not lose its meaning as a whole.
Pronounce introductory words in English should be emphasized with intonation. And then we'll talk about whether you need to isolate them when writing.
Should punctuation mark introductory words?
How is it in Russian? Introductory words are necessarily distinguished by commas or (in rare cases) a dash. In English, as you know, punctuation rules are more flexible and depend on the intonation of the author. That is why introductory words are very often not distinguished by punctuation marks at all. Unfortunately, for many students, this flexibility is difficult. For them, accustomed to the clear rules of the Russian language, it seems difficult in each case to decide independentlywhether to put a comma. Others, on the contrary, begin to punctuate with inspiration where necessary, although the minimum rules for their placement still exist. Advice for everyone: read more original texts in English, gradually you will learn to understand where it is worth highlighting such phrases and where not.
Also, pay attention to how far the meaning of the introductory word is far from the meaning of the main sentence. The punctuation mark also depends on the degree of remoteness. If the introductory words are used "in passing", and, having spoken this phrase, you will hear clear pauses around it, it can be enclosed in brackets. The softest degree of "distance" is drawn up with commas.
A number of such turns should be separated by commas on both sides (for example, "however" - "however"). Some introductory words are separated by a comma only if they are at the beginning of a sentence (for example, "also" - "also"), but not in middle sentences. This is logical enough. Why overload the sentence with punctuation marks, because this introductory word is very short. For example, punctuation is affected by the length and location of a word in a sentence.
