Any kid will tell you that words like firstly, secondly, and lastly structure a text. But of course, not all authors will be mindful to structure their texts so prominently. Some may think that using simple signposting words are beneath them.

It is, therefore, the responsibility of the teacher to inculcate in his charges an acute awareness of the range of signposting words. Textbook exercises are indisputably boring to teenagers though; they cannot stimulate their interest.

Hence, I began with the End in Mind. I chose something that I knew my students would like. My school’s speak takraw team competed in the finals against the defending champions in the National School Games. The match highlights were featured on YouTube.

I immediately turned to Twee to generate a summary of the video.

Having obtained the summary, I then flexed my stellar prompt engineering skills on ChatGPT and asked it to condense it into four suit sentences.

No doubt, I got to tweak the sentences to customise them to my students’ level, but I created an interesting text cohesion exercise without onerous effort. Score 1 for Sensei!