Transition questions look easy and aren't. The SAT hands you two sentences with a blank between them and four words that all sound plausible: however, therefore, likewise, meanwhile. Pick by ear and you'll miss a steady chunk of them, because the wrong choices are wrong for a specific reason you skipped past.
The Transition Ward drills exactly this, and it's free: play it here.
It runs like a clinic. Each round is a patient. The relationship between the two sentences is the condition, and the transition word is the treatment. You diagnose first — is this a contrast, a cause, an example, a concession? — and then pick a word that treats that relationship. Choose a word that treats the wrong one and it tells you why: "that word treats contrast; this sentence is a concession."
The order is the point. The mistake most people make on transitions is grabbing the word that sounds right before deciding what the two sentences are actually doing. Naming the relationship first is the entire skill, and the game won't let you skip it. Once you can name it, the word is usually obvious.
It's a few minutes a round, it keeps score, and the sentence pairs are written to work the way the real ones do.
One takeaway: on any transition question, decide what the two sentences are doing to each other before you look at the answer choices. Everything after that is easy.
Play it at forgesat.com/games/transition-ward.html — no login. If you're not sure transitions are even where your points are going, that's what the diagnostic is for, and it's free too. Sign up and it'll tell you where you're actually losing them.
Forge is a beta, built by one developer who still teaches full-time. If a round scores wrong or a sentence looks off, reply or email me and I'll fix it.