UNDERSTANDING TEXT STRUCTURES
READERS
WRITERS
Text Structure As Idea Chunking
Text Structure As Organizational Patterns
Text Structure as Architectural Shape
Text Structure As Organizational Patterns
Text Structure As Idea Chunking
Text Structure As Architectural Shape
click to edit
In An Introduction to Symbolic Logic, Susanne Langer writes, “The structure of a thing is the way it is put together. Anything that has structure, then, must have parts, properties, or aspects which are somehow related to each other” (60).
by recognizing the structure of a text and its internal parts, it helps student anticipate the content they encounter and understand its function in the piece as a whole
look at the physical shape of a text
ask yourself:
Are some sections bulkier than others? If so, where in the piece are they situated?
Are some parts
much smaller than others?
Are all the parts the same size?
What does that suggest about the importance of the content in this segment or its organizational function?
How many paragraphs (stanzas, chapters, parts) does it have?
The paragraph indentation signals a shift.
Good readers learn to attend to how these shifts work and what they suggest about both content and emphasis.
Chunking of ideas on a similar topic
Thesis
Academic Writing
Students might be confused by the sophisticated texts that withhold a claim until later (i.e., the first or second pharagraph)
Authors often use headings to help readers recognize different content chunks.
Might contain multiple paragraphs—even pages—devoted to the same related topic.
always appear in certain parts of a text
“Says and Does” (see Considering the Structure of the Text in “Rhetoric of the Op Ed Page”) .
they are useful analytic tools to help students unpack idea clusters and discover additional ways of structuring the presentation of their ideas.
These three main organizational patterns are found in many different genres; however, they are rarely found in isolation.
Chronological Organization
Logical Organization
Spatial Organization