Every word in this sentence has a distinct meaning. The words interact with one another to convey the sentence’s overall meaning. The sentence then connects with the ones around it to make a more significant point. The meaning of this paragraph would change if different words were used or the words and sentences were arranged differently.

Text structure refers to how words and phrases are organized and relate to one another on a written page. Understanding the significance of text structure, the various types of text structures, and how to conduct a text structure analysis aids readers in deciphering meaning.

What is Text Structure?

Text Structures are the organizational structures used within paragraphs or longer texts that are genre and purpose appropriate. The text structures are sequence/process, description, time order/chronology, proposition/support, compare/contrast, problem/solution, cause/effect, inductive/deductive, and investigation.

Over the last two decades, research in literacy learning has found that: a) understanding various text structures and their purposes improves students’ ability to comprehend what they read, and b) some text structures are more easily learned and understood than others. If you’re looking to write an essay and need assistance with text structure, consider exploring essay writers for hire who can provide valuable insights and support tailored to your needs.

The Value of Text Structure

Understanding and examining text structure is essential for analyzing multimodal texts.

The text structure is significant because it assists linguists in understanding one of the many ways meaning is conveyed in a text. The organization of various elements in authors’ written works can significantly impact how readers understand them. As a result, it is critical to consider how a text is laid out and how linguistic modes interact.

Description Text Structure Examples

The following sentences demonstrate the concreteness, evocativeness, and plausibility of good descriptive writing.

She strolled through the woods.

This sentence describes what the person is doing—walking through the forest—but says nothing else about what is happening in the scene. Take the following sentence and add adjectives and adverbs to make it more descriptive:

She took her time walking through the lush green forest.

The adverb slowly tells us how she walked, and the adjectives lush and green describe the forest. This sentence is far more descriptive than the first and paints a clear picture of what the author wishes to convey.

Descriptive text can be used in more abstract ways as well. You can express what is happening vividly with your words if you show rather than tell what you want to convey. Here’s an example that isn’t particularly descriptive:

The elf was depressed.

We know what the elf was thinking but not why or how the elf expressed its sadness. To illustrate the same scene, let’s add some descriptive text.

When the elf saw its flower garden flooded by the storm, tears streamed down its cheeks.

Here, we not only learn that the elf was crying, but we also see a clear image of the elf’s face with the phrase dripping down its cheeks. This is far more evocative than simply stating that the elf was crying. We also know why the elf was crying and what the surrounding scene looks like. This is an excellent example of a descriptive sentence that paints a vivid picture of what is happening rather than simply telling the reader. The more information you provide about what is going on, your text will be descriptive.

• Her last smile was not a sunset. It was the last eclipse, noon fading into the darkness where there would be no dawn.
• My Uber driver sounded like talk radio on repeat and looked like a deflating airbag.
• The old man was hunched into a capital C, his head so far forward that his beard almost touched his knobby knees.
• The painting was a field of blue flowers and yellows on deep green stems that seemed to invite the viewer to join in the fun.
• My dog’s fur felt like silk against my skin, and her black coloring shone like a pure, dark mirror, absorbing sunlight and reflecting it.
• The sunset lit the sky with a deep red flame, igniting the clouds.
• The waves rolled along the shore in a graceful, gentle rhythm as if dancing with the land.
• Winter hit like a welterweight that year, a jabbing cold that you thought you could handle until the wind blew up and knocked you out.

Types of Text Structure

There are various ways in which the texts are constructed; it is the method by which the authors capture their ideas, the primary material with which they are constructed.

The type of text determines how the reader interacts with the text, including aspects such as the mental representation of what is read. It also determines how much it stimulates their imagination, emotions, or sensations, how the text can be used, how the person identifies with it, and other discursive order-related aspects.

This allows us to determine whether the text intends to entertain, inform, or convince. For example, if the writer wants to describe how some events occurred, he or she uses narration; if the writer wants to persuade someone about something, argumentation is the appropriate type to use. It is important to remember that each order has characteristics that must be followed to achieve the writer’s goal.

8 Text Structure Types Every Critical Reader Should Understand

The five most common nonfiction text structures are as follows:

Description

Many nonfiction books for elementary school students contain descriptive text structures. The main topic of a paragraph or article is described in descriptive texts. Authors use descriptive text rather than other text structures to teach the reader about a specific topic.

Identifying a descriptive text structure:

• A topic sentence is a sentence that introduces a central theme or topic.
• Sentences describing the central theme or topic
• Descriptive words are those that help the reader visualize the subject.
• The author’s goal is to educate the reader on a specific topic. 
• Nature and animal books frequently contain descriptive text. 

The author is describing facts about a particular subject. They provide information so the reader can visualize and learn from the text.

Order and Sequence 

Another famous structure in children’s nonfiction literature is order and sequence. The text in Order and Sequence is written in chronological order. Authors use order and sequence to quickly convey the order of events when narrating a true story or process.

You can identify “order and sequence” structures by observing the following:

• Events or instructions that occur sequentially
• A topic sentence that initiates a series of events
• A final sentence that summarizes the final event
• Words like “at first,” “finally,” “first,” “second,” and “third.”

The author’s goal is to describe a process or a true story. As a result, biographies and how-to books frequently use order and sequence text structures. Authors of biographies typically write about a person’s life from birth to death (or present day), including each event in the order that it occurred in their life.

The Cause and Effect

Cause and effect is the most flexible nonfiction text structure. A cause-and-effect structure employs the “If… Then…” pattern. If ABC occurs, then XYZ will occur. The author intends to explain a primary event and the events that follow it in cause and effect.

You can identify “cause and effect” structures by observing:

• A major event
• Additional events that occurred as a result of the main event
• Words like “because,” “because of,” and “as a result of”
• Cause and effect text structures can be found in various nonfiction writing styles. Biographies? Yes. How-Tos? Yes. What about historical nonfiction? Yes. What is scientific nonfiction? Yes. What is persuasive writing? Yes!

Some students may be perplexed by the Cause and Effect text structures. The number and significance of the main event’s “effects” vary. You could have one event that triggers three or four others, or you could have only one.

Compare and Contrast

One of the most common text structures is compared and contrast. Compare, and Contrast is a technique authors use to highlight the similarities and differences between two (or more) subjects.

Compare and contrast by observing:

• A topic sentence that contrasts two subjects or topics
• Sentences that alternate between describing two distinct subjects
• Keywords like “likewise,” “in contrast,” and “both.”

Compare and Contrast various books, particularly informational books about animals or literary writing.

Problem and Solution

Authors use “Problem & Solution” to describe problems and potential solutions.

Identify problem and solution structures by observing:

• A problem-initiating topic sentence
• Sentences that suggest possible solutions are provided below.
• Words like “problem,” “solution,” “therefore,” “so,” and “then.”

We are constantly exposed to “problem and solution” text structures as adults. It is a typical persuasive writing structure. 

Problem and solution texts for children are more challenging to come by. I frequently look for texts about the environment and communities in which the author emphasizes local or global issues. 

Authors frequently explain the issue at hand (problem) and how people attempt to solve those issues in those texts (solution).

Novels in Graphic Form

Graphic novels are prime examples of multimodal print texts. They include images of the events described in the text below in boxes. As a result, they include linguistic, visual, and spatial modes. The interaction of the storyline, images, and characters’ speech alters the reader’s understanding of the graphic novel’s meaning.

Podcasting Sites

A podcast website is an example of a digital multimodal text that includes linguistic, visual, and aural components. Typically, readers can listen to a podcast recording and then read a transcript or summary. Images on the website frequently add to the meaning of the discourse.

Chronological

This is a text that is written in chronological order. Identify this structure by looking for a clear beginning, middle, and end in a specific timeline. Almost all fiction is written in chronological order.

Gone with the Wind is a fictional text about the Civil War that uses chronological order. The novel tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara, a Southern belle who lives in the South before the war, during the war, and for several years afterward. The plot follows a set timeline with a distinct beginning, middle, and end.

Look for ways the author might manipulate the timeline to achieve a specific effect on the reader when analyzing this type of text structure. Flashbacks or stories within stories can be used to reveal important details at a specific point in time. For example, an author writing a tragedy may only reveal a critical detail at the end of a novel that dooms the main character to emphasize emotional impact. When reading a text chronologically, be aware of these time manipulations.

The author of descriptive writing does not simply tell the reader what was seen, felt, tasted, smelled, or heard. Instead, the author describes something from their own experience and makes it seem real through careful word choice and phrasing. Descriptive writing is colorful, vivid, and detailed.

Excellent Descriptive Writing

Good descriptive writing leaves the reader with an impression of an event, a place, a person, or a thing. The writing will be such that it will set a mood or describe something in such detail that the reader would recognize it if they saw it. Descriptive writing must be concrete, evocative, and plausible to be effective.

• To be concrete, descriptive writing must provide specifics that the reader can visualize. Instead of “her eyes were the color of blue rocks” (Light blue? What color is it? Marble? Instead of “her eyes sparkled like sapphires in the dark,” try “her eyes sparkled like sapphires in the dark.”
• To be evocative, descriptive writing must combine concrete imagery with phrasing that conveys the impression the writer wishes the reader to have. Consider the difference between saying, “her eyes shone like sapphires, warming my night,” and saying, “the woman’s eyes had a light like sapphires, bright and hard.” Each phrase begins with the same concrete image and then employs evocative language to create a variety of impressions.
• To make the concrete, evocative image plausible, the descriptive writer must limit it to the reader’s knowledge and attention span. “Her eyes were brighter than the sapphires in Tipu Sultan’s golden throne’s armrests, yet sharper than the tulwars of his cruelest executioners,” will have the reader checking their phone halfway through. In a fraction of the reading time, “her eyes were sapphires, bright and hard” achieves the same effect. When in doubt, write less, as is always the case in the writing craft.

What Distinguishes the Text Structure?

The sunset filled the sky with a deep red flame, setting the clouds ablaze.

Text structures are incorporated into all state language arts standards (e.g., Common Core State Standards — CCSS, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — TEKS). They are frequently mentioned directly in standards for teaching expository text comprehension.

They are indirectly related to narrative text standards in which children are required to think deeply about a text and engage in higher-order thinking — for example, why did the character behave that way? (This implies a cause-and-effect relationship). Students are asked to compare and contrast the problems and solutions in different texts.

Based on the inclusion of text structures in state standards, almost all textbooks include text structure instruction. A comprehensive list of English Language Arts (ELA) approaches designed to promote comprehension in four textbook series reveals that cause and effect are taught as specific skills to be learned (Beerwinkle, Wijekumar, Walpole, & Aguis, 2018).

T-Charts and Venn Diagrams are also used to teach compare and contrast. To organize passages, sequence and description are frequently used, and children are asked to participate in activities such as numbering the water cycle. The terms “problem” and “solution” were rarely used in the textbooks examined.

In every case, text structure was taught as a separate skill to be learned apart from writing main ideas, summarizing, generating inferences, and monitoring comprehension. Teachers use the following sequence of activities to teach reading within the ELA classroom, according to our observations of teachers using these textbooks to guide instructional practices in classrooms (Beerwinkle, Wijekumar, Walpole, & Aguis, 2018):

Engage background knowledge and discuss some intriguing aspects of the text.

Vocabulary should be pre-taught or taught in context. For children who are unfamiliar with the terms, provide definitions and examples.

Preview the text by skimming it, reading headings, and reading sections. These activities can be done in a large group, small group, silent reading for an extended period, or some combination of classroom organization.

Concentrate on the “skill” of the week or a skill combination. Typically, textbooks concentrate on one aspect of the text. Genre, main ideas, summaries, inferences, comprehension monitoring, writing, and author’s purpose are some of the observed foci.

Teachers have also asked students to choose critical ideas from the text and provide a central point.

According to Beerwinkle et al., over 90% of teachers used strategies such as “Beginning-Middle-End,” “First sentence and last sentence,” rereading the passage, and looking for what is essential.

Teachers may ask students to complete a graphic organizer on cause and effect and a T-Chart or Venn Diagram for a comparison, depending on the focus of the week.

The location and manner in which the text structure is introduced during instruction is an essential distinction between the Text Structure Strategy and the applications of text structures listed above.

After completing all other instructions, the text structure is presented in step 6 of the observed teacher activity list.

Bottom Line

Text structure refers to how information in a text is organized.

Linguists study how text structure affects meaning in semantics.

When considering multimodality, or the interaction of different modes of conveyed meaning, text structure is critical.

Among them are linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial modes. Print, physical, and digital media are examples of different mediums.

Readers should evaluate modes and medium, take note of context, identify functions, and analyze relationships between lexical items when analyzing text structure.