Organization of Text
Text organization refers to how a text is organized to help
readers follow and understand the information presented. There
are a number of standard forms that help text organization when
writing. This text organization guide will help you logically
guide your readers through your text.
Authors organize their writing based on the purpose of their text.
Five of the main methods that authors use to structure their text
are cause and effect, compare and contrast, chronological order,
inductive presentation of ideas, and deductive presentation of
ideas.
Cause and Effect
Cause and effect present the reasons something happened. For
instance, if I said, “If you go to bed late, you will be tired,” the
cause is going to bed late and the effect is being tired.
A cause-and-effect piece of writing is going to keep giving you
reasons something happened and the effect of that particular
reason.
Compare and Contrast
Compare and contrast writing discusses similarities and
differences. It’s going to say how two things are alike and how
they are different. These may also come across as “pro and con”
pieces, where it gives you the pros of two things and the cons of
two things.
An example would be if I said as a thesis statement, “Those who
are up to date on technology are still debating over whether
DVDs or Blu-ray discs are better,” the author could go through
and describe all the similarities between DVDs and Blu-ray
discs and all the differences between DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
In the end, you could make up your mind which one is better,
because they are simply comparing and contrasting the two.
Chronological Order
Chronological order presents information in the order that it
happened. It starts at the beginning and works its way to the end.
A good example of chronological order pieces is biographies.
You start whenever someone was born; you go through their
childhood, adulthood, and events leading up to their death. The
book is laid out to describe events exactly in the order that they
happened chronologically in time.
Inductive Presentation
Inductive presentation of ideas starts with specific examples and
moves to a general conclusion. If I were to want to convince you
that it was good to donate blood, I would start off with lots of
specific examples or reasons why it was good to donate blood,
and then give you the general conclusion: you should always
donate blood.
Deductive Presentation
Deductive presentation of ideas is going to be the opposite of
that. It starts with that conclusion (You should always donate
blood) and then it explains supporting examples. I would give
you examples or reasons that list out the benefits of donating
blood. You can see these are opposite. It’s important to
remember the difference: inductive is going to list all of them
and take them into a general conclusion at the end.
Deductive is kind of like division. You start with one big
conclusion and divide it down into lots of supporting details or
examples.
Whenever you are trying to organize your own writing, or trying
to figure out the purpose of an author’s writing, try to figure out
what the organizational method was, and it might help you
figure out the overall purpose of the text.
Different Thematic pattern
A theme is a central topic, subject, or message within a
narrative. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's
thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and
its thematic statement being "what the work says about the
subject”. Thematic means concerned with the subject or theme
of something, or with themes and topics in general.
Importance
Theme choice in academic texts plays an important role to the
reader’s comprehension as it facilitates the coherence and
cohesiveness of the text. However, research on thematic
structure in academic settings in developing world has
still received less attention. It employed functional
grammar as the main theoretical framework to the
analysis of different types of themes including simple
themes, multiple themes and clausal themes There are
various approaches to conducting thematic analysis, but the
most common form follows a six-step process: familiarization,
coding, generating themes, reviewing themes, defining and
naming themes, and writing up. Following this process can also
help you avoid confirmation bias when formulating your
analysis.
This process was originally developed for psychology
research by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. However,
thematic analysis is a flexible method that can be adapted to
many different kinds of research.
Different approaches to thematic analysis
Once you’ve decided to use thematic analysis, there are different
approaches to consider.
There’s the distinction between inductive and
deductive approaches:
An inductive approach involves allowing the data to
determine your themes.
A deductive approach involves coming to the data with
some preconceived themes you expect to find reflected
there, based on theory or existing knowledge.
Ask yourself: Does my theoretical framework give me a strong
idea of what kind of themes I expect to find in the data
(deductive), or am I planning to develop my own framework
based on what I find (inductive)?
Step 1: Familiarization
The first step is to get to know our data. It’s important to get a
thorough overview of all the data we collected before we start
analyzing individual items.
This might involve transcribing audio, reading through the text
and taking initial notes, and generally looking through the data
to get familiar with it.
Step 2: Coding
Next up, we need to code the data. Coding means highlighting
sections of our text – usually phrases or sentences – and coming
up with shorthand labels or “codes” to describe their content.
After we’ve been through the text, we collate together all the
data into groups identified by code. These codes allow us to gain
a condensed overview of the main points and common meanings
that recur throughout the data.
Step 3: Generating themes
Next, we look over the codes we’ve created, identify patterns
among them, and start coming up with themes. Themes are
generally broader than codes. Most of the time, you’ll combine
several codes into a single theme.
Step 5: Defining and naming themes
Now that you have a final list of themes, it’s time to name and
define each of them.
Defining themes involves formulating exactly what we mean by
each theme and figuring out how it helps us understand the data.
Naming themes involves coming up with a succinct and easily
understandable name for each theme.
For example, we might look at “distrust of experts” and
determine exactly who we mean by “experts” in this theme. We
might decide that a better name for the theme is “distrust of
authority” or “conspiracy thinking”.
Step 6: Writing up
Finally, we’ll write up our analysis of the data. Like all
academic texts, writing up a thematic analysis requires
an introduction to establish our research question, aims and
approach.
We should also include a methodology section, describing how
we collected the data (e.g. through semi-structured
interviews or open-ended survey questions) and explaining how
we conducted the thematic analysis itself.
The results or findings section usually addresses each theme in
turn. We describe how often the themes come up and what they
mean, including examples from the data as evidence. Finally,
our conclusion explains the main takeaways and shows how the
analysis has answered our research question.
