Text Structure, Part 4

Question 1: Discuss the narrative in the context of literary theory.

Answer 1: A narrative, according to literary theory, is a story or part of a story. A story is any form of text despite the medium which describes a sequence of events caused and experienced by characters who may or may not be fictional. The narrative may be spoken, written or imagined and will have one or more points of view which represent some or all of those who participate or observe. In verbal stories, the narrator tells the story and can be seen and sometimes heard as well as adding layers of meaning to the text in a nonverbal way. This is different from written forms in which the author has to determine a reader's likely reaction upon decoding the text, and thus make a final choice of words in order to hopefully reach the desired response.

There are lots of good resources about Text Structure that you can find available.

Question 2: Briefly describe the primary structures of expository text.

Answer 2: Expository text is written in order to inform, explain, describe, present information or to persuade. The text is subject-oriented and contains information and facts using little dialogue. How expository text is organized depends upon the genre or form of that text, such as a letter, newspaper article, editorial, brochure, map, etc. There are seven basic structures of expository text. It has been suggested by researchers that teachers begin to teach expository text structure at the level of paragraphs. The expository text structures are: definition, description, classification, process (listing, collection, time order), comparison, analysis and persuasion. The types of expository text include advertisements, autobiographies, biographies, book reports, campaign speeches, cartoons, catalogues, comics, complaints, definitions, editorials, interviews, journals, menus, etc.

Question 3: Define these expository text structures:1. Definition. 2. Description.

Answer 3: 1. Definition is a form of writing used by authors when they wish to define a particular subject or topic. Definitions are important to any type of writing and are especially useful for expository text. A question that might be asked for a definition structure might be: What is being defined? 2. Description is a writing form used to describe the features and attributes of people, places or items. Usually, the main topic is introduced in descriptive writing and then the attributes are later included in the body of the paragraph. The focus of the information which is included in a descriptive paragraph might include smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing and touching. Examples of expository text that are descriptive include brochures, animal descriptions or scientific concept descriptions. A question which may be asked for descriptive text might be: What is being described?

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