Structure of text Developing academic English

The house analogy - a way to structure text

Words on screen: MASUS Area 2. Structure and development of text. The house analogy, a way to structure text.

Chris Lee: To help students structure and develop their texts we encourage them to do plans. So to help with that what one of my colleagues always says to her students, and I've picked up, is to pretend that you're somebody selling a house and you're showing you know, the customers, the clients around the house. The introduction to the house and what different rooms you're about to see, that would be the introductory paragraph. Then you move into the living room and say, 'This is the living room' which is your introductory sentence, and then you describe what's in the living room, that's the rest of the paragraph. Then you move into the next room which is the next paragraph, introduce that, give the detail and then move on like that. And that seems to help students organise things.

When using the house analogy, moving into a new room is like introducing a new theme. You need to give the introduction to the room first, for example say, This is the dining room where we eat, rather than saying the detail like, Look at the knives and forks, so that would help a student give a clear key opening sentence and then fill in the detail later, rather than the other way round.

The room analogy can help students deal with the logic of the argument, and linking paragraphs which is one of the key difficulties, I think, for many students. You don't just leap from one room to the other but you make a sort of transition. For example, I suppose if you were going up the stairs to the bedroom you'd have to finish the downstairs and use the stairs to link to the bedroom. In a similar way, a student cant leap from one bit of the essay to the next, you have to link the paragraphs together logically for the reader so that there's a flow in the argument which makes the logic stand out.