Determining Text Structure

Text Structure and Purpose

What are "text structure and purpose" questions?

The question will then ask you to identify...

The main purpose
or
overall structure of the text.

Let's try one now!

Multiple Choice

The following text is from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1910 poem “The Earth’s Entail”.

No matter how we cultivate the land,
Taming the forest and the prairie free;
No matter how we irrigate the sand,
Making the desert blossom at command,
We must always leave the borders of the sea;
The immeasureable reaches
Of the windy wave-wet beaches,
The million-mile-long margin of the sea.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

• The speaker provides examples of an admirable way of approaching nature and then challenges that approach.

• The speaker describes attempts to control nature and then offers a reminder that not all nature is controllable.

• The speaker argues against interfering with nature and then gives evidence supporting this interference.

• D

  The speaker presents an account of efforts to dominate nature and then cautions that such efforts are only temporary.

How should we think about text structure and purpose questions?

Instead of just what a text says, these questions dig into why and how the text says it.

Is it purpose or is it structure?

• to explain ______

• to illustrate ______

• to criticize ______

• to argue ______

• to introduce ______

What does it look like?

Purpose is the why behind the passage. Why did the author write it? What did they want to accomplish? What’s the point?

What is it?

Purpose

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