College Writing

College Writing Study Guide

Chapter 3: Organization

Learning Objectives This chapter will discuss: 1. Paper-level, paragraph-level, and sentence-level organization 2. The Five-Paragraph, Five-Part, Rogerian, Toulmin, and Aristotelian organizational structures 3. The PIE method for organizing your paragraphs Organization is vital to your writing because it allows the reader to follow the connections between your ideas. For the two essay questions on the test, you will be required to form good, complex argu- ments, and in the academic world, good arguments build – one point follows the other, which con- nects to a third point, and all of the text convinces the reader of your point of view. Organized arguments are natur al for most people. If you are trying to convince your signi�icant other to do more chores around the house, you won’t bring up random points about where you had dinner last night. In writing, the same thinking applies, and we can break down organization into three sep- arate but related categories: paper-level organization, paragraph-level organization, and sen- tence-level organization. Effective paper -level organization ensures that your responses to the test questions will have a clear focus, which means that the essay will concentrate on a single main idea. Paragraph-level organiza- tion is about ensuring that each paragraph provides a single stepping-stone in your argument. Sen- tence-level organization ensures that the sentences connect to the paragraph’s topic and make logical connections to the main idea. Let’s go through each of these in detail. 3.1 Paper-Level Organization Paper-level organization is guided by your thesis statement. A thesis is, simply speaking, a claim. Your thesis states something to be true, and the rest of the paper seeks to prove why your thesis is true. By de�inition, your thesis must be arguable, which means that your paper’s thesis cannot be a pure statement of fact. For example, your paper’s thesis can’t be: “The sky is blue.” We don’t need your paper to prove this when we can simply look outside and discover its accuracy. Additionally, good theses can only be used in rhetorical situations . Rhetorical situations require an arguable thesis, a convincible audience, and a problem that can be solved by language. No matter how good your thesis or your argument is, if your audience refuses to engage with your ideas, you won’t be able to convince them, and likewise, if the main problem requires immediate action – like a life- or-death scenario – then the situation is not rhetorical and cannot be solved by language. In the case of the exam, you should assume that your audience will be convincible and the prompt will present you with a problem that can be solved by language.

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