Learning Objectives
Teacher Framing:
Structure use according to Practical Criticism pays attention to how a text is organized across macro (whole text) and micro (sentence/line) levels. Teachers must understand that structure is the overarching narrative and rhetorical architecture—how tension is built, perspectives shift, or arguments pivot. It moves students past isolated word-spotting into seeing how a text develops sequentially to shape meaning.
Student Learning Objectives:
- Track how a text opens, develops, and concludes.
- Identify structural shifts, turning points, or focal changes.
- Explain the effect of sequencing on the reader’s engagement or understanding.
Core Knowledge:
Structure refers to the skeleton and sequencing of a text. Just as a building has an intentional framework, a text is structured in a specific order to guide the reader through an experience or an argument. By looking at structural signposts—such as shifts in focus, changes in pacing, framing devices, or turning points—we can understand how the writer manages information, builds suspense, or contrasts different ideas from beginning to end.
Key Ingredients:
Key Vocabulary:
- Summary: Provision of a wide range but low detail account to open
- Support: adding new, similar ideas
- Contrast: adding new, opposing ideas
- Sequence: placing ideas in a specific, non-moveable order
- Emphasis: a strong assertion
- Cause and effect: a sequence that shows ‘this because of that’
- Illustrations: examples, demonstrations
- Conclusion: Provision of a wide range but low detail account to close
Key Sentence Stems:
- “At the beginning, the writer establishes [X], which provides an overview of…”
- “The writer develops the initial idea of [X] by introducing further details about…”
- “The movement from [X] to [Y] marks a turning point in the text, changing the reader’s understanding of…”
- “The relationship between the opening and ending suggests that the writer has developed the initial idea of [X] into…”
- “The writer slows the pace by [structural method], drawing the reader’s attention to…”
- “The writer shifts the focus from [X] to [Y], redirecting the reader’s attention towards…”
Key Thinking:
Incorrect: “The writer uses a short paragraph here to make it interesting.”
This identifies a feature without explaining its position, purpose or relationship to the surrounding text. It assumes that the feature has a particular effect without demonstrating how the structure produces it.
Correct: “The writer isolates the sentence ‘Nobody came back’ in a short paragraph after describing the villagers’ preparations. This structural contrast separates their hopeful expectations from the reality of their abandonment, making the absence of the villagers’ anticipated visitors the focal point of the passage.”
Models
Non Literary Warm Up:
Example: A political campaign leaflet
Imagine a campaign leaflet arguing that a local town needs better public transport. The leaflet is organised into four sections:
- Summary: An opening statement establishes that transport in the town is unreliable.
- Support: The leaflet provides statistics about delayed buses and interviews with frustrated residents.
- Cause and effect: It explains how unreliable transport affects employment, education and local businesses.
- Conclusion: It ends with a direct appeal for residents to support the campaign.
Literary example – :
Imagine a narrative that opens with a character standing outside a locked house. The narrative then shifts backwards to describe an argument earlier that day, before returning to the character outside the house.
Model analysis:
“The writer opens with the character unable to enter the house, establishing a moment of uncertainty before revealing its cause. The subsequent shift backwards delays the explanation, encouraging the reader to reconsider the opening in light of the earlier argument. When the narrative returns to the original moment, the character’s situation carries a different significance because the reader now understands the events that preceded it.”
This model demonstrates how a writer can manipulate the order of events to control the release of information and develop the reader’s understanding.
Now Apply To This To Our Text:
- Map the text: Divide it into its main sections, paragraphs, stanzas or significant moments.
- Summarise the sequence: Describe how the ‘telling’ changes as the text progresses.
- Identify structural functions: Determine where the writer summarises, supports, contrasts, sequences, emphasises, illustrates or concludes.
- Examine positioning: Ask why a particular event, idea or detail appears at that point in the text.
- Explain the significance: Connect the structural choice to the development of meaning, the writer’s purpose or the reader’s understanding.
- Formulate an analytical sentence: Use a structural term, precise textual evidence and an explanation of how the sequence develops meaning.
Exit Question:
Finish the sentence:
“Texts gain meaning through intertextuality because __________.”
You are listening for:
- transformation
- inherited ideas
- connections
- traditions
Homework:
What do you think are the most important parts of a text’s structure? Are some more important than others? You can challenge this assertion too and argue that no, all structural elements are equally valuable.