The Writing of Expository Texts in Early Grades

Teaching of reading and writing expository texts is no common task in primary grades. Indeed, several types of research have shown how little exposure this type of texts is given compared to the narrative text. Hall, Sabey, and McClellan pointed out that to neglect early teaching of expository text could contribute to pupil’s fourth-grade slump in reading — the emergence of understanding difficulties in reading occurring at that period when they switch from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”. Furthermore, the little exposure the young pupils get to that type of text and its specific vocabulary does not stimulate the development of necessary skills to its comprehension and production even while informative texts are more in use in other school disciplines.

Expository Texts

 

Expository Text Structures

For three decades, works led by Meyer and her collaborators clearly expressed the various rhetorical relations in play in the expository texts which are regrouped in five types. “Description” comes first, in which the properties of one or many elements are presented; then follows “sequence”, where elements are presented in temporal order; then comparison/contrast where the author compares and contrasts two or more similar events, topics, or objects; then “cause/effect” relation, where one or more causes are delineated and its effects are described; and finally “problem-solution”, where a problem is stated and its solution(s) are developed accordingly. Meyer’s work shows that among those types, comparison, and problem-solution are the most complex because of the high number of relations (predicates) involved between the arguments, and the most useful and memorizable since each argument was the object of a still higher number of processes.

Writing a Comparison Text

In a comparison text, the youthful author’s test is to think about two items, i.e., a beaver and a muskrat, to inspect their attributes and hold just those on which resemblance could be assessed.

Composing that sort of content infers that the decision of data and the etymological procedures utilized empower the peruser on one hand to set up the semantic relations with respect to every one of the portrayed referents, while then again, prompt a near procedure of that data whose undertakings are intellectually all the more requesting and at a higher reflection level than that of the depiction structure. So as to do as such samedaypapers.com writers recommend that the content structure should be composed in such a way as to delineate then again the attributes of every creature. This procedure is frequently fortified by the nearness of examination signals (“as” and “though”). It is typically settled that examination content includes generally arrangement information, which is in respect to a progressive association of the world.

Writing a Problem-Solution Text

The problem-solution text brings forward a problem event and shows the chosen action to solve the problem. It uses a logical cause-effect relation between the various events which, in the cognitive development of the child,
is only later mastered. In such a text, the writer’s challenge is to sequence orderly the wording of the problem and its solution with information re-use of information (arguments) showing the causal relations (predicates — what the authors are saying of) between the problem and its solution. To guide the readers in constructing those relations and constantly moving back and forth from the problem to the solution, the writer uses connection signals as “because”, “then”, “consequently”, etc., making those relations explicit. Thus, opposed to the comparison text, the problem-solution text offers a lower ratio of predicates/arguments since a number of arguments used in the statement of the problem are also used in its solution.

On the lexical side, other than the causal sign, the author must utilize action words or “nominalizations” to accentuate “activities” where changes may resolve the issue.

In light of those details in regards to both the semantic substance and the particular vocabulary utilized by those two kinds of content, we went for checking if from those perspectives, permitting that eminent contrasts could be seen among examination and issue arrangement writings created by youthful students of essential evaluations following instructional exercises.

The teaching of writing must focus on the learning of the cognitive processes supporting the writing tasks, such as planning and revision. However, this supposes that the beginning writer becomes able to word the view she wants to output, which means to decide what she says first, what she says afterward, and so on, in the sentence and between the sentences. This decision, in turn, must take care of the content to word and the goal aimed at in the text, which could be linked to the rhetoric relationship sustained by the expository text.

Whether its goal is to compare or expose a problem and its solution, the task of writing an expository text following the acquisition of specific linguistic procedures is an essential tool in the development of cognitive processes of comparison and the appropriation of cognitive causal relationships of high-level essentials to interrelate the ideas into a coherent whole.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *