Rhetorical typesGraham Thurgood (English 232) 120 Rhetorical types In reading a second (or, third) language, it is extremely important to be aware of how paragraphsand articles are structured. Once our students are intermediate or advanced, they are ready to learn some-thing about the structure of paragraphs and essays. Why? There are two reasons: First, it improves their overall reading strategies and thus their com-prehension. It helps enormously when reading to get the general meaning of a paragraph — even when someof the details are not clear.Second, when they later begin to do their own writing, it helps their organization, because thenotions of paragraph and essay structure are already familiar, making the transition from reading such mate-rial to writing such material all that much easier. Sometimes the students learn about paragraph and article structure from an exercise that focuses onit. For example, the reading “The pet dog” focuses in part on how a newspaper article is organized. Simi-larly, the reading using Bertrand Russell's speech 'What I Have Lived For' focuses in part on essay organiza-tion. Sometimes the students’ awareness of the structure can come from having them outline a particu-larly well-organized reading. And, sometimes it comes just from having had the teacher point it out often enough when it ispresent in a piece that the students are reading.One obvious source for examples of well organized paragraphs and essays are nature and sciencebooks. In these books, the organization is often extremely clear and these make excellent intermediate andadvanced readings. Another source are older composition textbooks in which the authors illustrate different rhetoricaltypes by using examples from outstanding writers. Many times these paragraphs need adaptation, but theseshort passages not only make excellent advanced readings but also are a good way to illustrate paragraph andessay organization. One final source, but a source of mixed quality, are the countless composition textbooks foundlargely unused on many of our own bookshelves. If the model paragraphs have been written by the authorsthemselves, use them only with great caution. About half of these are both badly written and extremely bor-ing. If these bore us to tears, they are completely useless in the classroom.The other half, however, includes many useful and interesting paragraphs and model essays, usuallytaken from authentic sources, in which the organization is clear and which are interesting to read.There are many ways of making students aware of paragraph and essay organization, but one way isby using strips stories. For example, with Bertrand Russell's five-paragraph essay 'What I Have Lived For',cut the title off. Then, cut the essay into the five paragraphs. Divide the class into pairs, and hand out all fiveparagraphs to each pair of students. Tell them to find out the correct organization of the paragraphs. For thisessay, it should be relatively easy. Tell the students to be prepared to justify their organization, as knowingwhy one particular answer is right is than more important than the answer itself.Two selections — this time paragraphs, not essays — ready to be organized are given below.Remember that each of these is a single paragraph, with a topic sentence plus supporting sections that occurin a certain order.The titles did not come with the original paragraphs. The titles have been placed at the beginningof each paragraph to let the readers know what to expect in the paragraph, assuming that they pay attentionto the title, something that usually depends on whether they have been taught to or not.Graham Thurgood (English 232) 121The first is a paragraph from Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us . It has been edited quite a bit tomake it more readable for intermediate readers. Notice that even if the reader does not understand everyword, it is still quite possible to find the basic organization. Occasionally, in fact, students have developedthe false belief that it is not possible to read a passage for basic understanding unless they know each andevery word; this paragraph is a good example of one in which the organization is clear without every wordnecessarily being understood.Rachel Carson's paragraph “The Whales” starts with her topic sentence, which summarizes theparagraph and outlines its organization by dividing the world's whales into three groups: the plankton-eat-ers, the fish-eaters, and the squid-eaters. Next, each kind of whale is discussed, beginning with the first kindmentioned in the topic sentence, followed by the second kind mentioned in the topic sentence, and endingwith the last kind mentioned in the topic sentence.The James Thurber paragraph 'Courtship' serves two purposes: it amuses us as it makes fun ofhuman behavior and it illustrates the use of problem-solution organization. Again, this paragraph has beenedited to make it easier to read. The arrangement is a problem-solution organization. The first section states the problem — thecourtship problems faced by the male fiddler crab. The next three sentences discusses a solution that wouldnot work, that is, this section points out that the male fiddler crab cannot solve his “courtship” problem bybehaving like a cave man. The next section discusses the solution that the male fiddler crab has chosen.And, the next to last section, evaluates how successful this solution is. Finally, Thurber concludes by gener-alizing about the courtship problems of all species.This essay is unusual both because of Thurber's writing skill and because of his sense of humor,but the organization is quite typical: state a problem, (optional) discuss consequences, (optional) discusssolutions that do not work well, present the writer's solution, evaluate the solution just presented. This type of presentation is extremely common in television commercials. Take a mouthwash com-mercial, for example. The problem is bad breath, with its consequence: no social life. The solution, ofcourse, is to use Brand X mouthwash.Graham Thurgood (English 232) 122Instructions: Cut the following paper up into six parts: a title plus five