100 TOEFL EXAM ESSENTIALS
RECOGNIZING STRUCTURAL PATTERNS
Just as an architect needs a blueprint when designing a building, writers must have a plan that organizes their information and ideas.
Learning organizational strategies will help you identify common patterns so that you can guess at what is coming ahead.
Recognizing structural techniques also helps you answer two types of questions on the TOEFL exam: supporting-detail ques-
tions you will be able to locate specific information in a passage and sentence-insertion questions you will know where best to
place new information in a passage.
The four most common organizational patterns that writers use are:
1. chronological order time 2. order of importance
3. comparison and contrast 4. cause and effect
Chronological order describes events in the order that they
happened, will happen, or should happen. History texts, mem- oir, personal essays, and instructions often use this organization.
Writers often provide clues in the form of transitional words or phrases to guide readers through events. Here are some common
chronological transitions:
first, second, third before
after Next
now then
when as soon as
Immediately suddenly
soon during while
Meanwhile later
Finally in the meantime
at last eventually
afterward
READING 101
Order of importance arranges ideas by rank instead of time.
Writers may organize their ideas:
■
by increasing importance least important idea→most important idea, or
■
by decreasing importance most important idea→least important idea
Newspaper articles follow the principle of decreasing impor- tance; they give the most important information first the who,
what, when, where, and why about an event. Arguments may fol- low the principle of increasing importance, saving the most per-
suasive points for the end. Transitions offer clues about this type of organizational pattern, too. The following are common tran-
sitions used to indicate order of importance:
first and foremost most important
more important moreover
above all first, second, third
last but not least finally
Comparison and contrast arranges two things side by side
to show their similarities and differences. In this way, a writer can analyze two items by seeing how they measure up to one another.
For example, this description of the two movie versions of King Kong uses comparison and contrast:
Both versions of the monster movie used the most sophisticated effects of their day comparison. However, the stop-motion
animation of the 1933 film retains its magic, whereas the
102 TOEFL EXAM ESSENTIALS
state-of-the-art special effects of 1976 seem hopelessly out of date today contrast.
Here are common transitions that signal that a writer is orga- nizing her ideas through comparison and contrast.
Words Showing Similarity
similarly in the same way
likewise like
in a like manner just as
and also
both
Words Showing Difference
but on the other hand
yet however
on the contrary in contrast
conversely while
unlike
Cause and effect arranges ideas so that readers can see why
something took place cause and what changes happened as a result effect. For example, a historian may write about the causes
of the stock market crash of 1929 in the United States investors borrowing money on easy credit to buy stock and the effects of
the crash lost fortunes, business and bank closings, unemploy- ment. The following are key words that give clues about when
a writer is describing cause and effect.
Words Indicating Cause
because of created by
since caused by
