Text structure and features in informational texts: recognizing organizational patterns (cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, chronological or sequential, description), explaining why a writer chose a structure, and using text features (headings, captions, graphics) to locate and understand information on a Grade 10 ELA MCAS informational passage.

What this skill is asking

Text structure is the way an informational text is organized, and text features are the visual and navigational elements (headings, captions, graphics) that present information, and the Grade 10 ELA MCAS asks you to read both. Structure questions ask you to name the organizational pattern (cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, chronological or sequential, description) and, more importantly, to explain why a writer chose it. Feature questions ask you to use headings, subheadings, captions, or a chart to locate or understand information. The skill students lose points on is naming a structure without connecting it to the writer's purpose, or treating features as decoration rather than tools. This page covers the common patterns, why writers choose them, and how to use text features. The transferable skill is seeing organization as a choice that serves meaning, then reading the layout for the help it offers.

The common organizational patterns

The first move is to recognize the pattern from how the parts relate.

To name a structure, ask how the parts of the passage relate to each other. If the text explains why something happens and what follows, it is cause and effect; if it sets two things side by side, it is compare and contrast; if it names a trouble and then fixes, it is problem and solution. Signal words speed this up, but the relationship between the sections is the real evidence. Sequential structures also show up in ordering items, where you arrange steps or events, so reading for order matters from both directions.

Why structure is a choice

This mirrors the literary skill of reading plot order for effect: in both, arrangement is a deliberate craft choice, not an accident. When a question asks how a particular paragraph fits the whole, or how the structure helps the reader, look at the job that section does in the pattern (it introduces the problem, it supplies a contrast, it gives the next step). Tying the part to the pattern, and the pattern to the purpose, is the complete answer, and it transfers straight to organizing your own long composition.

Using text features and reading structure

Try this

Q1. Name three common informational text structures and a signal word for each. [Recall]

• Cue. Cause and effect ("because," "as a result"); compare and contrast ("unlike," "whereas," "both"); problem and solution (an issue followed by ways to address it); chronological or sequential ("first," "then," "finally").

Q2. A writer organizes an article on a flood by first explaining the heavy rains and dam failure, then the damage that followed. What structure is this, and why might the writer have chosen it? [Short explanation]

• Cue. It is cause and effect: the rains and dam failure are causes, the damage the effect. The writer likely chose it to make clear how the disaster came about, helping the reader understand the chain of events that led to the flood.