Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: NARRATIVE AND STRUCTURE 147

13. The most likely explanation of students' failures to reference is that
    they do not think of themselves as writers.


14. We do not want students to fail to reference.

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Y

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Y

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Overall narrative flow of the text

There are ten paragraphs in the text. Here is what each of them does, as part of a
narrative flow that expresses the underlying logical structure:
1 Sets the scene by providing background information and grabbing the
reader's attention by establishing that there is a problem that needs to be
considered.
2 This paragraph provides crucial signalling information about the whole piece.
It identifies that there is something interesting about the solution proposed
by it to the problem (always useful to know when one is looking for new and
different ideas), and signals that the paper has a two-part structure.
3 A further set of signals about the organisation of the paper. It identifies that
there will be three reasons, and each will be examined in detail.
4,5,6 Each of these paragraphs covers one of the three reasons signalled in
paragraph 3. This structure shows how paragraphing can help, indirectly, to
sustain the argument ... reflecting the intellectual decisions about what and
how many reasons in the words on the page.
7 Sums up these reasons in an accessible way. It is not a conclusion. It
summarises. Paragraphs like this are useful to help readers grasp what has been
communicated since reading something twice helps to embed it in their
minds.