AP English Language · Lesson 2

Organization

Know Know it

Organization is a choice. The order of ideas tells readers what matters and how the ideas connect. Common patterns include chronological order (events in time), problem and solution, cause and effect, compare and contrast, and order of importance.

Each pattern suits a purpose. A history of a building runs in time order. An op-ed calling for change often opens with the problem, then proposes the fix. An argument with several reasons often saves the strongest for last, where it stays with the reader, or leads with it to grab attention.

Inside a paragraph, a topic sentence usually states the main point and ties it to the thesis. The sentences after it support that point. A sentence that breaks the pattern, such as a jump in time or a detail on a different subject, is usually out of place or off topic.

When a question asks where a sentence belongs, look for words that point backward (“this change,” “those scraps,” “after that”) and forward (a new term the next sentence explains). Those words lock sentences in place.

Trap Interesting is not the same as relevant

A sentence can be true and interesting and still not belong. If a question asks whether to keep a sentence, test it against the paragraph’s main point, not against whether it is a good fact.

Worked example Easy

Original passage written for Peakscor practice. The outline of a newspaper column:

Paragraph 1: The city’s only public pool has been closed for two summers because its pump is broken.

Paragraph 2: Children who used the pool now have nowhere nearby to swim, and two drowned in the river last July.

Paragraph 3: The city should use part of its parks fund to replace the pump before next June.

Which pattern of organization does the column follow?

  1. Chronological order
  2. Compare and contrast
  3. Definition and example
  4. Problem and solutionAnswer

How to solve it

  1. Name what each paragraph does: a problem, its effects, a proposed fix.
  2. That sequence is problem and solution.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Incorrect. Chronological order would tell events in time sequence, but the outline moves from problem to proposal.
  • B. Incorrect. Compare and contrast would set two things side by side, and the outline discusses one pool.
  • C. Incorrect. Definition and example would explain what a term means, but no term is being defined.
  • D. Correct. The column describes a problem and its effects, then proposes a fix in the last paragraph.

Worked example Medium

Original passage written for Peakscor practice. A student’s draft paragraph about the history of a city’s first public library, with its sentences numbered:

(1) In 1903, the library opened in two rented rooms above a hardware store. (2) Today the library has nine branches and lends more than a million items a year. (3) By 1915, so many people were borrowing books that the city built a separate library building on Lantern Street. (4) In 1962 the library moved its main collection to a larger building downtown, and the Lantern Street building became a branch.

To make the paragraph follow chronological order, where should sentence 2 be placed?

  1. Before sentence 1
  2. After sentence 3
  3. After sentence 4Answer
  4. Where it is now

How to solve it

  1. Put the time markers in order: 1903, 1915, 1962, then today.
  2. The “today” sentence comes after the 1962 move in sentence 4, so it goes last.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Incorrect. Putting a sentence about today before the 1903 opening would start the history at its end.
  • B. Incorrect. Placing it after sentence 3 would put today before the 1962 move described in sentence 4.
  • C. Correct. Sentence 2 describes the library “today,” so it belongs at the end, after the events of 1903, 1915 and 1962.
  • D. Incorrect. Where it is now, the paragraph jumps from 1903 to today and back to 1915, which breaks the time order.

Explain Explain it

Task verbs: explain, evaluate

To explain an organizational choice, name the pattern and connect it to the purpose: “By describing the empty storefronts on Main Street before proposing a weekend market, the writer makes the council see the cost of doing nothing, so the market reads as a fix rather than a luxury.”

Explain Your turn

A student’s report on how her town recovered from a 1974 flood has four body paragraphs, in this order: the night the river rose, the cleanup that summer, the rebuilding of Main Street, and the levee finished in 1981. Identify the pattern of organization she uses, and explain one reason it suits this report.

Write it, then compare. Nothing you type here is saved or graded.

Compare with a model answer

A full answer does this

  • Identifies the pattern as chronological (time) order
  • Explains a reason time order suits this report

Model answer

She uses chronological order, moving from the flood in 1974 to the levee in 1981. That suits a report on recovery, because readers follow the town step by step from the disaster to the finished levee, and each stage, like the cleanup, makes sense as the step that came before the rebuilding.

Apply Apply it

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