Building a Text, Like Building a House
In my language courses, learners must write a variety of professional texts. While the end product differs, the process and elements of the writing stay the same. Learners tend to have the most trouble with clear, concise writing. In particular, they include superfluous information that weakens their ideas and arguments. I searched the Internet for an analogy that might help them and stumbled upon Metaphor for My Writing Process, which inspired me to develop it further to fit my learners’ needs.
While the blueprints of a house are still comparable to the research and brainstorming process of a writing task, what my learners needed was more support with the parts of a paragraph and how to put everything together into a cohesive text. Therefore, to expand on the analogy, during the construction of a house, thought needs to be put into the floorplan in order to determine which rooms are required (paragraphs) and what is absolutely necessary in each room (the paragraphs’ arguments and supporting details) versus what would be nice, but unnecessary to include. The attached visual is a very simple way to demonstrate the analogy.
TweetExample for "Building a Text, Like Building a House":
https://bank.ecampusontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/floorplan-paragraphs.png
