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Organisation of
Paragraphs
In Saudi Arabia, parents have separate responsibilities for raising
their children. As with many other cultures the father tends to
be the
breadwinner and so spends his days at work. The mother therefore
spends most time with the children and especially with regard to
education
she is the one who talks to teachers on a regular basis and helps her
children
with their homework. However, mainly because of access to the
family
car, the father is responsible for taking the children to school each
day.
He is also the one who attends formal parent teacher meetings despite
the
fact that his wife tends to follow his children’s education more
closely.
The mother is completely responsible for feeding the children. Her
husband
may accompany her on major shopping trips at weekends - driving the car
when
a lot of goods are purchased. However, generally the mother does
most of the shopping and this applies particularly to clothing for the
children. In the evenings and at weekends the father tends to
take his son(s) swimming, playing football or driving in the car.
Daughters tend to stay at home with their mothers learning how to cook,
sew and clean. If there are younger
children in the family, older daughters will also be taught to look
after
them. This of course is the sole responsibility of the mother. So
it is quite clear that as a parent in Saudi Arabia, one is expected to
perform
certain functions. However there are certain tasks that can be
done
by either the mother or the father depending on what is most convenient
for
the family.
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Your paragraph should advance the point in an appropriate way.
Your information should be arranged in a particular way. In our
example we could have discussed fathers’ responsibilities and
then moved on to discuss mothers’ responsibilities. However, you
will note that mothers’ and fathers’ responsibilities are discussed
together. Nonetheless there is a clear organisation of ideas.
What is it?
Some of the following
ideas about organising your paragraphs can also be applied to
organising
your essay as a whole.
1 Chronologically
or Reverse-Chronologically
In our example we
could look at the life cycle of the child beginning when he was just
born discussing the role of the father and the mother at each stage of
his/her development right up to adulthood.
We could start with ‘adult’ Saudi’s and claim that even as adults their
parents still have responsibilities towards them. We could then
trace
back to childhood the origins of these reponsibilities.
2 In spatial
relation
We could organise our
ideas by first discussing responsibilities in the home, then
responsibilities
at school, then responsibilities at the mosque, in the street etc.
3 From General to
Specific (inductive)
We could begin by
discussing the fact that the father works and the mother stays home and
therefore the mother has more direct responsibilities. This is a
general statement. ‘Mothers tend to be responsible for the day to day
physical needs of her children’
is still a general statement but less general than the previous one. We
could
then start discussing specifics like changing nappies, feeding,
washing,
clothing etc. These are specific.
4 From Specific
to General (deductive)
We could begin by
listing all the things that a mother does for her children in an
average day eg. a
mother wakes her children, washes them, puts their clothes on, feeds
them, makes them lunch, gives them drinks, plays with them, teaches
them to read etc. We could then make a similar list of what the
father does. Our paragraph could then end with a few general
comments such as ‘it is clear that a Saudi mother spends more time with
her children and does a lot more of the day to day chores for
them. However, although the father may not appear to do much, he
is the one that does all the big and important things
with his children.
5 From Least
Important to Most Important
Not from most to
least! Why?
In our example it may be difficult to say what is most important and
what is least. But if we consider basic needs we can perhaps
order our ideas as follows:
a) food
b) clothing c) love
d) education
e) play
6 Through
Division and
Classification
This is in effect
what has been done in the example above. We have
divided/classified the responsibilities
of fathers and mothers according to whether they are to do with the
childs
i) education ii) physical well-being (food/clothing) or iii)
amusement.
7 By Cause and
Effect
There are particular
reasons why mothers and fathers have particular responsibilities and we
could use these reasons to organise our ideas.
eg. In Saudi Arabia a woman is not allowed to drive a car and therefore
the following responsibilities become the father’s i) taking the
children
to school ii) teaching his sons how to drive iii) doing the
shopping
iv) taking the children to the mosque for prayer etc.
In Saudi Arabia a woman is not allowed to be in the company of a man
who is not a relative and therefore the following responsibilities
become the father’s: i) arranging the child’s education ii) Meeting
teachers iii) taking children to see the doctor etc.
8 By Problem and
Solution
In our particular
example this is similar to cause and effect above. The problem is
that women are not allowed to drive and the solution is that the father
does the driving, takes his children to school etc.
9 Through
Comparison or Analogy
Our topic sentence
may need to be changed to make this approach relevant. We could
compare child rearing in Saudi with child rearing in Turkey and use
this comparison to arrange our ideas. Just as in Turkey, Saudi
fathers tend to spend their days at work and only see their children in
the evenings and at weekends. Also similar to Turkey, Saudi
fathers... etc. However there is a major difference between
fathers’ responsibilities in Turkey and Saudi with regard to...
10 Through
Contrast
In this example you
could contrast the fathers’ role with that of the mother. Eg.
Whereas
a mother spends all day with her child and therefore knows them well, a
Saudi
father spends very little time with his children and therefore doesn’t
know
them very well. A mother helps her child with his/her homework
every
night and therefore has a realistic assessment of how intelligent her
child
is. However, the father has so little time to spend with his
children
that he spends it doing more pleasant things like playing and so he
doesn’t
really know how intelligent his child is.
11 By Process
You could describe a
typical day in the life of a Saudi father and a Saudi mother.
Because
of the hot climate, the mother gets up at 5am washes herself, gets
dressed, cooks
breakfast and then wakes her children up at 6am. At this time the
father
is still asleep in bed. All on her own the mother washes and
dresses
the children. At this point she calls her husband. The mother and
children
then sit down to breakfast...
12 Through
Definition
In our example we
are basically talking about rearing children. If you have a good
dictionary
and look up the word ‘rear’, or after some reflection if you make a
list
of the things that rearing a child involves, this list can be used to
organise
your ideas. In another context where you are for example writing
about
‘democracy’ you could look up your dictionary to find the following
definition
‘government by the whole population usually through representatives’. (
The Pocket Oxford Dictionary, 1996) This definition offers
you
a structure for your discussion - first discuss what we mean by
‘government’,
then discuss the population of a country and the types of people that
make
it up and finally discuss the concept of representatives.
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