Forms of Arrangement

Before I can deliberate about forms and techniques of arrangement, and to explain why I attempted to craft “some kind of scheme of superior arrangement” to convey my message, I must point out a quote from Podis: “…not only is an effective arrangement achieved through an understanding of purpose, but so too may purpose itself be better understood through a refinement of arrangement.” I tried to refine the arrangement of Podis’ text to “underscore the main idea”. Podis suggests organization as a coherent and teachable sequence, of some practical principles like chronological, spatial, and logical progressions and patterns, which fluent writers use in arranging their material.

When helping students at the Writing Center, I’ve identified many students demonstrating the same problems with their writing, especially Podis’ second principle of arrangement. They often can’t connect the same ideas or comments about a determined issue in a concise way. As a result, when proofreading, the information is chopped and students become frustrated because they think they can’t convey their point across. I found out that the biggest challenge students face is to find a thesis statement. According to Podis, the first practical principle is function and organization, requiring a consciously crafted scheme of superior arrangements, which the writer must first discover what best highlights the point or thesis of the paper. The second principle is concerned with the idea of grouping items, and the third principle concentrates more on the interrelationship of items or groups of items, establishing a progression of the thesis, if the writer can discover one.

On the other hand, Lindemann suggests arrangement in a shape of discourse through the examination of organizational schemes implicit in heuristics, adopting conventional forms, making and fulfilling promises to readers, block plans, and D'Angelo's paradigms to illustrate that the process of shaping discourse begins with prewriting and continues through rewriting.

Lindemann states that the arrangement of material in prescribed ways, according to  patterns sanctioned by convention and tradition. In these contexts, effective communication depends partly on writing-by-formula; and prescribed patterns of organization, then, serve a useful purpose, especially when time or tradition limits the choices writers have in shaping their work. Though, she focuses primarily on organizing a kind of writing that allows students more time to discover their purpose and message and that permits several options for arranging the material. Including most self-expressive writing and responses to assignments in many composition, creative writing, and journalism classes, the kind of writing students and professionals do whenever the audience considers as organizational patterns acceptable.

But as Lindemann points out, “although we rarely pay attention to how the world around us is organized, form is everywhere” and “students who cling to a model usually do not know they have choices about form, what those choices are, or how to choose wisely”.  To add to her point, Podis states that “there is, no single correct, predetermined organizational scheme for any given essay, but rather a superior or inferior alternative of arrangements, because what works for one paper will not necessarily work well for another. Arrangement is integrally related to the thesis or purpose of an essay and to be more efficient, is necessary to apply the principle of grouping likes with likes.”

By rearranging the message from the text, I used my own technique to help me organize the information, or translate, to a sequence that makes sense for me. Different writers have their own ways to convey a message, find out what they want say, or where they stand on a determined issue. But until writers becomes more experienced, rearranging a message or grouping it by connecting ideas in a concisely way, is challenge that many will face.