Sequential Pattern of Organization

You’re probably familiar with at least one or two fairy tales. These children’s stories, along with many others, are written in an organized fashion. They are told in a simplistic way from beginning to end, and they serve as an example for structuring a text using a sequence of events. A sequence of events is when events are listed in the order that they occurred. They go in time order from the beginning to the middle to the end without jumping around in time.

There’s another sequential structure that we’re going to discuss. This is a sequence of steps, which we all use when cooking dinner or baking cookies. A sequence of steps is when a process is written in the order that tasks were done. Recipes and scientific procedures are written using this organizational structure.

When a sequence of events is used, it creates a chronological pattern of organization, meaning it follows the progression of time, either forward or backward. Historical topics are best organized using this pattern because readers are able to understand a series of related events, when they happened, and what happened before and after them. More complex informational texts often use literary devices, such as flashbacks, to hint at a change in time order by going back in time and then returning to the present time period being discussed. But a more simplistic organizational pattern involving a sequence of events divides events into past, present, and future or before, during, and after segments.

Signal words are used to signal to the reader that the sequence of events or steps structure is being used. They include words such as:

• Before
• First
• Second
• Third
• Next
• Then
• Later
• Eventually
• Finally

By embedding signal words into the article, readers are able to identify the organizational structure used, and that format helps them understand the process and remember its key parts in a clear and concise manner.

Example of Sequential Structure

In a 2007 Businessweek article entitled ‘From Homeless to Millionaire,’ the millionaire Chris Gardner is interviewed. Before launching into Gardner’s responses, writer Carmine Gallo talks about Gardner’s success and how his personal story inspired the movie The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith. She then includes a paragraph written in the sequence of events structure. As I read it, see if you can identify the signal words used to determine the sequence of events.

While attending an unpaid internship program at Dean Witter Reynolds in 1981, Gardner spent a year on the streets with his two-year-old son. They took refuge at night in a church shelter or the bathroom of a BART subway station in Oakland, California. Nobody at work knew. Gardner eventually won a position as a stockbroker at Dean Witter. Two years later, he left for Bear Stearns (BSC), where he became a top earner. In 1987, he founded his own brokerage firm, Gardner Rich, in Chicago. Today, Gardner is a multimillionaire, a motivational speaker, a philanthropist, and an international businessman who is about to launch a private equity fund that will invest solely in South Africa. His partner in the fund? Nelson Mandela. Not bad for a guy who, six years before founding his own brokerage firm, was ‘fighting, scratching, and crawling my way out of the gutter with a baby on my back.‘

Gallo uses the years 1981 and 1987 to clearly mark time. She also states that Gardner ‘spent a year on the streets with his two-year-old-son’ to show time. She uses signal words like ‘eventually,’ and ‘later,’ and ‘before,’ and marks the present using ‘today’ and points to the near future using ‘is about to launch.’ Without this well-organized introduction, the reader would not have a clear idea about Chris Gardner’s triumphant past, and if it weren’t so carefully laid out in sequential order, the reader would be confused or might not fully understand how far Gardner has come.

Lesson Summary

A sequence of events is when events are listed in the order that they occurred. A sequence of steps is when a process is written in the order that tasks were done. When a sequential pattern of organization is used, the information is arranged according to a step-by-step sequence that describes a specific process. When a sequence of events is used, it creates a chronological pattern of organization.

Signal words are used to signal to the reader that the sequence of events or steps structure is being used. They include words such as:

• Before
• First
• Second
• Third
• Next
• Then
• Later
• Eventually
• Finally