Now its you turn to draw the outline for this text.

Remember you should provide an organic, visual picture. Indicate hierarchies and interconnections of concepts. Include concepts present in your main idea, other important concepts, subideas and supporting material. Possible steps to consider: -Scan the text again. -Re-read your main idea. -List the most important concepts from the whole text. Make sure you discriminate and state to whom they belong. -Circle or underline the most important ones. -Square (hacer un cuadrado) two or three secondary concepts. -Think how these concepts are connected in the text. -Show these connections with arrows or other icons. Give the arrows a name if you consider their meaning is not clear. -Construct a visual picture (outline) of this network. -The connection between the different concepts should show a hierarchical organization. This means important concepts must stand out. If you still have doubts as regards the design of your outline, ask for help to a tutor. Its always better to clarify your doubts outline by outline rather than redo all the outlines in the module.

In order to draw your outline, you can use this same Microsoft Word. To begin with, you can select the icons at the bottom or on top of your version of Word (text box, arrows, lines, etc) When you choose the text box, you can write inside the concepts and then join them with lines or arrows. Indicate the relationship with = or # and different colours. There are also Block Arrows or other signs in Auto shapes to indicate strong relations or important concepts. Dont forget to close the outline with the authors conclusion.

The texts you read have different types of organization. The author chooses one of them according to his needs. In long texts you may find different types of text structures in different parts of the article or chapter. The following are some examples of graphic organizers designed to match specific recurring text structures.

1. If the author wants to describe a process, a sequence of events or a cause and effect relationship, he may use the following:

Step or event 1

Step or event 2

Step or event 3

Step or event 4

2. If the writer wants to describe an object or concept, he will probably resort to:

Object / concept

Characteristic 1

Characteristic 2

Characteristic 3

3. If the author wants to classify entities, he may choose this organization: Category

Subcategory 1

Subcategory 2

Subcategory 3

Attribute 1 Attribute 2 Attribute 1 Attribute 2 Attribute 2 Attribute 1 Attribute 3

4. If the author wants to present a problem with different solutions, he may adopt this one:

Problem

Solution 1

Solution 2

Solution 3

5. If the author wants to present an argument, claim or thesis statement , he will probably choose the following organization:

Argument / Claim / Thesis statement

Evidence/ argument 1

Evidence/ Argument 2

Evidence / Argument 3

Conclusion

6. If there are different points of view on the same problem or topic, the graphic becomes more complex as you can see in the figure below:

Central problem /topic/ concept

Point of view 1 #

Point of view 2

Conclusion

Thinking aloud: a) Were the steps to help you draw the outline effective? Why? Why not?

b) Would you add any other step to the list? Why? Why not?