Patterns (Modes) of Development
Andy Gurevich
Modes (Patterns) of Essay Development
Many college essays follow a primary pattern of development for laying out their ideas and expressing their main thesis. Others are organized according to genre. A pattern of development is the way the essay is organized, from one paragraph to the next, in order to present its thesis and the relevant, authoritative support for it.
One of the many choices you have to make in the writing process is how to arrange your material. All writers begin with an idea and then work to translate their thoughts about a subject into a clear and easily read essay. This is made relatively easy when your assignment specifies a particular pattern of development.
Probing your subject by asking a series of questions can often help you to order your ideas by suggesting an effective arrangement for your essay. The initial “answers” you discover to these probing questions will lend themselves to an organizational structure based on causation or comparison or definition, etc. This tendency will reveal your likely pattern of development.
Even if your assignment does not specify a particular pattern of development, asking the questions below can still help you to develop an effective arrangement for your essay.
Your readers will be experiencing your essay in time. That is, they will read it starting in paragraph one and then two, then three, four, five, six… This may seem obvious, but you will need to consider how the reader will experience the essay in time and in relation to your thesis statement.
Thus, we will need to organize the essay into a coherent pattern which allows the reader to easily follow our logic through the essay and fully relate it back to our central theme(s). Some essays use a combination of patterns to communicate their ideas, but usually a primary pattern is established to present the overall structure and logical flow of the essay.
Common patterns of development include:
- Narration & Description
- Exemplification
- Cause & Effect
- Comparison & Contrast
- Definition
- Argumentation
- Process Analysis
- There are several more variations of patterns of development (see below) but these are the most common.
BEST: Patterns of development work best when they are used consistently and in conjunction with the structure and theme of the primary thesis statement.
- Consult this link from the Purdue OWL site to a more developed discussion on the more popular modes of essay writing .
- Consult this handout from Hunter College New York on the basic understanding and uses of the primary patterns of development.
- Consult this handout on the patterns of development discussed as the modes of essay writing.
- Consult this link from Lumen Learning on the Rhetorical Modes that helps to visualize and summarize the primary patterns of rhetorical writing.
- Consult this link from Lincoln University on Rhetorical Patterns. With relevant exercises and questions.
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