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What Is Informational Text?

Informational text is nonfiction writing intended to inform readers about a specific topic. It uses special text features like headers, bold vocabulary words, and visual representations to help readers easily find key information and understand the main topic. There are five main structures for informational text: description, sequence/instruction/process, cause/effect, compare/contrast, and problem/solution. Students must be able to identify these structures to fully analyze informational texts from various sources like textbooks, news articles, and nonfiction books.

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Joselito Fausto Villanueva
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1K views3 pages

What Is Informational Text?

Informational text is nonfiction writing intended to inform readers about a specific topic. It uses special text features like headers, bold vocabulary words, and visual representations to help readers easily find key information and understand the main topic. There are five main structures for informational text: description, sequence/instruction/process, cause/effect, compare/contrast, and problem/solution. Students must be able to identify these structures to fully analyze informational texts from various sources like textbooks, news articles, and nonfiction books.

Uploaded by

Joselito Fausto Villanueva
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is Informational Text?

Informational text is nonfiction writing, written with the intention of informing the reader about
a specific topic. It is typically found in magazines, science or history books, autobiographies and
instruction manuals. They are written using special text features that allow the reader to easily
find key information and understand the main topic. The author will do this by providing
headers over certain sections, by placing important vocabulary in bold type, and by using visual
representations with captions. These visual representations can be pictures or even
infographics that include tables, diagrams, graphs and charts. In some cases the author will even
provide the reader with a table of contents or a glossary to assist them in finding the information
easily.

 
5 Types of Informational Text Structures

The vast majority of texts are written for one or more of these three purposes:

 To make an argument
 To inform
 To tell a story

To achieve these purposes, authors use one or more of the following 5 text structures:

 Description
 Sequence/Instruction/Process
 Cause/Effect
 Compare/Contrast
 Problem/Solution

Students must be able to unpack these 5 text structures and study their components in order to
fully understand and analyze informational texts, whether they're reading textbooks, news
articles, or works of literary nonfiction.

1. Description

This is pretty straightforward. Texts that use this structure simply describe something. With few
exceptions, these texts also present plenty of details about what they're describing.

A text using this structure might also:

 Tell you why something is being described


 Tell you why the described topic is important
 Provide examples of the described topic(s)
Descriptive texts are everywhere—in novels, works of literary nonfiction, news articles, science
textbooks—which makes sense because the entire point of description is to present information.

2. Sequence/Instruction/Process

This text structure covers a few purposes:

 Sequential instructions (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3; do this, then do that, and finally do this)
 Chronological events (This happened, then this happened, then this happened, etc.)
 Arguments that use evidence to support a claim (presenting evidence from least to most
convincing)

When students read or write a text with this structure, order is key. Texts that use this format
usually don't present any event or instruction out of order, as doing so would make its directions
more difficult to follow.

As a ludicrous example, imagine a cake recipe in which preheating the oven is the last step. It
would just be confusing and odd. Poorly written instructions just aren't worth your time.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of words and phrases that indicate a text follows the
sequence/instruction/process text structure:

after before during earlier


eventually finally first from
how to in order last meanwhile
next now until while

3. Cause/Effect

Cause/Effect text structures explain, well, causes and effects. Sounds pretty simple! But works
that use this structure can become complex when an effect has multiple causes (or vice versa).

Students will encounter complex examples of cause-effect when they read historical texts. Many
events in history had more than one cause, all related in ways that can be difficult to unpack.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of words and phrases that indicate a text follows the cause/effect
text structure:

because cause led to reason


accordingly effect result consequence
4. Compare/Contrast

This text structure involves a comparison involving multiple things, revealing how they are
similar and how they are different.

Make sure your students know that contrasting two or more things doesn't necessarily mean
identifying them as either good or bad. Comparisons simply relay the differences; therefore, one
thing could have both positive and negative traits.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of words and phrases that indicate a text follows the
compare/contrast text structure:

alike also both comparable


even in common just as similar
although but despite difference
however instead otherwise unlike

5. Problem/Solution

This text structure involves two parts:

 The author identifies a problem


 The author details a solution to this problem

Problem/Solution can be a very complex text structure, as it necessitates the use of other
structures, too. Clearly, the author needs to describe the problem. The author would likely also
explain the causes and effects of the problem in order to argue in favor of their solution. Does
implementing the author's solution involve following a series of specific steps? That involves
another structure. What if the author wants to mention other potential solutions and then explain
why their solution is the best one? Oh, hello there, Compare/Contrast!

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