Academic Paragraphs
When you organise information in an academic paragraph, your choice of what should be Theme and New in a sentence is partly influenced by the purpose, topic and focus of the whole paragraph. It is also influenced by the requirement of putting 'given' information in the initial position Theme, and 'news' in the final position New.
There are a number of ways of progressing from information in one sentence to the next in a paragraph. The two most typical patterns of Information Structure are shown below. Others will be shown later.
| Pattern 1 THEME to THEME Given information from previous Theme. |
Pattern 2 NEW to THEME Given information from previous New. |
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