ABSTRACT
So far we have looked at relationships between individual words and sentences in texts. Many texts are also organised into larger patterns which, as writers or readers, we may not be consciously aware of, but which we none the less use to help us find our way round the information in a text. One such pattern is BACKGROUND – PROBLEM – SOLUTION – EVALUATION (BPSE). The four parts of this pattern can be seen as answers to four questions, listed here along with some of the more detailed questions they subsume:
1 What is the BACKGROUND? (What time, place, people, etc. are going to be involved in this text? What do we need to know to understand the next part, the ‘problem’?)
2 What is the PROBLEM that arises out of this situation? (What is this text principally about? What need, dilemma, puzzle, obstacle or lack does this text address?)
3 What is the SOLUTION to the problem? (How are or were the need met, the dilemma resolved, the puzzle solved, the obstacle overcome, or the lack remedied?)
4 How should this solution be EVALUATED? (How good is it at solving the problem? If there is more than one solution, which is best?)
The text given here shows the BPSE structure quite clearly (the paragraphs are numbered for convenience):
(320) <1> It’s a quiet life for Danny these days. He’s in regular work and spends most of his sparetime with his new baby.
