The Presidential Election is right around the corner and for most Americans, the question is looming around: “Who will be the next President of America?” The author of “The Road to the White House” wrote an article explaining five things you need to know as America prepares to pick its next president. The author’s decisions of the type of text and text structures formed a perfect understanding of his or her points.

In my opinion, this type of text is suitable for expository. I believe this because the article gives facts and information about the election as well as using bold words, pictures, captions, and headings. For example, to be president you have to be at least 35 years old, have lived in the United States for at least 14 years, and that the first of many caucuses was held in Iowa on February 1st. Also on page 5 of the Scholastic News, there are pictures with captions, bold words, and headings. As for the text structures, I think that the author used compare and contrast and description. The author compared and contrasted primaries and caucuses, what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire, Republican candidates and Democratic candidates, and the two political parties. The author described who can and can’t be president, parties that have nothing to do with balloons or cake, what a primary and a caucus is, why Iowa and New Hampshire are so important during February, and that there are a lot of people wanting to become the next president.

I think that the author made the decisions about the text types and the text structures because narrative, technical, persuasive, sequence, problem and solution, and cause and effect do not flow with this article, but expository, compare and contrast, and description do. I also believe this because the author may have wanted to inform the reader about the events that take place during the election and what to expect. The author’s decisions affected my understanding of the text because if it was not expository, I may have thought that the author was taking the piece in a whole different direction, such as persuading me to take a side on an argument or informing me on events that take place during the election. Lastly, if Lauren Tarshis had written this article, I think that she would have written the article differently than Joe Bubar, the author of “The Road to the White House”, which means that she would have probably included different information. I can draw this conclusion because Lauren usually uses the narrative format. In the I Survived series and “Mountain of Fire”, she uses a narrative text type to tell a story in her piece. In “Mountain of Fire”, she even interviewed a family from their point-of-view. If Lauren wrote this article, she may have interviewed a candidate or a voter who feels strongly about whom they are voting for. If she didn’t interview anybody, she most likely would have done LOADS of research because to have a good piece, most writers do research.

In conclusion, I found this article very interesting and intriguing. I learned many, many things about the presidential election that I may never learn in my whole entire life. Who knew there was so much to know about the election?

Lily M.