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Text Structure and Purpose: SAT Reading and Writing notes
Text Structure and Purpose questions ask why a text was written, how it is organized, or what job one underlined sentence or phrase does within it.
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What this topic tests
These questions are about the author's choices rather than the facts. Instead of asking what the text says, they ask what the text, or one part of it, is doing: reporting a study, challenging a belief, giving an example, setting up a contrast, or showing how a character feels.
They come in three forms. Main purpose asks for the point of the whole text. Overall structure asks you to describe the order of its moves, such as “a common view, then a finding that challenges it.” Function asks what one underlined sentence or phrase does for the text around it. The passages are a mix of science, history and arts paragraphs, plus excerpts from novels, poems and memoirs.
The winning habit is to describe the text in your own words first, using action verbs: it introduces, explains, challenges, gives an example. Then compare your description with the choices. Wrong answers usually get one part right and one part wrong, so check every part of a choice against the text before you pick it.
Key ideas
- Read for what each sentence does, not only for what it says. Give each one a quick label in your head: claim, example, evidence, contrast, result.
- Words like however, but, yet, in fact and thus usually mark the turn or the conclusion that the whole text is built around.
- In science and history texts, the point usually arrives near the end, where the study's finding or the author's own view appears.
- In literary texts, the purpose is usually to show a character's feelings or the mood of a scene. Look at the details and images the author piles up.
- A correct choice must be right in every part. One wrong verb (argues instead of describes) or one detail the text never mentions is enough to rule it out.
- Be suspicious of choices that are stronger or broader than the text, such as “all,” “proves” or “argues that we should,” when the text only reports something.
The 3 kinds of Text Structure and Purpose question
Sorted from every Text Structure and Purpose question in the site's bank: each kind keeps coming up, and has a method that works every time.
1. Main purpose
How to spot it. The question asks, “Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?” The choices usually start with “To” plus a verb, such as to describe, to argue, to explain or to emphasize.
How to answer it:
- Read the whole text and ask why the author wrote it. Pay extra attention to the last sentence and to any “however” or “thus.”
- Say the purpose in one short sentence that starts with a verb, such as “to report a study that found X” or “to show how the narrator feels about Y.”
- Check each choice's verb against the text. Does the text really argue, or does it just describe? Then check the rest of the choice.
- Pick the choice that covers the whole text, not just one detail, and that contains nothing false.
The trap. Choosing an answer that is true of one sentence but not of the whole text, or one with the right topic but the wrong verb. A text that reports a study is not “arguing that” something should change, and a text that uses one study as an example is not “critiquing previous studies.”
2. Overall structure
How to spot it. The question asks, “Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?” Each choice describes a sequence of moves joined by “then,” such as “It describes a common view, then discusses a finding that challenges it.”
How to answer it:
- Split the text into its two or three main parts. The breaks usually come at a new sentence or at a turning word like however or but.
- Give each part a short job label: question, answer, claim, example, finding, explanation, exception.
- Read each choice part by part, in order, and compare it with your labels. Cross a choice out as soon as one part doesn't match.
- Pick the choice whose every part matches, in the same order as the text.
The trap. Choices that get the first part right and then drift off, adding a debate, a comparison of methods or a recommendation that the text never makes. Others describe the right moves in the wrong order, or say an exception “casts doubt” on an explanation when the text actually explains both with the same idea.
3. Function of an underlined part
How to spot it. Part of the text is underlined, and the question asks what it does “in the text as a whole.” It may be a single phrase, a full sentence, or a few separate pieces that work together.
How to answer it:
- Read the whole text first, then reread the underlined part.
- Look at what comes right before it and right after it. Ask what the text would lose if this part were deleted.
- Describe its job in your own words, such as “gives an example of the previous sentence,” “states the belief that the study then challenges,” or “shows that the character feels at home.”
- Match your description to a choice, making sure the choice names the right connection to the rest of the text and not just the right topic.
The trap. Picking a choice that correctly restates what the underlined part says but gets its job wrong. For example, a choice might describe an underlined belief accurately but call it “the assumption behind the study's hypothesis” when the study actually challenges it. Always check how the part connects to its neighbors.
Practise Text Structure and Purpose
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