Digital SAT Text Structure & Purpose

​On the Reading and Writing section of your SAT, some questions will present a short text for you to read. The question will then ask you to identify the main purpose or overall structure of the text.
Text structure and purpose questions are all about seeing past the surface of a passage. Instead of just what a text says, these questions dig into why and how the text says it.

​​Text Structure & Purpose

​The following text is from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1910 poem “The Earth’s Entail”.
No matter how we cultivate the land,
Taming the forest and the prairie free;
No matter how we irrigate the sand,
Making the desert blossom at command,
We must always leave the borders of the sea;
The immeasureable reaches
Of the windy wave-wet beaches,
The million-mile-long margin of the sea.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

​
Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?


A. The speaker provides examples of an admirable way of approaching nature and then challenges that approach.

B. The speaker describes attempts to control nature and then offers a reminder that not all nature is controllable.

C. The speaker argues against interfering with nature and then gives evidence supporting this interference.

D. The speaker presents an account of efforts to dominate nature and then cautions that such efforts are only temporary.

Purpose

Purpose is the why behind the passage. Why did the author write it? What did they want to accomplish? What’s the point?

A text's purpose can often be framed using active verbs that demonstrate the goals of the author. Some examples include

• to explain ______

• to illustrate ______

• to criticize ______

• to argue ______

• to introduce ______

The author wants you to have a particular experience when you read their writing. Maybe they want to help you understand a new concept, or maybe they want to convince you of something. What were your takeaways from reading the text? Chances are, those takeaways are closely related to the text's purpose.

​Structure

Structure is how a passage works to achieve its purpose. How does the text flow from one idea to the next? Where does the author place particular emphasis?

A text's structure can often be described as a sort of motion, following the focus as it shifts from one place to another.

Separating a text's structure from its content can be difficult, but it often helps to consider how the ideas within the text relate to one another. Do they disagree? Does one idea cause or build upon another? These relationships create a shape for the text which serves to support the goals of the author.

​How to approach text structure and purpose questions

Step 1: Identify the task The first thing you should do is glance at the question to see if it asks about "overall structure" or "main purpose". While structure and purpose are closely linked, you may find it helpful to read the passage while focusing on just the one the question asks about.
Step 2: Summarize the text

Read the passage closely and summarize the ideas you encounter. Try to boil the whole text down to one or two simple points. You already know whether the question asks about structure or purpose, so keep that in focus as you form your summary.

Rephrasing things in your own words will give you a strong understanding of what the passage is about, and this is the first step to understanding the why and how of the text.

​​How to approach text structure and purpose questions

Step 3: Test the choices

Compare your summary to each of the choices. While a summary isn't exactly the same as a structure or purpose, you should find a significant resemblance. A text's purpose will include reference to the main ideas in the passage. A text's structure will often be made obvious by a straightforward summary. One of the choices should jump out as the most clearly linked to your summary. You can select this choice with confidence!

​ Top tips

Stay specific: Don't stray beyond the focus of the text. Eliminate choices that describe a purpose or structure that introduces information not directly addressed in the passage. Likewise, avoid choices that shift or blur the purpose of a text by emphasizing details that aren't a central focus.

Be strict: Choices in structure questions often break the text into two parts. Make sure the description of both parts of the text is accurate. If a choice correctly describes the first part of the text, but doesn't feel quite as accurate for the second part, eliminate that choice. Every part of the answer needs to accurately describe the text.

Lean on transitions: Transitions like "however" and "therefore" contribute significantly to the structure of a text by showing how one idea flows into the next. Take note of any transition words you encounter while reading; these can be very helpful when trying to map out the structure of the text.

Multiple Choice

Michelene Pesantubbee, a historian and citizen of the Choctaw Nation, has identified a dilemma inherent to research on the status of women in her tribe during the 1600s and 1700s: the primary sources from that era, travel narratives and other accounts by male European colonizers, underestimate the degree of power conferred on Choctaw women by their traditional roles in political, civic, and ceremonial life. Pesantubbee argues that the Choctaw oral tradition and findings from archaeological sites in the tribe’s homeland supplement the written record by providing crucial insights into those roles.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

• It details the shortcomings of certain historical sources, then argues that research should avoid those sources altogether.

• It describes a problem that arises in research on a particular topic, then sketches a historian’s approach to addressing that problem.

• It lists the advantages of a particular research method, then acknowledges a historian’s criticism of that method.

• It characterizes a particular topic as especially challenging to research, then suggests a related topic for historians to pursue instead.

Multiple Choice

Composer Florence Price won first place for her score Symphony in E Minor at the 1932 Wanamaker Foundation Awards. The piece was performed the following year by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a significant recognition of its quality. Price continued to compose many musical pieces throughout her career, blending traditional Black spirituals with classical European Romantic musical traditions. In recent years, Price’s concertos and symphonies have been performed and recorded by several major orchestras, further preserving her work for others to enjoy.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

• To describe the musical styles that inspired many of Price’s symphonies

• To provide examples of Price’s importance as a composer

• To argue that more major orchestras should perform Price’s compositions

• To compare Price’s scores with those of classical European composers

Multiple Choice

The following text is adapted from Charles Dickens’s 1854 novel Hard Times. Coketown is a fictional town in England.

[Coketown] contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

• To explain the limited work opportunities available to the town’s residents

• To emphasize the uniformity of both the town and the people who live there

• To argue that the simplicity of life in the town makes it a pleasant place to live

• To reveal how the predictability of the town makes it easy for people lose track of time

Multiple Choice

The following text is adapted from Oscar Wilde’s 1897 nonfiction work De Profundis.

People whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. In one sense of the word it is of course necessary to know oneself: that is the first achievement of knowledge. But to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined question in the text as a whole?

• It cautions readers that the text’s directions for how to achieve self-knowledge are hard to follow.

• It concedes that the definition of self-knowledge advanced in the text is unpopular.

• It reinforces the text’s skepticism about the possibility of truly achieving self-knowledge.

• It speculates that some readers will share the doubts expressed in the text about the value of self-knowledge.

Multiple Choice

The following text is adapted from Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre. The narrator, Jane, is reflecting on an incident with Mrs. Reed, her aunt and guardian.

A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

• • To show Jane's regret after her outburst against Mrs. Reed

• To portray Jane as a rebellious and angry child who deserves punishment

• To explore Jane's complex feelings of love and hate towards Mrs. Reed

• To reveal the source of Jane's resentment toward Mrs. Reed

Multiple Choice

In the Here and Now Storybook (1921), educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell advanced the then controversial idea that books for very young children should imitate how they use language, since toddlers, who cannot yet grasp narrative or abstract ideas, seek reassurance in verbal repetition and naming. The most enduring example of this idea is Margaret Wise Brown’s 1947 picture book Goodnight Moon, in which a young rabbit names the objects in his room as he drifts off to sleep. Scholars note that the book’s emphasis on repetition, rhythm, and nonsense rhyme speaks directly to Mitchell’s influence.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

• The text summarizes an argument about how children’s literature should be evaluated and then discusses a contrasting view on that subject.

• The text outlines a debate between two authors of children’s literature and then traces how that debate shaped theories on early childhood education.

• The text lists the literary characteristics that are common to many classics of children’s literature and then indicates the narrative subjects that are most appropriate for young children.

• The text presents a philosophy about what material is most suitable for children’s literature and then describes a book influenced by that philosophy.

Multiple Choice

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Mercedes López-Morales and colleagues measured the wavelengths of light traveling through the atmosphere of WASP-39b, an exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system. Different molecules absorb different wavelengths of light, and the wavelength measurements showed the presence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in WASP-39b’s atmosphere. This finding not only offers the first decisive evidence of CO₂ in the atmosphere of an exoplanet but also illustrates the potential for future scientific breakthroughs held by the JWST.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

• It outlines the steps taken in a scientific study, then presents a hypothesis based on that study.

• It discusses a method used by some researchers, then states why an alternative method is superior to it.

• It examines how a group of scientists reached a conclusion, then shows how other scientists have challenged that conclusion.

• It describes how researchers made a scientific discovery, then explains the importance of that discovery.

Multiple Choice

Horizontal gene transfer occurs when an organism of one species acquires genetic material from an organism of another species through nonreproductive means. The genetic material can then be transferred “vertically” in the second species—that is, through reproductive inheritance. Scientist Atma Ivancevic and her team have hypothesized infection by invertebrate parasites as a mechanism of horizontal gene transfer between vertebrate species: while feeding, a parasite could acquire a gene from one host, then relocate to a host from a different vertebrate species and transfer the gene to it in turn.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

• It explains why parasites are less susceptible to horizontal gene transfer than their hosts are.

• It clarifies why some genes are more likely to be transferred horizontally than others are.

• It contrasts how horizontal gene transfer occurs among vertebrates with how it occurs among Invertebrates.

• It describes a means by which horizontal gene transfer might occur among vertebrates.