First, the idea
Every piece of writing is built in some order. Something comes first, something comes next, and something comes last, and each part is connected to the parts around it. The structure of a piece of writing is that build: the order its parts come in, and how each part connects to the next. This quiz is about the structure of a whole piece, from its first sentence to its last, and about why a writer chose that shape for it.
Look at the picture above. It is an X-ray, a photograph taken with rays that pass through skin and stop at bone, so the bones show up light and the skin almost disappears. At the top is the left hand of a baby, open, with the fingers spread. You can see each small bone of each finger, and the longer bones of the palm below them. At the wrist there are only two or three small round bones. That is because, in a baby, most of the little bones of the wrist are still soft and do not show up on an X-ray yet; they harden over the years of childhood. Below the baby's hand is the hand of an adult, many times larger, holding the baby's forearm from underneath. You can see the adult's finger bones too, and a ring on one finger, which shows up bright white because metal stops almost all of the rays.
An X-ray shows what holds a body up: the bones, under the skin. A piece of writing has bones too. Its bones are its structure, the order its parts come in and how they connect. The words are the skin, and the structure is what you find when you look through them. The two hands in the picture have the same bones in the same order, though one hand is many times the size of the other. In the same way, a short notice and a long book can be built on the same structure. To read for structure, look through the words to the bones.
There are only a few common structures, and the test asks about the same ones again and again. Each has words that show it, the way a bone shows on the X-ray. These words are called signal words, because they signal, or show, how one part connects to the next.
Time order, also called sequence, tells events or steps in the order they happen. Its signal words are first, next, then, after, finally, and dates and times: in 1837, by noon, the next morning.
First the dough is mixed. Then it rises for an hour. At five o'clock it goes into the oven.
Cause and effect tells why something happened and what happened because of it. A cause is what makes something happen; an effect is what happens as a result. Its signal words are because, so, since, as a result, therefore, and led to.
Because the rent went up, the shop moved to a smaller space, and as a result it lost its back room.
Problem and solution tells about a trouble and then about what was done, or could be done, to fix it. Its signal words are the trouble was, the problem, to fix this, the answer, and solved.
The trouble was that the bus stop had no shelter, and riders waited in the rain. To fix this, the riders' group wrote to the city, and a shelter went up in the spring.
Compare and contrast sets two things side by side. To compare is to show how they are alike; to contrast is to show how they differ. Its signal words are both, also, like, but, unlike, while, and however.
Both clinics are open on Saturday, but only the one on 125th Street takes patients without an appointment.
Description tells what one thing is like, one part at a time. It has few signal words of its own. Instead, it has words of place and of parts: on the left, at the far end, inside, on top.
The kitchen is narrow. The stove is on the left, the sink sits under the window, and the refrigerator stands at the far end.
An argument has a structure of its own, a claim followed by the reasons for it. Quiz 14 takes up that structure. This quiz stays with the five above.
Signal words help, but they can also fool you. A history full of dates is not always built in time order, and one because does not make a whole piece cause and effect. So the check for structure is a set of three questions about the whole piece: what does the first part set up, what does each part after it do, and what does the last part do?
Here is what the three questions do with the bus stop example. What does the first part set up? A trouble: no shelter, riders in the rain. What does the next part do? It tells what the riders did to fix it. What does the last part do? It tells that the fix worked: a shelter went up. A trouble, then a fix: that is problem and solution. The words in the spring are a time signal, but they are one small part inside the fix. They do not set up the piece, and they do not finish it.
That leads to a second thing to know. Real writing often mixes two structures. A problem-and-solution piece may tell its solution in time order, step by step. A cause-and-effect piece may compare the world before and after. When two structures are mixed, one of them is the main one. The main structure is the one the first part sets up and the last part finishes. The other one is working inside it.
The last question the test asks about structure is why the writer chose it. A writer chooses a structure to fit the purpose, which is what the writer wants the piece to do. A writer who wants to explain how a problem was solved begins with the problem, because a reader cannot understand a fix without knowing what was broken. A writer who wants to teach a task uses time order, because the steps have to be done in order. A writer who wants to help you choose between two things compares them. So when the test asks why does the author begin with…?, ask what that first part prepares the reader for.
Two other quizzes in this series ask about parts of a text, so it helps to know which question is which. Quiz 6 asked how two ideas are related, one to the other. Quiz 11 will ask what job one sentence or one paragraph does. This quiz asks about the shape of the whole piece. The signal words are the same in all three, but here you are looking for the pattern that runs from the first sentence to the last.
So, when you meet a question about structure on the test, read the whole passage first. Then ask the three questions. Say to yourself what the first part sets up, what each later part does, and what the last part does. Name the shape, and then look for it among the four choices.
Worked example — thinking out loud
A short piece from the newsletter of the tenants of 148 Grove Street, the building from earlier quizzes. Here it is, whole.
Last winter, the boiler at 148 Grove Street broke down three times, and twice the building went two days without heat. Calls to the management company got no answer. In January, the tenants met in the lobby and agreed to act together. In February, they collected signatures from forty apartments and sent a letter to the company and to their council member. In March, a new boiler was installed, and it has run all winter.
Read it aloud once. Then look at it without reading the words closely, the way an X-ray looks through skin. What stands out first are the dates: last winter, January, February, March.
The tempting path stops there. The months come in order, one after another, so the piece must be built in time order.
The newsletter piece is organized in time order, from January to March.
Run the check on that. What does the first part set up? Not a date. It sets up a trouble: a broken boiler and apartments without heat. The second sentence adds to the trouble: no one would answer the calls. What do the next parts do? They tell what the tenants did about it. What does the last part do? It tells that the fix worked: a new boiler, running all winter. The months are real, but they are inside the fix. They tell the steps of the solution in order.
Why it fails, in one sentence: the signal words a reader notices first are not always the ones that build the whole piece, and the first and last parts tell you which ones do.
The right path names the main structure and the one inside it.
The newsletter piece is organized as a problem and its solution, and the solution is told in time order.
First part: the problem. Last part: the problem solved. Main structure: problem and solution. The check passes.
Now the question of why. The newsletter wants other tenants, in this building and in others, to see that acting together got the boiler fixed. To show that, it has to begin with the broken boiler and the calls nobody answered. If it began in January with a meeting in the lobby, a reader would not yet know what the meeting was for. Leading with the problem is how the piece makes its point.
One more look at the picture. A notice of five sentences and a long history of a city can have the same bones: a problem first, then the fix. That is what you will find in Part B, in a passage more than three times as long as this one.
Part A · The skill by itself
Four short pieces, each built on a different structure. For each one, read the whole piece first. Then ask the three questions: what does the first part set up, what does each part after it do, and what does the last part do?
1. A sign on a laundromat door: Because a water main broke under the street on Tuesday night, the city shut off the water to the whole block. As a result, our machines could not run, and we stayed closed all day Wednesday. We lost a day of washing, so this Saturday every wash is half price. Which best describes how the sign is organized?
2. From a guide for new riders: The A train and the C train run on the same subway line under Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, and both stop at 42nd Street and at 14th Street. But the A is an express, and during the day it skips the smaller stations. The C is a local and stops at every one. Late at night the C does not run at all, while the A runs all night. Which structure does the writer use?
3. From the tenants' handbook at 148 Grove Street: Here is how a repair request moves through the building. First, the tenant writes the problem in the logbook in the lobby. Next, the super checks the logbook every morning at eight. Then he visits the apartment and decides whether he can make the repair himself. If he cannot, he calls the management company, which sends a licensed worker within a week. The words first, next, and then show that the paragraph is organized as
4. From a flyer for a community center in the Bronx: The center is three floors tall. On the ground floor are the front desk and a large meeting room with folding chairs. The second floor has two classrooms, each with a whiteboard and twenty desks, where evening classes meet. The top floor is a small gym with a wooden floor and one basketball hoop. How is the flyer organized?
Part B · The skill in the wild
A short history, written for this quiz, of how New York City got clean water. Eighteen numbered sentences. Read it once straight through before you look at the items. Then ask the three questions about the whole passage before you choose.
WATER FOR THE CITY
1In the early 1800s, New York City had a water problem, and it grew worse as the city grew. 2Manhattan is an island, but the rivers around it are salty, so the city could not drink from them. 3People drew their water from wells and from cisterns, tanks that catch rainwater, and the wells near the shore turned salty too. 4The Collect Pond, near where Canal Street runs today, had once given fresh water, but by 1800 the businesses along its banks, such as tanneries, where animal skins are made into leather, had filled it with waste. 5In 1799 a private business called the Manhattan Company was given the right to supply the city's water, but it put its energy into banking, and the water it did pipe in was scarce and bad; the bank it started is part of JPMorgan Chase today.
6Then, in the summer of 1832, cholera reached the city. 7Cholera is a disease spread through dirty water, though no doctor knew that yet, and about 3,500 New Yorkers died of it that year. 8Three winters later, on the night of December 16, 1835, a fire started in a warehouse in lower Manhattan. 9It was so cold that the East River froze, and when firefighters cut holes in the ice to pump water, the water froze around their hoses. 10By the time the fire was out, nearly 700 buildings were gone.
11The fire pushed the city to hurry with a plan its voters had approved that spring: a public water system that would bring fresh water to Manhattan from the Croton River, in northern Westchester County. 12Work began in 1837 on a dam across the river and on an aqueduct, a covered channel of stone and brick for carrying water, about 41 miles long. 13The aqueduct sloped gently downhill the whole way, so the water moved by gravity alone, with no pumps. 14Thousands of laborers, most of them Irish immigrants, built it. 15In the summer of 1842 the water reached Manhattan and filled two reservoirs, large man-made lakes for storing it: one where the Great Lawn of Central Park is now, and one on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, where the main branch of the New York Public Library stands today. 16On October 14, 1842, the city celebrated with cannon fire at dawn and a fountain of Croton water in City Hall Park that shot fifty feet into the air. 17Where the aqueduct crossed the Harlem River, a temporary pipe carried it at first, until the High Bridge, a stone bridge built to carry the aqueduct, was finished in 1848; it is the oldest major bridge still standing in the city.
18With one system, the city had answered both of its old troubles, dirty water and too little water to fight fires, and New York still brings its water from the hills to the north.
Sources: Museum of the City of New York, “The Contentious History of Supplying Water to Manhattan”; National Research Council, Watershed Management for Potable Water Supply (2000), chapter 2; American Society of Civil Engineers, Civil Engineering magazine, March 2023; Hudson River Maritime Museum, “The Croton Aqueduct”; Baruch College, “New York City Cholera Epidemic of 1832”; History.com, “The Forgotten Fire That Leveled New York”; New York State Parks, “Old Croton Aqueduct State Historic Park.”
1. Which best describes how the passage as a whole is organized?
2. Which sentence marks the turn from the problem to the solution?
3. Why does the author begin with sentences 1 through 5, about the salty rivers, the wells, the Collect Pond, and the Manhattan Company?
4. What does sentence 18, the last sentence, do for the passage as a whole?