Mr. Ye Shengtao once said: "Thought has a path, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and the author of a good article will never go anywhere." The materials of prose are organized in the works according to certain ideas, and the structure of the works is the concrete expression of their ideas. College entrance examination questions often test students' ability to grasp the ideas of works by asking questions about the structure of works. When reading prose, we should be good at capturing sentences that reflect time, space, people, events and feelings, and grasp the context of the article.

For example, 1998 college entrance examination paper, No.21Title: In the first paragraph, the author wrote that he was "surprised first, then disappointed" when he saw Hosta blossoming. (1) Why is the author surprised? (2) Why is the author disappointed?

To answer these two questions, we must combine the context and clarify the thinking of the article. Why is the author surprised to see Hosta flowers "sticking their heads out"? After this sentence, use "first" as a sign to answer it, that is, "beginning of autumn will be in a few days after this flower blooms"; As for the reason of "disappointment", the two sentences at the end of the fifth paragraph "make people feel wary" and the sixth paragraph "always in an uneasy anxiety" suggest the author's thinking. After a little induction, you can get the answer that "the harvest season is still empty-handed"

Such as Ba Jin's "Lamp". The author first wrote about the lamp in front of him. Because "they light up the dark color for me" (catalyst), I can't help but recall my own experience, think of the lighthouse on the sea, the solitary lamp on Harriet Island ... The author has scattered from the light in front of me to the light of memory and association, but the author did not allow this "scattering", but borrowed some philosophy of life as a catalyst at the end of the article to collect my thoughts. Even at the time of liberation, the author is not rambling, but always revolves around the main line of "when people are trapped, they should still be full of hope and belief in life and the future"

Another example is Zhu Ziqing's Moonlight on the Lotus Pond, which is a famous essay. The article said that when the author was sitting in the yard to enjoy the cool at night, he wanted to see the lotus pond (catalyst) under the full moon because he was "very uneasy these days". So the author strolled out of the house and came to the lotus pond (flying), so there was a faint moonlight on the small cinder road, the faint moonlight that could not be shone in the pond, and the mottled moonlight around the lotus pond was like smoke ... So he thought of "picking lotus" and "remembering the sentences in Xizhou Qu". All this seems to be scattered, but it always runs through the whole text with a touch of sadness and joy. The author used almost touching his own door as a catalyst to bring his thoughts back to reality, and "I" also returned home. Everything from the yard to the pond to the yard, the migration of places, the transformation of scenes and the jumping of ideas reflect the structural characteristics of gathering, dispersing and gathering.

Prose has many structural forms, and the common ones are as follows:

① Vertical structure: (time) such as back, peanut and Mr. Fujino.

② Parallel structure: (horizontal) (nature classification, various sides and spaces), such as Tianshan scenery and Jinhua caves.

(3) criss-crossing structure (network structure): such as "Land" and "Lyric of the Country Altar".

Step structure (the process of observation and understanding): such as litchi honey.

(5) the structure of the flow (the author's emotional changes):

⑥ Contrastive structure: From Hundred Herbs Garden to Guo Moruo's San Tan Yin Yue and Du Fu.

⑦ Close-up structure (focusing on a scene or fragment): one side is struck by a thunder.

Prose mainly expresses the author's feelings about life, so its structural form is mainly based on the ups and downs of the author's thoughts and feelings. Although the people, events, scenery and things it writes have their own time and space and the order of development and change, this is only the external clue of the article. Therefore, in an essay, it is often manifested as: there are both external lines of time and space order and internal lines that run through thoughts and feelings. Criss-crossing, virtual and real set each other off into interest.

Second, the law of proposition

Exam propositions often ask such questions:

1, by examining the key words to examine the understanding of the article ideas;

2. By examining the levels of paragraphs and sentences, we can examine the grasp of ideas;

3. By summarizing the meaning of the paragraph, check whether you have grasped the train of thought;

Check whether you understand the author's ideas by adding or deleting redundant words.

Third, the solution to the problem

1. Grasping the whole text is the first step to answer the reading questions. The structure of the article is the result of the author's careful arrangement of writing materials in order to express the central idea, and it is the concrete embodiment of writing ideas. The structural level of the article is restricted by the content. In order to distinguish the levels of the article, we must first have a general understanding of the full text and paragraphs. When doing the problem, we should understand the paragraph meaning and level meaning of the article paragraph by paragraph on the basis of grasping the content of the article as a whole, so as to clarify the thinking of the article.

2. Grasp the structural characteristics of different styles. When analyzing the narrative structure, we should pay attention to the following points: look at the changes in time, space, feelings, stories, contents and development stages of things. To analyze the structure of argumentative writing, we must first grasp the structural form of the full text. The common structural forms of argumentative writing are juxtaposition, contrast, progression and total score. When analyzing the structure of expository texts, we should grasp the key points such as time sequence, spatial order and logical sequence.

3. Pay attention to language symbols. Many articles have obvious language symbols, such as "first" and "second" ordinal numbers. At the level of paragraph, there are often some words that connect the context, such as "first … second ……" on the one hand … on the other hand, "not only that …" and "besides". You can also look at punctuation.

4. Pay attention to the central sentence. An article, finding the central sentence, is to roughly grasp the center of the article and grasp the general idea of the article. A paragraph, grasping the central sentence, means that you can roughly understand the hierarchical structure of this paragraph. There are some turning sentences and the following sentences in the article, which are also important basis for our answer, so we should make full use of them.