运用文章的宏观结构把握文章主题。如问题答案型的文章，文章一开头提出问题，那么答案就是该篇文章的主题。
把每一段主题叠加在一起就是文章的主题。
主旨题型的标志：出现mainly about; best title; purpose等这样的单词
主旨题找答案的三大原则：
1、文章的中心词或同义词必须出现;
2、文章中的细节不能出现;
3、文中未提及的信息不能出现。
小心首末段陷阱：当有一个选项是文章首段或者末段的高度浓缩时，该选项有可能是一个诱惑选项，因为第一段很有可能只是引子，不是文章的主题，最后一段也很有可能只是一个分论点而已。
如2001年第三篇文章开头直接出现了问题Why do so many Americans distrust what theyread in their newspapers? 为什么美国人不相信他们在报纸上所读到东西?那么原因就是主题，选项B就是正确答案。
59. What is the passage mainly about?
[A] needs of the readers all over the world
[B] causes of the public disappointment about newspapers
[C] origins of the declining newspaper industry
[D] aims of a journalism credibility project
再如1998年第五篇：
Scattered around the globe are more than 100 small regions ofisolated volcanic activity known to geologists as hot spots. Unlikemost of the world's volcanoes, they are not always found at theboundaries of the great drifting plates that make up the earth'ssurface; on the contrary, many of them lie deep in the interior of aplate. Most of the hot spots move only slowly, and in some cases themovement of the plates past them has left trails of dead volcanoes. Thehot spots and their volcanic trails are milestones that mark thepassage of the plates。
That the plates are moving is now beyond dispute. Africa and SouthAmerica, for example, are moving away from each other as new materialis injected into the sea floor between them. The complementarycoastlines and certain geological features that seem to span the oceanare reminders of where the two continents were once joined. Therelative motion of the plates carrying these continents has beenconstructed in detail, but the motion of one plate with respect toanother cannot readily be translated into motion with respect to theearth's interior. It is not possible to determine whether bothcontinents are moving in opposite directions or whether one continentis stationary and the other is drifting away from it. Hot spots,anchored in the deeper layers of the earth, provide the measuringinstruments needed to resolve the question. From an analysis of thehot-spot population it appears that the African plate is stationary andthat it has not moved during the past 30 million years.
The significance of hot spots is not confined to their role as aframe of reference. It now appears that they also have an importantinfluence on the geophysical processes that propel the plates acrossthe globe. When a continental plate come to rest over a hot spot, thematerial rising from deeper layer creates a broad dome. As the domegrows, it develops deep fissures (cracks); in at least a few cases thecontinent may break entirely along some of these fissures, so that thehot spot initiates the formation of a new ocean. Thus just as earliertheories have explained the mobility of the continents, so hot spotsmay explain their mutability (inconstancy)。
70. The passage is mainly about ________。
[A] the features of volcanic activities
[B] the importance of the theory about drifting plates
[C] the significance of hot spots in geophysical studies (出现中心词hot spot，正确答案)
[D] the process of the formation of volcanoes
