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。
叠加法：把每一段主题叠加在一起就是文章的主题。
主旨题找答案的三大原则：文章的中心词或同义词必须出现；文章中的细节不能出现；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 they read 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 of isolated volcanic activity known to geologists as hot spots. Unlike most of the world's volcanoes, they are not always found at the boundaries of the great drifting plates that make up the earth's surface; on the contrary, many of them lie deep in the interior of a plate. Most of the hot spots move only slowly, and in some cases the movement of the plates past them has left trails of dead volcanoes. The hot spots and their volcanic trails are milestones that mark the passage of the plates.
That the plates are moving is now beyond dispute. Africa and South America, for example, are moving away from each other as new material is injected into the sea floor between them. The complementary coastlines and certain geological features that seem to span the ocean are reminders of where the two continents were once joined. The relative motion of the plates carrying these continents has been constructed in detail, but the motion of one plate with respect to another cannot readily be translated into motion with respect to the earth's interior. It is not possible to determine whether both continents are moving in opposite directions or whether one continent is stationary and the other is drifting away from it. Hot spots, anchored in the deeper layers of the earth, provide the measuring instruments needed to resolve the question. From an analysis of the hot-spot population it appears that the African plate is stationary and that it has not moved during the past 30 million years.
The significance of hot spots is not confined to their role as a frame of reference. It now appears that they also have an important influence on the geophysical processes that propel the plates across the globe. When a continental plate come to rest over a hot spot, the material rising from deeper layer creates a broad dome. As the dome grows, it develops deep fissures (cracks); in at least a few cases the continent may break entirely along some of these fissures, so that the hot spot initiates the formation of a new ocean. Thus just as earlier theories have explained the mobility of the continents, so hot spots may explain their mutability (inconstancy).joozone.com