Glossary
problem and solution
A problem-and-solution structure states a problem and then presents one or more fixes, often weighing their limits.
Problem and solution is a text structure that names a difficulty and then sets out what could be done about it. It usually opens by establishing the problem with its scale and consequences, then offers a proposal, sometimes several, and often evaluates them — cost, feasibility, what each leaves unsolved. The signals are the problem is, one approach, a solution would be, however, this, as a result, and the structure is the natural home of the author purpose question to persuade, because a passage that proposes a fix is rarely neutral. The distinction that decides questions is between the problem and its causes: a passage may spend most of its length explaining why something happens and only a sentence on what to do, and the main idea is still the problem, not the fix. Read what the passage actually spends its space on.
Taught in
Related terms
- text structure — Text structure is the outline a passage is built on — sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, or problem and solution — and naming it tells you where the claim sits.
- cause and effect — A cause-and-effect structure explains why something happened, linking an event to the conditions that produced it.
- author purpose — Author purpose is the reason a passage was written — to inform, to explain, to persuade, to entertain or to describe.
Source: The reading-comprehension guide in this course: the three skills above are the ones that guide teaches, and every definition is written for this course in our own words, with no publisher's prose reproduced. Elsevier's own HESI A2 page, which names reading comprehension among the areas the exam covers, is the exam-side source. (Elsevier HESI A2 page accessed 2026-10-23; definitions written 2026-10-27)