Locate

In the context of China's national civil-service examination (国家公务员考试, Guókǎo), Shēnlùn (申论)—the "essay/practical writing" paper administered by the State Administration of Civil Service (国家公务员局)—is a closed-corpus test in which every answer must be grounded in the provided documents (给定资料, gěidìng zīliào). "Locate" names the foundational technique by which a candidate identifies where in those documents the relevant evidence sits before extracting, condensing, and synthesizing it. The official Shēnlùn syllabus tests four graded competencies—comprehension (阅读理解能力), analysis (综合分析能力), problem-solving (提出和解决问题能力), and expression (文字表达能力)—and locating is the operational first step that all four depend upon, because Shēnlùn explicitly forbids fabricating content outside the corpus. Examiners mark against a fixed point-bank (采分点, cǎifēndiǎn); a point not located in the source cannot earn marks regardless of how eloquently it is argued.

The mechanics of locating rest on disciplined reading of the corpus, which typically runs 6,000–10,000 characters across several numbered passages (资料1, 资料2…). Candidates scan for trigger words and signposts: causal markers (因为, 由于, 导致), problem indicators (问题, 困难, 短板, 瓶颈), evaluative cues (认为, 指出, 强调), and enumerative structures (一是…二是…, 首先…其次…). Effective locating distinguishes the question stem's command verb—概括 (summarize), 分析 (analyze), 对策 (propose measures), 贯彻执行 (apply/implement)—and then targets the document segments that supply that category of material. A "locate-then-extract-then-process" workflow (定位—摘抄—加工) is the standard pedagogy: first mark the source sentence, then lift the keyword, then rewrite it concisely under a thematic heading. The skill also requires mapping each sub-question to its governing passage range, since later questions (especially the major essay, 文章写作题) draw their thesis and arguments from the entire corpus rather than a single passage.

In current practice for the 2026 cycle, Shēnlùn papers remain split into two tracks—the 副省级 (deputy-provincial) and 市地级 (prefectural) levels—each weighting the abstraction and policy-application demands differently, but both reward precise location of cǎifēndiǎn. Coaching materials from major preparation institutions (e.g. 中公教育, 华图教育) build entire modules around 定位 (location) drills, and model answers annotate which passage each point was drawn from. Mislocation—pulling a point from the wrong passage, or missing a buried point in a quoted speech or statistic—is the single most common cause of lost marks on the comprehension and summarization items.

For the exam, "locate" is directly tested in the Shēnlùn paper of the Guókǎo and provincial civil-service exams (省考), and the analogous skill appears in any source-based précis or comprehension task across the UPSC, CSS and BCS essay/précis papers. The typical question angle is a summarization or "identify the problems/causes/measures" item where graders check answers against a hidden cǎifēndiǎn list; candidates who cannot rapidly locate the governing passage forfeit marks no matter how polished their prose, making this the highest-leverage micro-skill in the entire paper.