We have all been there, though it can often feel as futile as the search for that proverbial needle in a haystack… Finding the main idea of a piece of writing can be challenging, but it is an … See more

Whether we are talking about the main idea of a paragraph, a poem, a chapter, or a longer text, finding the main idea requires the reader to identify the topic of a piece of writing and then … See more

The main idea of a sentence is usually fairly straightforward to identify. Often it is as simple as identifying the subject of the sentence. Whole chapters or books, on the other hand, can seldom be easily reduced to expression in the form of a single, main idea. For these reasons, the paragraph offers the student the most suitable format in … See more

It can appear to be a reasonably clear-cut task to define the main idea, so why is it often so problematic for students to identify it? Well, the truth is that it needn’t be so. Often the central concept is expressed directly in the text and is as easy to identify as your own face in the mirror. However, the main idea will not always be expressed s... See more

Attention is the key to pulling the main idea from a text, whatever the genre. Students need to identify the most relevant information from the work and use it to develop a statement expressing what they perceive as the main idea. We can refer to this as The Statement of the Main Idea. This statement should be a lean sentence or two. The … See more