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Chapter 4: Locating Main Ideas
Chapter Summary
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Locating Main Ideas
In order to understand a paragraph, you need to be able to pinpoint the topic and locate the main idea. This chapter provides a series of explanations and exercises that show you how to identify the main idea. First, examples and practice exercises are given for separating out general from specific ideas. Then, explanations and practice exercises are provided for identifying the topic and locating the most general sentence or the topic sentence.
Tips for locating the main idea include analyzing paragraphs for the structure of the details and general statement. In other words, tips are given for finding the main idea when it occurs as the first sentence, the last sentence, a middle sentence, or split between the first and the last sentence. Several exercises are provided for practice in locating the main idea including three tests, two mastery tests, and a long reading with vocabulary and comprehension review questions.
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