Chapter summary
The aility to locate an author's main idea is key to unerstanding your reading. In order to see the relationship between the main idea and the details that support it, You must first distinguish between general ideas and more specific ones. The topic is the most general idea. The main idea is the more specific cotrolling idea of a piece of writing. The details, which are most specific, support and illustrate the main idea.
Questioning yourself, looking in the usual places, noticing clue words, and categorizing an authour's points are four strategies you can use to think systematically about what you read. If you ask yourself the question "What is this all about?" you will actively look for the answer to your question as you read. Looking in the obvious spots helps you to find the main idea more efficiently. Noticing cluse words and categorizing ideas helps you to separate examples and other supporting ideas from the larger, main points, so the relationships between ideas become clear.
Some main ideas are stated directly in a reading and are easy to identify. Others are implied, and you must infer their meaning from the reading and then restate them in your own words. Implied main ideas and strategies for detecting them will explored in Chapter 7.
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