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Central Ideas and Details — Worked example
Learn the best way to approach a central ideas and details question on your SAT. Start by stating the main idea of the text in your own words, then find the choice that best matches your summary, using the process of elimination. Remember, everything you need is in the text. You've got this! Created by David Rheinstrom.
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- Study Tip, not a Question
My step 0, before step 1 of covering choices, is to read the question before reading the passage - I even make a guess of the answer, ever ready to change if I encounter new evidence from the passage! I've found it primes my brain to detect just the right info from the passage - in timed tests.(85 votes)- Reading a question first also determines your goal in this task. So if for example the question refers to the idea, it will be a reminder for you not to keep focused on the specific details but overall idea and vice versa(20 votes)
- Hey, anyone here preping for the SAT in May, I'm trying to find study partners(10 votes)
- Can someone PLEASE Tell me why it isn't option A, I'm very confused?(3 votes)
- Because the author does not mention that other people find him unpleasant. Pierre is described as someone who is clumsy, 'absent-minded', and ungainly. The piece of text basically only makes depictions of his persona. He is very awkward, but nobody thinks badly of him according to the given text.(15 votes)
- can any one tell me some other free online SAT resources(5 votes)
- The best ones I've encountered are khan academy and schoolhouse.world, so I'd say you're on the right track.(2 votes)
- I always look for the answer with the most evidence then see if it aligns with the question.(3 votes)
- wrong. smh cant believe it(2 votes)
- The first step covers the choices next step summarizes the text so the following text is adapted for Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel war and peace translated by Louise?(2 votes)
- Whenever I find it hard to pick between 2 choices in a main idea question, is it a good strategy to try to guess how each choice could be wrong?(2 votes)
- why no option a(1 vote)
- Because he was absent-minded. But option A says "he is deliberately".(1 vote)
- Good morning, today I will be saying Hi to everyone who wants me to say hi to them.(1 vote)
- what is the main idea?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- Let's take a look at this
writing and language question. So we've got this little blurb
that introduces a passage from a novel, and then we've
got the passage itself, but we'll avoid diving into that for now. And down below that, we
have a question that asks us which choice best states
the main idea of the text? So if you'd like to pause the video here and give the question a go
on your own, be my guest. Now let's talk through it together. So, because the question
asks us about a main idea, we know this is a central
ideas and details question. You'll encounter several of
these questions on test day and your job is pretty
blessedly straightforward, I gotta say, you don't need to
bring any outside information or knowledge to this question. Like for this one, the
passages from War and Peace, you don't need to know
anything about War and Peace. Everything you need is
contained within the question. You just have to put
all the pieces together. The power was inside you all along. Okay, so finding the
central idea is like asking, what's the point of this passage? Why was it written? What's it meant to convey? Sometimes these questions will
ask a very specific question about a detail from a passage and other times they'll
ask you about the main idea of the passage, which requires you to put
those details together. In this case, we're working with one of
those main idea questions. Let's talk about what a
main idea should cover. A main idea should cover most
of the details in the passage, as well as mention points of emphasis. But it should not focus
on just one detail, nor will it introduce new
ideas that weren't present in the passage, and it won't
contradict the text either. So now that we know what a main idea does, how do we go about looking for it? Well, first we suggest
that you cover the choices. We don't want them to distract us from making an accurate prediction. Then we'll summarize the
text in our own words. On main idea questions, this summary will
function as our prediction for what the main idea is, because these passages are pretty short. Uncover the choices and then find a match to your prediction. If you don't find a match immediately, use the process of elimination and get rid of any choices that
are too broad or too narrow or that misread or contradict the passage. Okay, let's return to the question now and put this strategy into action. First step, cover the choices. Next step, summarize the text. So the following text is adapted from Leo Tolstoy's 1869
novel War and Peace, translated by Louise and
Aylmer Maude in 1922-23. "Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height,
broad, with huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is how to enter a drawing room and
still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something
particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this, he was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he
took up instead of his own, the general's three-cornered
hat and held it, pulling at the plume, till the general asked him to restore it." So our boy, Pierre, is
ungainly, he's clumsy. He doesn't know how to make an entrance and he's even worse at leaving. When he leaves, he picks
up someone else's hat and tugs on its feather
until someone points out the hat isn't his. So he's big, he's clumsy, he doesn't know what to do with his hands. Listen, Pierre, I feel that, my guy, he's anxious and awkward. That's my summary. Pierre was an anxious, awkward man. That is also my prediction and now, we'll try to find a match. Let's unveil the choices
and see what we've got. Choice A, deliberately unpleasant. That doesn't match my prediction. The passage doesn't say he was
unkind to people on purpose. He's just awkward. We can eliminate this one. Choice B, he has an
excessively formal manner. That feels like new information, so we can eliminate that too. Choice C, oh yeah, that's it. Pierre is physically and socially awkward. That's basically what I said,
he was anxious and awkward. On test day, we could save ourselves
some time and stop here, but let's look at choice D,
just for completion's sake. Okay, Choice D, Pierre
has a good sense of humor. There's no evidence for
that in the passage. Maybe he took the general's
hat as a wacky prank, but we don't have the context from this short passage
to actually prove that. So that is not our answer. Even if we didn't find a choice that matched our prediction this well, we could see that choices A, B and D are talking about things
that aren't reflected in the passage. So we've got two distinct paths to victory is what I'm saying. If our prediction doesn't get
us there, elimination will. Let's talk through some top tips for approaching this question type. Keep it simple. Whatever your summary is, see if you can get it down to a few words because that's what the choices look like. a few words or a short
sentence, and keep it specific. Any choice that either gets too broad or too narrow won't be a main idea. Keep yourself focused on
what the text actually says, not what it might say if it
were a little bit longer. And that's how you approach
a central ideas question on the SAT, test takers. Good luck out there, you've got this.