DefinePK

Description

To identify the main idea or ideas in a text, ask yourself two questions: first, “what's the topic of this text?” You can usually describe the topic with a single word or a phrase, like “pasta” or “bears” or “knife juggling.”

And the second question is, “what does the author mainly want to tell or teach me about the topic? What's the big idea? “People shouldn’t feed wild bears” or “rigatoni is the best kind of pasta” are examples of main ideas.

But what if... there's more than one main idea?

David explains how that works.



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Attributions: the photograph of the Alash ensemble is in the public domain; they are the source of the brief clip of throat-singing, as well.