How to highlight the main thoughts

Highlighting the main thoughts allows you to better understand, remember and absorb the text. Moreover, the penetration into the most important ideas of the author often depends on the personality of the reader, on his experience, attitudes, ability to generalize and the level of culture.

Instruction manual

one

In one paragraph, as a rule, there is only one main idea, otherwise the text would not be divided by the author in this way. The remaining thoughts reveal, supplement, reinforce the main idea, or lead to it. By learning to highlight and retell a key idea in your own words, you can significantly improve the quality of assimilation of texts.

2

If you are new to the topic, you may find that there are a lot of “main thoughts”. Otherwise, if the text is too simple or too familiar for you, it may seem “empty” and irrelevant to you. One must learn to overcome in oneself both the first and second variants of error.

3

Most often, the main thoughts are presented through one sentence, in an explicit form. However, sometimes they can be expressed implicitly, by stating the facts in several sentences. In the first case, the author somehow distinguishes the main idea from others, focuses the reader on it (perhaps even repeatedly). Often, he leads to the conclusion with the help of auxiliary words: "so, " "in this way, " "therefore, " "as a result, " etc.

4

Implicitly, the main idea can be represented in the form of short conclusions, formulas, numbers or theses. Thus, the reader’s thinking is activated, who is invited to “approach” the main idea and formulate it on the basis of the material from the paragraph.

5

The skill of highlighting the key thoughts of the text requires a certain training from the reader. Despite the fact that different people, especially when it comes to people of different ages, can perceive the same text in completely different ways, this does not mean that the main meaning of the work is always devoid of objective meaning and depends only on a subjective approach. The differences that appear upon reading fluctuate within the limits “set” by the work, and nothing alien to it can be attributed.

Useful advice

Think about what kind of question you can ask the text, and this will help you understand what the author’s idea is written.