READING SKILL 1: Answer Main Idea Questions Correctly
In Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL TEST
This book provides you important skills to master types of questions in TOEFL Reading Comprehension test. This time, I'll show you the first question that poses the first and crucial skill of reading that is to find main idea of the passage or paragraph(s) correctly.
The passage:
In the philosophy of John Dewey, a sharp distinction is made between "intelligence" and "reasoning." According to Dewey, intelligence is the only absolute way to achieve a balance between realism and idealism, between practicality and wisdom of life. Intelligence involves "interacting with other things and knowing them," while reasoning is merely the act of an observer, "... a mind that beholds or grasps objects outside the world of things..." With reasoning, a level of mental certainty can be achieved, but it is through intelligence that control is taken of events that shape one's life.
The question:
What is the topic of this passage?
A. The intelligence of John Dewey
B. Distinctions made by John Dewey
C. Dewey’s ideas on the ability to reason
D. How intelligence differs from reasoning in Dewey’s works
If the text requires you to find what the text/passage and/or paragraph(s) talk about, it means you need to do skimming. After you do skimming, then, you can move on to the next step which is scanning. Scanning is an activity to find specific information in a text and you can find the keywords of the questions before find those specific information in the text.
First of all, we need to know how to do skimming and find the right main idea. And, the main idea usually appears in the first sentence of paragraphs (in almost most cases, it happens this way). Like in this passage.
The passage:
In the philosophy of John Dewey, a sharp distinction is made between "intelligence" and "reasoning." According to Dewey, intelligence is the only absolute way to achieve a balance between realism and idealism, between practicality and wisdom of life. Intelligence involves "interacting with other things and knowing them," while reasoning is merely the act of an observer, "... a mind that beholds or grasps objects outside the world of things..." With reasoning, a level of mental certainty can be achieved, but it is through intelligence that control is taken of events that shape one's life.
As you can see, I have put on bold what the passage talks about and actually it talks about the difference (or distinction) between intelligence and reasoning. Are you not sure this is the right main idea of the passage? So, let's check whether we've got similar info in the supporting ideas/sentences. If the supporting sentences already support the general main idea, it means we have got the RIGHT main idea. I'll put the supporting sentences in different color, green.
The passage:
In the philosophy of John Dewey, a sharp distinction is made between "intelligence" and "reasoning." According to Dewey, intelligence is the only absolute way to achieve a balance between realism and idealism, between practicality and wisdom of life. Intelligence involves "interacting with other things and knowing them," while reasoning is merely the act of an observer, "... a mind that beholds or grasps objects outside the world of things..." With reasoning, a level of mental certainty can be achieved, but it is through intelligence that control is taken of events that shape one's life.
Based on this evidence, I can say that we've got the RIGHT main idea already. So it's time for us to move on to the next stage, which is scanning.
After we do skimming, scanning will be easily done. Look at the keywords I've chose below.
The question:
What is the topic of this passage?
A. The intelligence of John Dewey
B. Distinctions made by John Dewey
C. Dewey’s ideas on the ability to reason
D. How intelligence differs from reasoning in Dewey’s works
So, what do you think of the answer after doing skimming and scanning?
Yap, the answer is ...
The passage:
In the philosophy of John Dewey, a sharp distinction is made between "intelligence" and "reasoning." According to Dewey, intelligence is the only absolute way to achieve a balance between realism and idealism, between practicality and wisdom of life. Intelligence involves "interacting with other things and knowing them," while reasoning is merely the act of an observer, "... a mind that beholds or grasps objects outside the world of things..." With reasoning, a level of mental certainty can be achieved, but it is through intelligence that control is taken of events that shape one's life.
The question:
What is the topic of this passage?
A. The intelligence of John Dewey
B. Distinctions made by John Dewey
C. Dewey’s ideas on the ability to reason
D. How intelligence differs from reasoning in Dewey’s works
So, after all get the general idea of the passage, what the passage is talking about. After doing skimming, everything will become easier later, so make sure you do some practices on that. And in the book you can find those practices or you can visit our YouTube channel (The link is already provided below.)
(1) TOEFL Reading Comprehension Skill 1 - Answer main idea questions correctly
I have provided the Presentation slides. You can download the presentation freely by visiting this link: (I will update the link soon. Thanks for waiting.)
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