On the ACT® Reading section, you'll encounter several questions regarding the main idea or theme of a paragraph, section, or passage. These questions require students to make greater inferences, as always, based entirely on the details in the text. The important strategy for these questions is to ensure you have an answer before looking at the answer choices.
Common Question Types
Here are some examples of how main idea and theme questions might be phrased:
- What is the main idea of the first paragraph?
- What is the main idea of the passage?
- What is the central concept behind...?
- Which of the following is a theme of the passage?
It's worth noting that it's less common to see questions about the main idea of the entire passage compared to questions about specific paragraphs.
Optimal Technique to Solve
To find the main idea, you need to understand the specific words in context, whether that's a paragraph or passage. Once you do, you can elaborate on how the details all reference a specific thing, whatever that is. It can be anything: a feeling of loneliness, the historical rise of plastic as a consumer good, the strength of a specific species of ant, and so on.
Here's a step-by-step approach:
- Read the question carefully.
- Go back to the passage to find the details referenced in the question.
- Read the details, then decide for yourself the topic that each of these details contributes to.
- Keep that thought in your mind, then go back down to the answer choices.
- When looking at the answer choices, make sure to read the entire answer.
- Use Process of Elimination to eliminate wrong answers.
- Select the correct answer, then move on.
Be aware that the ACT® often tries to trick students by making the first ¾ of an answer choice correct, then twisting the final ¼ of the sentence to make the answer choice incorrect.