Finding the main idea or theme of a written piece is one of the most important aspects of good reading comprehension. It is, however, easy to confuse the main idea or theme with the subject. Basically, the subject of a piece of writing is what that piece is generally about, plain and simple – the facts and information. However, when you look past the facts and information to the heart of what writers are trying to say, and why they are saying it, that’s the main idea or theme. For example, the subject of this introduction is about distinguishing between a subject and a main idea or theme; the main idea or theme is why it is important to be able to recognise that difference.
The main idea is the point that the writer is trying to help the reader understand, whereas the topic is what the writer is using to get “main ideas across.”
Lessons
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Read the passage and answer the questions
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Read comprehension and answer the questions
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Read Comprehension and answer the questions
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Read comprehension and answer the questions
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Read comprehension and answer the questions
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Read the passage and answer the questions
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Read the comprehension and answer the questions
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Read the comprehension and answer the questions
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No very satisfactory account of the mechanism that caused the formation of the ocean basins has yet been given. The traditional view supposes that the upper mantle of the earth behaves as a liquid when it is subjected to small forces for long periods and that differences in temperature under oceans and continents are sufficient to produce convection in the mantle
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How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship.
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In the eighteenth century, Japan’s feudal overlords, from the shogun to the humblest samurai, found themselves under financial stress. In part, this stress can be attributed to the overlords’ failure to adjust to a rapidly expanding economy, but the stress was also due to factors beyond the overlords’ control.
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Between the eighth and eleventh centuries A. D., the Byzantine Empire staged an almost unparalleled economic and cultural revival, a recovery that is all the more striking because it followed a long period of severe internal decline.
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Virtually everything astronomers known about objects outside the solar system is based on the detection of photons—quanta of electromagnetic radiation. Yet there is another form of radiation that permeates the universe: neutrinos.
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Most economists in the United States seem captivated by the spell of the free market. Consequently, nothing seems good or normal that does not accord with the requirements of the free market.
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Caffeine, the stimulant in coffee, has been called “the most widely used psychoactive substance on Earth.” Snyder, Daly and Bruns have recently proposed that caffeine affect behavior by countering the activity in the human brain of a naturally occurring chemical called adenosine.
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Archaeology as a profession faces two major problems. First, it is the poorest of the poor. Only paltry sums are available for excavating and even less is available for publishing the results and preserving the sites once excavated. Yet archaeologists deal with priceless objects every day. Second, there is the problem of illegal excavation, resulting in museum-quality pieces being sold to the highest bidder.
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Federal efforts to aid minority businesses began in the 1960s when the Small Business Administration (SBA) began making federally guaranteed loans and government-sponsored management and technical assistance available to minority business enterprises. While this program enabled many minority entrepreneurs to form new businesses, the results were disappointing, since managerial inexperience, unfavourable locations, and capital shortages led to high failure rates.
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The majority of successful senior managers do not closely follow the classical rational model of first clarifying goals, assessing the problem, formulating options, estimating likelihoods of success, making a decision, and only then taking action to implement the decision.
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Nearly a century ago, biologists found that if they separated an invertebrate animal embryo into two parts at an early stage of its life, it would survive and develop as two normal embryos.
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In the two decades between 1910 and 1930, over ten per cent of the Black population of the United States left the South, where the preponderance of the Black population had been located, and migrated to northern states, with the largest number moving, it is claimed, between 1916 and 1918
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In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two-year-old was told that since the child had made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three-year-old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $750,000.
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Prior to 1975, union efforts to organize public-sector clerical workers, most of whom are women, were somewhat limited. The factors favoring unionization drives seem to have been either the presence of large numbers of workers, as in New York City, to make it worth the effort, or the concentration of small numbers in one or two locations, such as a hospital, to make it relatively easy.
