How to Find the Implied Main Idea

By Kelly Roell

Before getting into a discussion on how to find an implied main idea, you have to know what the main idea is in the first place. The main idea of a paragraph is the point of the passage, minus all the details. It’s the big picture — the Solar System vs. the planets. The football game vs. the fans, cheerleaders, quarterback, and uniforms. The Oscars vs. actors, the red carpet, designer gowns, and films. It’s the summary.

What Is an Implied Main Idea?

Sometimes, a reader will get lucky and the main idea will be a stated main idea, where the main idea is easy to find because it’s written directly in the text.

However, many of the passages you’ll read on a standardized test like the SAT or GRE will have an implied main idea, which is a little trickier. If the author doesn’t directly state the main idea of the text, it’s up to you to infer what the main idea is.

Finding the implied main idea is easier if you think of the passage as a box. Inside the box, is a random group of stuff (the details of the passage). Pull each item from the box and try to figure out what they each have in common, kind of like the game Tri-Bond. Once you’ve figured out what the common bond is among each of the items, you’ll be able to summarize the passage in a snap.

Read the passage of text.
Ask this question to yourself: “What do each of the details of the passage have in common?”
In your own words, find the common bond among all the details of the passage and the author’s point about this bond.
Compose a short sentence stating the bond and what the author says about the bond.

Step 1: Read the Implied Main Idea Example

When you’re with your friends, it’s okay to be loud and use slang. They’ll expect it and they aren’t grading you on your grammar. When you’re standing in a boardroom or sitting for an interview, you should use your best English possible, and keep your tone suitable to the working environment. Try to gauge the personality of the interviewer and the setting of the workplace before cracking jokes or speaking out of turn. If you’re ever in a position to speak publicly, always ask about your audience, and modify your language, tone, pitch and topic based on what you think the audience’s preferences would be. You’d never give a lecture about atoms to third-graders!

Step 2: What’s the Common Thread?

In this case, the author is writing about hanging out with friends, going on an interview, and speaking publicly, which, at first glance, don’t seem to relate to each other that much. If you find a common bond among all them, though, you’ll see that the author is giving you different situations and then telling us to speak differently in each setting (use slang with friends, be respectful and quiet in an interview, modify your tone publicly). The common bond is speaking, which will have to be part of the implied main idea.

Step 3. Summarize the Passage

A sentence like “Different situations requires different kinds of speech” would fit perfectly as the implied main idea of that passage. We had to infer that because the sentence doesn’t appear anywhere in the paragraph, but it was easy enough to find this implied main idea when you looked at the common bond uniting each idea.

Read these 2 Body Paragraph examples. Analyze why one is bad and the other one is good.

Read the following examples of expansion by examples. The first one is not very good because it looks like a fake example and isn’t plausible. There is too little detail. Then read the second one and notice how much detail and imagination they used – this is an excellent example (evidence). Think about these 2 examples when you are writing your examples/evidence in your Body Paragraphs, and add as much imagined detail as you can.

Stress causes students to lose sleep and lack of sleep will lead us to lose our concentration. When we are studying in college, we have a lot of stress because we will have to take exams and we will fail because we cannot concentrate and will not do well. For example, my friend Jose is going to BMCC. He is a nursing student and has a lot of stress. He sleeps very little because there are a lot of tests in his class and he often stays up to prepare for his tests. He couldn’t focus in his class and when he took his test, he failed and now he has to take the class again.

Comments: This is NOT very good.

Why? There is not enough detail for the reader to imagine the meaning of this. It looks fake. The example is too general and it’s easy to make up a fake one like this.

Now let’s look at another one:

The passage is right to state that stress is the main reason why students don’t sleep well. These days, many students have to work, often full-time, to support their family and pay for their tuition when they are studying in college to get a degree to improve their future. They often have to sacrifice their sleep.Imagine (you can also use “suppose …”) someone who has to work from 9-5 Monday through Friday and has to take evening classes in order to get into the nursing major in college. Many college majors such as nursing are very challenging. You need to keep a high GPA and if you don’t do well, you can’t even get into the major. I can imagine the above individual has to spend many hours till late at night, even through the whole night, plus all his free time on weekends, studying, finishing the homework on time, and preparing for tests, especially the final exams. He can’t quit his stressful job because he needs the income for himself and his family. Even on the nights when he doesn’t have any homework, all this pressure and worries about his school, work, and his future may keep him awake. What if he doesn’t get a high enough GPA? And worse, what if he fails too many classes and can’t get into nursing at all? What would his parents, his family, or his friends think of him? All this time, energy, and money will be completely wasted. Many students are under such pressure these days without even realizing it and this is a serious problem that needs health professionals’ attention.

Comments: This is much better.

Why? The student doesn’t have an example in real life, but he doesn’t pretend to have one. After a brief comment, he uses an “imagined” example to connect to the point that students’ stress is the main reason they don’t sleep well. The great thing about it is you are free to use all your imagination for details/specifics for expansion. You can see there are good details, true to some of the students’ situations today, that support the topic sentence.

Remember: you MUST THINK GRAMMAR and use it to analyze what you read. Also, open Page 4 in Module 2 and ALWAYS have it in front of you when you are writing. Especially, use the “Correcting” information at the bottom of the page, in order to remember what you need to check and correct when you review your writing. You must ALWAYS edit and correct your writing before submitting.