Finding the main idea is VERY IMPORTANT, because if you can’t find the main ideas, you will probably not correctly understand what you read. It’s also necessary because you must paraphrase and include EVERY main idea in your Summary. Also, when you are reading, you have ideas and thoughts/memories that you think of – you MUST write them down in the annotation, because that is how you are preparing to compose your essay response.
The first sentence often explains the subject being discussed in the passage. Main ideas are also found in the concluding sentences of a paragraph. The main idea can be expressed as a summation of the information in the paragraph as well as a link to the information in the next paragraph.
What Does a Summary Need to Have?