Details

This chapter is about Using Inference to Identify Implied Main Ideas. The authors use details to help reads understand the supporting details.

Details are specific pieces of information that serve as the "arms and legs" of the main idea. They are usually presented as facts, opinions, examples, illustrations, explanations or definitions and are frequently discovered by asking questions. In order to understand a paragraph, you need to be able to pinpoint the topic and locate the main idea. It is the "key concept" being expressed. It supports the main idea by telling how, what, when, where, why, how much, or how many. Location the topic, main idea and supporting details helps you understand the points, the writer is attempting to express. Identifying the relationship between these will increase your comprehension.

If you are able to distinguish between the major and main supporting details, in your reading materials, it means you have understood what you have reading.



Learning Journal, P139

Exercise 6a, Identifying Major Supporting Details, P180
Your question:
How is it that the pain from a beating does not come until about eight or ten seconds after the stroke?
Major supporting detail: The stroke itself is merely a loud crack and a sort of blunt thud against your backside, numbing you completely.

Your question: Why is a tattoo a bad thing in the white-collar world?
Major supporting detail: You cannot earn power.

Your question: Why didn’t she approve of him?
Major supporting details: A. fell asleep at desk
B. Sniffled all the time

Your question: How does the visitor’s hand feel?
Major supporting detail: It was cool and quite oily and seemed human to me.

Your question: What advantages does the pointed arch offer?
Major supporting detail:
A. Because the sides arc up to a point, weight is channeled down to the ground at a steeper angle, and therefore the arch can be taller.
B. The vault constructed from such an arch also can be much taller than a barrel vault.

Your question: How does the Bacillus subtitles bacterium reproduce?
Major supporting details:
It splits every twenty minutes.