Lesson 25 of 35 · Reading Comprehension
Main idea, primary purpose and the role of a paragraph
Answer main-idea, primary-purpose and function questions by predicting from your map and testing each choice for scope and verb.
About 22 minutes
In this lesson
- State a passage's main idea and primary purpose before reading the choices.
- Reject choices that are too narrow, too broad or wrong in their verb.
- Say why an author includes a paragraph or a detail.
The idea
Three questions about the whole
Many Reading Comprehension questions ask about the passage as a whole or about the job one part does in it. They come in three common forms:
- Main idea: "Which best states the main point of the passage?"
- Primary purpose: "The primary purpose of the passage is to..." The answer is usually a verb phrase: to argue that..., to explain why..., to challenge...
- Function: "The second paragraph serves to..." or "The author mentions X in order to..."
All three are answered from the map, not from the details. If you mapped the passage, you can predict the answer before you read a single choice, and prediction is what protects you from attractive wrong answers.
Main idea: what the author would sign
The main idea is the claim the whole passage supports, usually the author's position. Test a candidate with two questions:
- Would the author sign it? A view the passage reports and then rejects fails at once.
- Does it cover the whole passage? A point that only one paragraph makes is too narrow; a claim larger than anything the passage argues is too broad.
| Choice type | Example (replication passage) | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Too narrow | "Some experiments depend on the time of day." | One detail from one paragraph. |
| Too broad | "Science cannot be trusted to correct itself." | Far beyond anything argued. |
| Wrong voice | "Failed replications show misconduct." | The view the author pushes against. |
| Right | "Failed replications often reflect unreported conditions and are better treated as clues than verdicts." | Covers the argument; the author would sign. |
Primary purpose: get the verb right
A purpose choice has two parts: a verb and an object. Check the verb first; it often eliminates half the choices.
- Argue, challenge, criticise, defend, propose mean the author takes a position.
- Describe, explain, summarise, outline mean the author mostly reports or accounts for something.
- Compare, evaluate mean the author weighs two or more things.
A passage that calls a view "misleading" and proposes another is not one whose purpose is "to describe" two views. A passage that explains a process with no position is not one whose purpose is "to argue". Match the strength of the verb to how committed the author is, then check the object: what exactly is argued, explained or challenged?
Function: why is it there?
For a function question, ask what the part does for the main point. Typical jobs:
- gives background the argument needs;
- presents a view the author will answer;
- offers an example or illustration of a claim;
- makes a concession before a turn;
- states or supports the conclusion.
Then read the part's neighbours. A function is a relation: an example illustrates something, an objection is raised against something. The right choice usually names both the job and what it relates to.
When the question names a detail ("The author mentions the supplier of a chemical in order to..."), the answer is almost never about the detail itself. It is about the claim the detail supports. Find the sentence the detail sits in, and the claim that sentence serves.
Testing the choices
After predicting, read every choice and sort it:
- Matches the prediction in voice, scope and verb: keep.
- Half right: the first half matches, the second adds something unsupported. A single wrong word sinks a choice; reject it.
- True but beside the point: something the passage says, but not the answer to this question. Common in function questions.
If two choices survive, compare them on the word that differs, and go back to the passage for that word only.
Worked examples
Example 1: Predicting the primary purpose
When a published finding cannot be reproduced by other laboratories, the failure is often treated as a scandal, and attention turns to whether the original researchers were careless or dishonest. Such cases exist. Yet treating every failed replication as a sign of misconduct obscures a more ordinary explanation.
Many experiments depend on conditions that their authors did not think to report because they seemed too obvious to mention: the supplier of a chemical, the time of day measurements were taken, the way animals were handled before testing. A second laboratory that follows the published method exactly may still differ in several of these respects. When its results diverge, the divergence may reveal not an error in the first study but a variable no one knew mattered.
Seen this way, a failed replication is less a verdict than a clue. It tells researchers that the finding is narrower than it first appeared, and that some unlisted condition is doing more work than anyone suspected. Laboratories that respond by comparing their procedures in detail, rather than by defending or attacking the original paper, are the ones most likely to learn what that condition is.
What is the primary purpose of the passage? Predict, then judge these candidates: (1) "to expose researchers who publish unreliable findings"; (2) "to describe the methods laboratories use to replicate experiments"; (3) "to argue that failed replications are often better understood as revealing unreported conditions than as evidence of misconduct".
Map: (1) failed replications treated as scandal; author concedes misconduct exists ("Such cases exist") but says this obscures a more ordinary explanation; (2) the explanation: unreported conditions; (3) so treat a failure as a clue; compare procedures.
Voice and verb: the author takes a position ("obscures", "less a verdict than a clue"), so the verb should be argue, challenge or propose, not describe.
Prediction: to argue that failed replications often reflect unreported conditions and should be treated as clues.
Judge: (1) takes the scandal view the author pushes against; (2) has a neutral verb and a topic the passage does not cover in detail; (3) matches the prediction.
Answer
Candidate 3. Candidate 1 is the wrong voice, the view the author qualifies; candidate 2 has the wrong verb, since the passage argues rather than describes.
Example 2: The job of the middle paragraph
Using the replication passage in the first example: "The second paragraph serves primarily to..." Predict the answer.
Find the paragraph's place on the map: paragraph 1 promises "a more ordinary explanation"; paragraph 3 draws the practical lesson.
Paragraph 2 supplies that explanation: unreported conditions, with three examples of them, and the consequence that a diverging result may reveal an unknown variable.
State the job and what it relates to: it gives the alternative explanation promised in the first paragraph, which the third paragraph builds on.
Answer
It sets out the ordinary explanation (unreported conditions) that the first paragraph says is obscured by the misconduct view. A choice saying it "lists the errors careless researchers make" is the trap: the conditions it lists are not errors.
Example 3: Why mention a detail?
Using the replication passage: "The author mentions the time of day measurements were taken primarily in order to..."
Find the sentence: it is one of three examples of "conditions that their authors did not think to report because they seemed too obvious to mention".
Ask what claim the example serves: that experiments depend on unreported conditions, which can differ between laboratories.
Phrase the answer as illustration of that claim, not as a claim about time of day itself.
Answer
To illustrate the kind of seemingly trivial, unreported condition that can make a second laboratory's results differ. A choice claiming the author "recommends taking measurements at a fixed time" turns an illustration into advice the passage never gives.
Common traps
The too-narrow main idea
A choice that accurately repeats one paragraph feels safe because you can find it in the text. But a main idea must cover the passage. If a choice would be equally good as the summary of one paragraph alone, it is probably too narrow.
The verb that overcommits or undercommits
"To prove" for a passage that suggests, or "to describe" for a passage that argues, misstates the author's stance. Check the verb against the author's evaluative words before you read the object.
Half-right choices
Many wrong choices begin exactly as you predicted and then add one unsupported claim: "...and recommends that journals ban such studies". Read to the last word; a choice is only as right as its weakest part.
True but not the function
In function questions, choices often state something the passage really says. That is not enough; the question asks why the part is there. Ask what the part does for the main point.
Check yourself
Answer each question before you open its answer.
Question 1: Primary purpose
Reading Comprehension
Debates about translating poetry usually begin with a choice between fidelity and freedom. A faithful translation, it is said, keeps the literal sense of every line at the cost of the original's music; a free translation keeps the music, or something like it, at the cost of the sense. Each camp accuses the other of betraying the poet.
This way of putting the matter assumes that sense and music can be separated, so that a translator must decide which to keep. In much poetry they cannot. A line's rhythm may be what tells a reader that a statement is ironic; a rhyme may join two words whose connection is the poem's whole point. A translation that preserves the dictionary meaning of each word but loses the rhythm has not kept the sense at all, because part of the sense lived in the rhythm.
None of this makes translation impossible. It means that the translator's real task is to identify, line by line, what is carrying the meaning, and to find some means in the new language that will carry it there. Sometimes that will be a literal rendering, sometimes a loose one. The fidelity-versus-freedom debate, by asking translators to choose a policy in advance, directs attention away from that work.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
- A.argue that free translations of poetry are superior to faithful ones
- B.explain why poetry cannot be successfully translated
- C.challenge a common way of framing the choices in poetry translation and propose a different account of the translator's task
- D.trace the history of the debate between faithful and free translators
- E.defend faithful translation against the charge that it betrays the poet
Show the answer
Answer: C. challenge a common way of framing the choices in poetry translation and propose a different account of the translator's task
Working
Map: (1) the fidelity-versus-freedom debate; (2) the debate assumes sense and music can be separated, and often they cannot; (3) translation is still possible: the real task is finding what carries meaning, line by line, and the debate distracts from it. The author challenges the framing and proposes another account of the task. Choosing a side, declaring translation impossible or tracing a history all misread the passage.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. The author says the right rendering is "sometimes a literal rendering, sometimes a loose one"; neither policy is declared superior.
- B. The passage says plainly "None of this makes translation impossible".
- D. The passage describes the debate's terms, not its history; there is no sequence of events or periods.
- E. The author criticises the faithful camp's assumption as much as the free camp's, and defends neither.
What carries over
When an author attacks the terms of a debate, the purpose is to reframe it, not to win it for one side.
Question 2: Role of the second paragraph
Reading Comprehension
Debates about translating poetry usually begin with a choice between fidelity and freedom. A faithful translation, it is said, keeps the literal sense of every line at the cost of the original's music; a free translation keeps the music, or something like it, at the cost of the sense. Each camp accuses the other of betraying the poet.
This way of putting the matter assumes that sense and music can be separated, so that a translator must decide which to keep. In much poetry they cannot. A line's rhythm may be what tells a reader that a statement is ironic; a rhyme may join two words whose connection is the poem's whole point. A translation that preserves the dictionary meaning of each word but loses the rhythm has not kept the sense at all, because part of the sense lived in the rhythm.
None of this makes translation impossible. It means that the translator's real task is to identify, line by line, what is carrying the meaning, and to find some means in the new language that will carry it there. Sometimes that will be a literal rendering, sometimes a loose one. The fidelity-versus-freedom debate, by asking translators to choose a policy in advance, directs attention away from that work.
The second paragraph serves primarily to
- A.present the argument that free translators use against faithful ones
- B.concede that sense and music can usually be separated
- C.propose the method the author recommends to translators
- D.question an assumption underlying the debate and illustrate why it often fails
- E.provide historical evidence about how poems have been translated
Show the answer
Answer: D. question an assumption underlying the debate and illustrate why it often fails
Working
The paragraph opens by naming the assumption the debate makes ("that sense and music can be separated"), says that in much poetry they cannot, and illustrates with rhythm signalling irony and rhyme joining words. That is questioning an assumption and illustrating its failure. The method comes later, and neither camp's argument is being presented.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. The paragraph speaks in the author's voice against an assumption both camps share; it is not one camp's argument.
- B. This reverses the paragraph, which says that in much poetry they cannot be separated.
- C. The recommended approach, identifying what carries the meaning line by line, comes in the third paragraph.
- E. The paragraph's illustrations are general (a rhythm, a rhyme), not historical evidence about past translations.
What carries over
A function answer names the job and what it acts on: here, an assumption of the debate.
Question 3: Why mention rhyme?
Reading Comprehension
Debates about translating poetry usually begin with a choice between fidelity and freedom. A faithful translation, it is said, keeps the literal sense of every line at the cost of the original's music; a free translation keeps the music, or something like it, at the cost of the sense. Each camp accuses the other of betraying the poet.
This way of putting the matter assumes that sense and music can be separated, so that a translator must decide which to keep. In much poetry they cannot. A line's rhythm may be what tells a reader that a statement is ironic; a rhyme may join two words whose connection is the poem's whole point. A translation that preserves the dictionary meaning of each word but loses the rhythm has not kept the sense at all, because part of the sense lived in the rhythm.
None of this makes translation impossible. It means that the translator's real task is to identify, line by line, what is carrying the meaning, and to find some means in the new language that will carry it there. Sometimes that will be a literal rendering, sometimes a loose one. The fidelity-versus-freedom debate, by asking translators to choose a policy in advance, directs attention away from that work.
The author mentions that "a rhyme may join two words whose connection is the poem's whole point" primarily in order to
- A.illustrate a way in which a poem's sound can carry part of its meaning
- B.argue that translators should always preserve a poem's rhymes
- C.show that rhyming poems are harder to translate than unrhymed ones
- D.give an example of a successful free translation
- E.criticise poets who rely on rhyme to make their point
Show the answer
Answer: A. illustrate a way in which a poem's sound can carry part of its meaning
Working
The rhyme sentence sits beside the rhythm sentence, both supporting the claim that sense and music often cannot be separated. Its job is to show sound carrying meaning. Turning it into a rule for translators, a difficulty ranking, an example of a translation or a criticism of poets each adds something the passage does not say.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. The author never says rhyme should always be kept; the third paragraph says the right means varies line by line.
- C. The passage never compares rhymed with unrhymed poems.
- D. No particular translation, free or faithful, is discussed.
- E. The author treats rhyme carrying meaning as a feature of poetry, not as a fault of poets.
What carries over
A detail is usually there to support the claim of its sentence or paragraph; name that claim.
Key points
Predict the main idea, purpose or function from your map before reading the choices.
A main idea must be the author's and must cover the whole passage.
Check the verb of a purpose choice against how committed the author is.
A function answer names the job and what the part relates to.
One unsupported word makes a choice wrong.
All questions here are original and written for UniExamer; none comes from the test maker.
Written by the UniExamer team with AI assistance. Every worked example and check question was re-solved by an independent checker before publication. No subject expert has reviewed this lesson yet. If you find a mistake, write to support@uniexamer.com.