Key Ideas and Details: Finding What the Passage Actually Says
What this domain tests
Key Ideas and Details questions ask you to locate explicit information, decide what a paragraph or passage is mostly about, and trace how one event or idea leads to another. The core skills are close reading, main-idea identification, and cause-effect or sequence reasoning.
Concepts to master
- Main idea vs. topic: the topic is what the passage is about (a few words); the main idea is the claim the author makes about it (a full sentence).
- Supporting details: facts, examples, or quotations the author uses to back the main idea. Distinguish them from incidental details that add color but carry no argument.
- Sequence and causality: signal words such as because, as a result, therefore, before, and consequently mark relationships you will be asked to reconstruct.
- Summary scope: the correct summary covers the whole passage, not just one vivid paragraph.
Traps to watch
- True but off-topic: an answer that is factually accurate but answers a different question.
- Too narrow or too broad: a main-idea choice that captures only one paragraph, or stretches beyond what the passage supports.
- Reversed causality: the answer flips cause and effect.
- Detail-as-main-idea: a memorable example offered as the passage's central point.
Rule of thumb
Before reading the choices, state the main idea in your own words in one sentence. Then eliminate any choice that contradicts it, is narrower than it, or is broader than it. If two choices survive, ask which one is supported by more of the passage.
Worked example
A passage describes how a city replaced a busy road with a pedestrian plaza, notes initial merchant complaints, then reports rising foot traffic and sales. A choice reading "Merchants disliked the change" is true but narrow; the best main-idea answer is that the plaza ultimately benefited local business despite early resistance.