Key Ideas and Details
What this domain tests
These questions ask you to identify what a passage says outright and what it implies. The core skills are main idea, theme, summary, supporting details, inference, and sequence or cause-and-effect relationships.
Concepts you must control
- Topic vs. main idea. The topic is what the passage is about (one or two words). The main idea is a full statement of the author's point about that topic.
- Main idea vs. theme. A theme is a general insight about life or human behavior, stated without naming the specific characters or events.
- Supporting details are the facts, examples, and reasons that hold the main idea up. Some details are vivid but minor.
- Inference is a conclusion the text strongly suggests but never states. It must be forced by the words on the page, not by your own experience.
Traps to expect
- An answer that is true according to the passage but only covers one paragraph (too narrow).
- A main idea broad enough to fit almost any passage (too broad).
- An inference that is plausible in real life but never supported by the text.
- A theme answer that names a specific person, place, or object.
Rule of thumb
Before choosing, ask: Could this sentence serve as a title-level claim for the whole passage, not just one part? If it only fits a sentence or two, it is a detail, not the main idea.
Worked example
A passage describes a coastal town that banned single-use plastic bags, then reports that some shoppers switched to heavier reusable bags that require more energy to make. The strongest main idea is not "plastic bags harm the environment" (a detail-level backdrop) but "a well-intentioned policy produced a trade-off the town had not anticipated," because that sentence accounts for both the ban and the setback.