Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure (MTEL):
Information, Interactive Practice Exercises, and Practice Tests 1
Objective: Determine the writer’s main idea. The correct answer is (b). Choice (a) is a somewhat mangled restatement of the first sentence of the paragraph. Choice (c) restates the last sentence of the paragraph. However, the student should not assume that the main idea of every paragraph automatically is placed into one or the other of these positions. Rather, the student should examine the whole passage asked about (not just one paragraph if the question asks for a larger portion of the passage, nor ideas from outside the passage asked about) and choose the answer which best describes the central idea of that passage. Choice (d) here is close to the main idea, but is more general than the information in the passage: choice (d) would incorrectly apply to downtown London as well as to a relatively wild Salem, for instance. Choice (b) gives the main idea of the paragraph at the appropriate level of specificity.