Getting the Main Idea: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Popular mediaists, podcasters, and post-anthropological journalists of the Emily Hansford ilk have turned their ire against teachers whom they believe to be anti-phonicators in a new direction. Now they want to argue that researchers and teachers alike don’t know beans about teaching comprehension. How do you teach getting the main idea? Why teach such nonsensical strategies?

Yes and no. Teaching main idea is, to be fair, a double-edged sword. Rooted in a relic from the 19th century, what I call the hamburger paragraph, current-traditional rhetoric uses main idea as code for “topic sentence.” Richard Larsen’s 1960ish analysis of tens of thousands of paragraphs in real-world texts put the nix on this notion. Fewer than 2% of these paragraphs used a topic sentence in first position.

But that doesn’t mean writers don’t write paragraphs; it’s just they are more like incredibly versatile. It doesn’t mean paragraphs don’t focus on a theme or a topic or an idea. Yes, they usually do. Of course, sometimes paragraphs serve as punctuation and nothing—breaking long paragraphs a la Faulkner into shorter paragraphs to scaffold the reader’s access to long short-term memory.

Reading real-world texts calls for some cognitive activity beyond word identification and syntactic construction. Sentence integration tasks the metalinguistic brain with knitting shards into patterns with any luck commensurate with the sense the writer had in mind.

Teaching children to get the main idea of a paragraph hinges upon teaching them to write and recognize paragraphs in their own work. I taught my fourth graders not to indent on their first rough drafts. Paragraphing is often up for grabs through the revision process.

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Think about teaching students about salad paragraphs. Depending on developmental level—I’d try it with first graders to see—a teacher might task the children with figuring out the notion of text structures or “chunks” put together on the principle of local cohesion.

Let’s talk about what a hamburger paragraph means, let’s practice that, then let’s try a salad paragraph. Let’s work in groups to create our common sense on this salad matter to report out. What are similarities and differences between hamburgers and salads?

Rigidity vs. Flexibility? Hamburger is more structured; salad is more fluid. Simplicity vs. Complexity? Hamburger is pretty basic, has been forever. Salad is a themed collection, a recipe enhanced by the work of the intuitive chef. Pull off the freeway, stop at a fast food restaurant, and eat in the car vs. speak with a waiter.

By all means, teachers should and must teach the hamburger paragraph. This paragraph is the meat and potatoes of technical writing. It’s easy to understand and teaches the basic concept of text structure. It’s really not difficult to teach. I like veggies. Broccoli…Turnips…Peas…I like veggies a lot. Stopping there is a mistake because writers don’t stop there.

The weakness isn’t the hamburger. It’s cutting off development before it’s time and can lead to formulaic writing appropriate in a small corner of the universe of discourse. After twelve years of hamburgers, the thrill is gone. Familiarity bias sets in, and graduates find no joy nor power in writing.

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The salad paragraph is a structure of a different quality. As a tool of written discourse, it affords the writer luxuries reserved for real-world agents and brokers of meaning.

Mixed fresh, robust ingredients tossed together unified by an experienced chef’s dressing affords flexibility, variety, and nuanced cohesion significant in accomplishing a nuanced rhetorical intent like, say, pulling the reader’s imagination into action during a boring recitation.

Humor, ambiguity, ornamentation, emphasis, a range of approaches to the reader’s sensibilities can be experienced experimentally in teachers who authorize learners to write experimentally, rather than be written by, the hamburger paragraph.

Moreover, the salad paragraph makes room for embeddings of the parenthetical variety. If I wanted to explain how charcoal is made, the hamburger might say

“Charcoal is made by heating wood without oxygen, removing water and volatile compounds. This process leaves a carbon-rich material that burns hotter and cleaner than wood.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

The salad?

“Charcoal is made by heating wood without oxygen, removing water and volatile compounds. Scientists believe charcoal use began accidentally 30,000 years ago when humans discovered that partially burned wood after a forest fire had different properties. This process leaves a carbon-rich material that burns hotter and cleaner than wood.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

Proponents of the hamburger method would be troubled by the salad method for its clear violation of unity, the cardinal principle of the 19th century paragraph. While it is permissible to infer a topic sentence in traditional paragraphs, this salad lacks even an inferred topic sentence to accommodate the historical data, though it exhibits a single focus with topical unity.

All information in the hamburger is linked logically , from the charcoal production process to the end product. Honoring a key rule of technical writing, it is unadorned and concise—no tangents, no seductive details to distract from the topic. If the goal is to explain how charcoal is made and what it's like, this hamburger paragraph accomplishes that without deviation.

Wait, thd second paragraph is far better, states the salad eater. True, the focus is shattered. The reader must process historical information that breaks the logical unity. But the extra information gives the reader a more robust understanding. It is interesting and engaging.

Educationally, I would argue that the 30,000 year distraction actually clarifies the information. It may raise questions of interest to the reader, compelling them to look beyond the text. The odds of remembering the information could be enhanced; readers can visualize prehistoric humans collecting charcoal from a destroyed forest

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In addition to hamburger, teach the layer cake paragraph. Each layer represents a subtopic or aspect of the main idea. Frosting acts as transitions between ideas. In the following example, the frosting is sentence parallelism.

“The United States government is divided into three distinct branches, each with its own responsibilities and powers. The Legislative branch, Congress, crafts and passes laws. The Executive branch, led by the President, implements and enforces these laws. The Judicial branch, headed by the Supreme Court, interprets the laws and ensures their constitutionality. This system of checks and balances preserves the nation's democratic principles.“

Puzzle paragraphs are those with pieces that fit together to form a complete picture, especially nice for argumentative writing. Two or more discrete pieces of evidence can be marshaled in a paragraph to support a claim.

“Electric cars are many years away from becoming the norm. The current lack of charging infrastructure poses a significant hurdle. Battery technology still limits vehicle range, making long-distance travel challenging. High initial costs put electric cars out of reach for many consumers. Additionally, the power grid in many areas isn't equipped to handle a large-scale shift to electric vehicles. These interconnected challenges collectively suggest that widespread adoption of electric cars remains a distant prospect.”

River paragraphs flow logically in their beds and—sometimes unexpectedly—go down a tributary or pull off on a bank. Tree paragraphs have a trunk with branches, and branches can branch themselves. Branch paragraphs can cohere or not with other branch paragraphs but always tie together in a hierarchy grounded by the trunk.

The main idea of a constellation paragraph is the brightest star with supporting ideas as surrounding stars to allow for relationships between ideas without strict hierarchy. The difference between this sort of paragraph and a tree paragraph is coherence. Subordinate stars may be nothing like one another except that they exist in proximity to the brightest star.

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To summarize, paragraph structures branch into various categories, each serving different purposes in writing, leading students to find parallels between composition and comprehension. At a base level, a starting point, lies the hamburger paragraph, with its classic structure of topic sentence, supporting details, and conclusion. Using metaphors can help learners break through the idea that the hamburger paragraph is all anyone needs to know about writing—and especially about reading. Butterfly paragraphs anyone?

Writing experimentally with low stakes attached in these diverse, potentially infinite forms helps writers choose the best structure for their purposes, creating clear and effective compositions according to their interests and intentions. In this setting teachers can bring in paragraphs from real-world writers for structural analysis. This work would involve reading—and getting the main idea.