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The Main Point

Whether you’re having a conversation in real life or listening to a passage on a test, knowing how to listen for the main point is key to actually understanding what the other person is trying to say. The main point is the most important concept or argument of the passage as a whole. Once you understand the main point, all the details will fall into place, but without the main point, nothing really makes sense.

Many students struggle with this because they think they need to understand every single word and detail to know what a speaker is saying. Then, they get so nervous and frantic about remembering every little thing that they completely lose sight of the main point. In this lesson, you’ll get some tips for avoiding this problem so you can stay focused on the main point.

Word Chains

One tool you can use when you’re trying to listen for the main point is word chains , sequences of similar or related words repeated throughout the conversation. This is especially true when you’re listening to something that the speaker has prepared in advance, like a lecture for a class. Here’s an example:

PROFESSOR: ‘Good morning, class. Today we’re talking about King Cyrus: specifically what kind of a leader is he? At some points, we see Cyrus talking to his generals and discussing what to do, which is what we think of as good leadership, but we also see him bribing his subordinates and tricking them into doing things. So, what kind of leadership is this? Is this the way we would expect a king to behave? Or, is it okay because Cyrus is a military commander in the middle of a war?’

In this passage, you can hear that ‘leadership,’ ‘leader,’ and related words are repeated several times. The same thing happens with the name ‘Cyrus.’ This creates a kind of chain of words, linking everything together; this is a passage about King Cyrus and leadership.

Listening for these word chains is a great way to identify the overall topic of a passage, or what the whole passage is about. If you’ve really identified the topic, you should be able to find related words scattered all throughout the passage, not just in one section or another.

Once you’ve identified the topic, you can ask yourself: ‘what is the speaker saying about the topic?’ The answer to this question will be: The main point of the passage. In this case, the professor is introducing some questions about King Cyrus and leadership.

Other Strategies

Word chains are helpful, but they aren’t the only way to listen for the main point of a conversation or another piece of spoken English. Here are three more tips:

First, pay attention to the beginning and end of a conversation. At the beginning, speakers will downright tell you what they want to talk about and why, and at the end, many people will recap by repeating their main idea. Here are a few examples:

JILL: Good morning, Joe. Can we talk about the printer repair for a minute?

It’s a good bet that the topic of this passage will be printer repair. Then, you just have to ask yourself: ‘what is Jill saying about printer repair?’ and you’ll have her main point.

Or

GREG: So, just to sum up, today we talked about bibliography sessions and why they’re helpful when you’re writing your papers.

Greg’s main point was probably something like ‘bibliography sessions are helpful.’

Second, keep an ear out for phrases that signal a recap of important points. You can even identify one of these in Greg’s statement above: ‘just to sum up’ indicates that Greg is now about to repeat his main point quickly. Other phrases that work like this include ‘to recap’ or ‘in conclusion.’ In a conversation, speakers sometimes recap each other’s main points with phrases like ‘so, you’re basically saying that…’ or ‘so, your point is… .’

Finally, listen to the sound of a speaker’s voice as well as the words. Often, the main point will be repeated more than once, spoken more loudly or slowly, or otherwise emphasized.

Two or More Speakers

If you’re listening to a conversation between two or more speakers, identifying the main point gets a little more complicated. The speakers will be discussing the same topic, but the speakers may have different main ideas about the topic. If you’re listening for the topic of the passage, you’ll want to listen to both speakers and watch out for word chains - just like you learned in the previous section. But, when you start asking what the speaker has to say about this topic, remember to distinguish carefully between the two speakers.

Lesson Summary

In this lesson, you got some tips on listening for the main point of a passage. Listen for chains of similar or related words that the speaker or speakers repeat throughout the conversation - this will likely guide you towards the topic . Then, ask yourself what the speaker is saying about this topic, and you’ll have the main point.

Remember that if you’re listening to a conversation between two people, each speaker probably has a different main point, even if they’re discussing the same topic. Pay attention to the beginnings and endings of conversation, and be on the alert for words or phrases that mark a summary or a recap. And, finally, listen for anything spoken more loudly or slowly: these are often cues that the speaker is making an important main point. It takes practice to make this all work, so don’t be worried if you can’t get it all right away. Just keep working on it, and you’ll figure it out!