Main Point Questions

There has never been a Main Point Except question, because the four
wrong answers would be identical in meaning and thus easy to spot.
Main Point questions may be the question type most familiar to test takers.
Many of the standardized tests you have already encountered, such as the SAT,
contain questions that ask you to ascertain the Main Point. Even in daily
conversation you will hear, “What’s your point?” Main Point questions, as you
might suspect from the name, ask you to summarize the author’s point of view.
From a classification standpoint, Main Point questions are a subcategory of
Must Be True questions and fall into the First Family type. As with all First
Family questions, the answer you select must follow from the information in the
stimulus. But be careful: even if an answer choice must be true according to the
stimulus, if it fails to capture the main point it cannot be correct. This is the
central truth of Main Point questions: like all Must Be True question variants the
correct answer must pass the Fact Test, but with the additional criterion that the
correct answer choice must capture the author’s point.
Because every Main Point question stimulus contains an argument, if you apply
the methods discussed in Chapters Two and Three you should already know the
answer to a Main Point question by the time you read the question stem.
Primary Objective #2 states that you should identify the conclusion of the
argument, and the correct answer choice to these problems will be a rephrasing
of the main conclusion of the argument. So, by simply taking the steps you
would take to solve any question, you already have the answer to a Main Point
question at your fingertips. Be careful, though: many Main Point problems
feature a structure that places the conclusion either at the beginning or in the
middle of the stimulus. Most students have an unstated expectation that the
conclusion will appear in the last sentence, and the test makers are able to prey
upon this expectation by creating wrong answers that paraphrase the last
sentence of the stimulus. To avoid this trap, simply avoid assuming that the last
sentence is the conclusion.
The Main Point question stem format is remarkably consistent, with the primary
feature being a request for you to identify the conclusion or point of the
argument, as in the following examples:
“Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main
conclusion of the argument?”
“Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion
of the journalist’s argument?”
“Which one of the following most accurately restates the main point of
the passage?”
“The main point of the argument is that”