TOEFL SAMPLE OF MAIN IDEA EXERCIEE

Passage 1
Off-Broadway theater developed in New York City in about 1950 as a result of
dissatisfaction with conditions on Broadway. Its founders believed that Broadway was overly
concerned with producing safe, commercially successful hit plays rather than drama with artistic
quality. Off-Broadway producers tried to assist playwrights, directors, and performers who could
not find work on Broadway. Off-Broadway theaters were poorly equipped, had limited seating,
and provided few conveniences for audiences. But the originality of the scripts, the creativity of
the performers, and the low cost of tickets made up for these disadvantages, and off-Broadway
theater prospered. However, by the 1960s, costs began to rise, and by the 1970s, off-Broadway
theater was encountering many of the difficulties of Broadway and had lost much of its vitality.
With its decline, an experimental movement called off-off-Broadway theater developed.

What is the main idea of this passage?

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Passage 2

Every scientific discipline tends to develop its own special language because it finds ordinary
words inadequate, and psychology is no different. The purpose of this special jargon is not to
mystify non-psychologists; rather, it allows psychologists to accurately describe the phenomena
they are discussing and to communicate with each other effectively. Of course, psychological
terminology consists in part of everyday words such as emotion, intelligence, and motivation, but
psychologists use these words somewhat differently. For example, a non-psychologist may use
the term anxiety to mean nervousness or fear, but most psychologists reserve the term to describe
a condition produced when one fears events over which one has no control.

What is the main idea of this passage?

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Passage 3
Gifford Pinchot was the first professionally trained forester in the United States. After he
graduated from Yale in 1889, he studied forestry in Europe. In the 1890s he managed the forest
on the Biltmore estate in North Carolina (now Pisgah National Forest) and became the first to
practice scientific forestry. Perhaps his most important contribution to conservation was
persuading President Theodore Roosevelt to set aside millions of acres in the West as forest
reserves. These lands now make up much of the national parks and national forests of the United
States. Pinchot became the chief forester of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905. Although he held
that post for only five years, he established guidelines that set forest policy for decades to come.

What is the main idea of this passage?

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IELTS SAMPLE OF MAIN IDEA EXERCIEE

What is the best heading for this passage?

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What is the best heading for this passage?

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What is the best heading for this passage?

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1. Relationships between biological and adoptive
kin have international scope
2. Families with an adopted member face more
challenges than biological families
3. Adoptive families and adoptees are treated like
criminals in nations that over-value blood
relationships.
4. Where blood kinship is excessively valued,
adoption is considered inferior.
5. Some birth mothers who were promised secrecy
about their role felt that breaking that promise
was an invasion of their privacy.
6. The adoptive relationship is inherently stressful

7. Some birth mothers felt that their biological

children’s pursuit of their identities should be
abandoned based on the possibility that the birth
mother requested privacy
8. Adoption touches a surprising number of people
throughout American society
1. When I finally get around to cleaning out my refrigerator, I always find something vile at
the back of a shelf, such as moldy fruit or old smelly beans

2. Petra has so many friends because she is a gregarious person.

3. I can't believe it! Right in the middle of our conversation, Peter turned around abruptly
and walked out of the room!

4. The thought of eating a rat is abhorrent to most people.

5. The lovely egret is in danger of extinction because clothing manufacturers use their long,
beautiful tail feathers to make ladies' hats.

6. You can trust the salesmen at that store because they always conduct business in an
aboveboard manner.

7. After the harvest, we had an abundant amount of apples. We made apple pie, apple sauce,
and apple juice because we had so many apples!

8. The easter egg hunt featured cryptic clues such as, “you will find a prize somewhere
narrow” and “look for the pink

9. Because of the professor’s explanation was nebulous, several of the students asked him to
make himself clear

10. The bank robber was apparently nondescript-none of the witnesses could think of any
special charateristics that might identify him.

11. The tiger’s roar could be heard in villages far away

12. Verbose writing can be hard to follow. For instance, “at this point in time, we have an
urgently felt need for more and greater financial resources” is less clear than “ We need
money now.”

13. The hill was too arduous for us to climb. We had to walk our bicycles up the hill.
 SAMPLE TOEFL

Questions 1-10
The growth of cities, the construction of hundreds of new factories, and the spread
of railroads in the United States before 1850 had increased the need for better illumination.
But the lighting in American homes had improved very little over that of ancient times.
Line Through the colonial period, homes were lit with tallow candles or with a lamp of the
5 kind used in ancient Rome – a dish of fish oil or other animal or vegetable oil in which
a twisted rag served as a wick. Some people used lard, but they had to heat charcoal
underneath to keep it soft and burnable. The sperm whale provided a superior burning oil,
but this was expensive. In 1830 a new substance called “camphene” was patented, and it
proved to be an excellent illuminant. But while camphene gave a bright light it too
10 remained expensive, had an unpleasant odor, and also was dangerously explosive.
Between 1830 and 1850 it seemed that the only hope for cheaper illumination in the
United States was in the wider use of gas. In the 1840’s American gas manufacturers
adopted improved British techniques for producing illuminating gas from coal. But the
expense of piping gas to the consumer remained so high that until midcentury gaslighting
15 was feasible only in urban areas, and only for public buildings or for the wealthy.
In 1854 a Canadian doctor, Abraham Gesner, patented a process for distilling a
pitchlike mineral found in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that produced illuminating
gas and an oil that he called “kerosene” (from “keros,” the Greek word for wax, and “ene”
because it resembled camphene). Kerosene, though cheaper than camphene, had an
20 unpleasant odor, and Gesner never made his fortune from it. But Gesner had aroused a new
hope for making an illuminating oil from product coming out of North American mines.