To extract key ideas and gist needs eyes hurrying across the page, picking out the central information only. This valuable technique for reviewing material or determining whether it is relevant for more detailed investigation is based on glancing through a text to extract the gist or main points. This strategy requires knowledge of text structures, different functions of paragraphs (e.g. descriptive, defining, explanatory, etc.) to recognise the relationship between main ideas and secondary ideas or other information from lexical and grammatical indicators.

predicting
from several articles which deal with a particular aspect of the topic.

matching
the misplaced sentences into a paragraph (developing awareness of topic sentences and paragraph coherence),
short texts with headlines or pictures.

reconstructing
a paragraph from component sentences,
a text giving subtitles to short chapters,
topic sentences with particular paragraphs.

Science books use headings and subheading to indicate main ideas and subpoints, using mostly numbering systems consistent with these divisions. A clear idea of the main points can be acquired by studying the organisation of the texts, looking for headings of sections, boxed information, points written in a different colour/mode. The end of the chapter includes rules, conclusions or summaries.