Which level of comprehension requires identifying main ideas within text?

The level of comprehension that involves identifying main ideas within the text is the text base level. At this stage, readers go beyond just recognizing words and sentences (which pertains to surface code) and begin to extract and synthesize the core information and themes presented in the text. This requires an understanding of how details relate to one another and to the overarching narrative or argument, leading to the identification of these main ideas.

Readers engaged at the text base level can summarize the content and understand how different pieces of information fit into a coherent structure. This is critical for deeper comprehension, as it establishes a foundation for further interpretation and mental modeling, which would occur at the mental model level. However, distinguishing the main ideas is specifically the focus of the text base comprehension level.