Secondary and postsecondary students who use the read-answer-discuss strategy while studying read ineffectively and do not comprehend or retain main ideas. A study examined the effectiveness of (1) the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity, (2) conceptual mapping, (3) a combination of those strategies, and (4) reading and underlining main ideas as strategies for helping students remember main ideas. Subjects, 48 freshman composition students at a large public university, were assigned to one of the four instructional approaches. They were also categorized as high or low aptitude students according to their SAT scores. The students had four weeks of their respective instruction, and practiced their study approach on two take-home essays. A third, 50-minute in-class essay was examined for the number of main ideas and subordinate ideas students recalled from reading an essay on which their own essays were subsequently based. Results showed that low aptitude students who used both directed reading and conceptual mapping, and those who read and underlined, recalled significantly more main ideas than students who used directed reading alone. For high aptitude students, none of the approaches had a significant effect on their ability to recall. The findings suggest that mapping alone is not effective, but that mapping and directed reading, and reading and underlining, significantly affect comprehensivon and retrieval. (Fifteen references are included.) (JC)