A study tested the relative effectiveness of four methods of teaching remedial reading students (grades 6 through 11) how to identify the main idea of expository paragraphs. Forty-seven students were divided according to treatment and were given the same pool of 125 paragraphs about geology and weather to read, and were given pretests and posttests. Treatments were as follows: (1) strategy training--tactics for identifying the topic and main idea of paragraphs, as well as metacognitive strategies for checking main idea hypotheses; (2) classification training--instruction and practice in classifying words, phrases, and sentences under appropriate topics; (3) a combination of classification and strategy training; and (4) practice only (control group). All instruction was carried out via the computer. The results indicated significant effects of strategy training on the students' ability to identify the main idea in paragraphs about the training content and in paragraphs about new content. Classification training showed positive effects on paragraphs about the training content, but the effect did not transfer to new content. Results suggest that comprehension strategies and metacognitive strategies can effectively improve remedial readers' abilities to identify the main idea of expository paragraphs. (NKA)