How to comprehend topic sentence and main idea

Topic Sentence and Main Idea

Paragraph Meaning

Paragraph are basically a series of sentence that give one basic idea. All the sentences are written in such a way that they relate to one another. Students tasks can be ;

1. Locate the topic sentence of a paragraph
2. write a topic sentence for the paragraph
3. write a title for the paragraph
4. outline the paragraph

To get more detail, about students task, let’s see the explanation of each below;

Reading for Main Idea

The ability to identify the main idea is necessary for interpretation and understanding of what is written. It is based on the accurate comprehension of the word, the phrase, and the sentence. All the other interpretative reading skills are secondary. Students who do not get the main idea can not identify the theme of the paragraph, do not understand the implied meanings, and usually cannot organize or summarize what they have read. To help the student find the main idea, the student may be required;

1. best selection title from several listed text
2. give text title based on students own words
3. read the summary of the chapter and tell what the chapter covered
4. headline found and describe it better in a newspaper.

Others means are the following: look for comparison that the author is making, study his or her vocabulary, look for analogies, study the figurative language, read between the line, and study the topic sentence.

Robinson (1961) suggest that the students be taught to identify the main idea of a sentence by being required to underline the key words. He then moves to identifying the key sentence in the paragraph. This is the topic sentence, some paragraph however, do not have a single sentence that summarizes the main idea. Thus the third step consist of teaching students to make an inference from a series of sentence as to what the basic idea is. Eventually the student need to learn that a main idea may be spread over two or three paragraph

Here are the task needed to identify topic sentence!

Which one of this sentence become a topic sentence?

Children’s hearts beat faster than grown-ups

1. when a baby is born, its heart beats around 140 times a minute.
2. In children about ten years old, the heart beats around 90 time/minute
3. Later on, the heart beats about 80 time/ minute
4. In grown ups the heart beats about 70 time/minute
5. Children’s heart beat faster then grown ups

Answer : e

Because option e is the conclusion of the others option.

What is the main idea of below paragraph?

Most thing cannot be enjoyed without friend. But reading can. While sitting alone in our house we can travel around the world. Therefore we can understand the reason for thousands of things. Living in this age we can talk with those who live thousands of years ago. Although we may be unworthy, we can become the friends of wise men. Only books can give us these pleasures. Those who cannot enjoy them are poor men; those who enjoy them most, obtain the most happiness from them

Answer :

Reading offers people many pleasures.

Main idea must be in sentence form, so reading offers people many pleasures is a sentence.