Locating Main Ideas in ENG11B (Lesson 2) PDF

Lesson 2: Locating Main Review lessons from ENG11B Reading & Writing. Diagnostic activity can be administered to the students. Understanding and Locating the Thesis Statement Thesis Statement- presents or describes the point of an essay. In an academic text, the thesis statement is usually presente...

Lesson 2: Locating Main Review lessons from ENG11B Reading & Writing. Diagnostic activity can be administered to the students. Understanding and Locating the Thesis Statement Thesis Statement- presents or describes the point of an essay. In an academic text, the thesis statement is usually presented in the abstract or executive summary or found at the last part of the introduction. It is written in a declarative sentence. Strategies in Locating the Thesis Statement ✓ Read the title of the text and make inferences on its purpose. ✓ If the text has no abstract or executive summary, read the first few paragraphs as the thesis statement is usually located there. ✓ In other cases, you may also check the conclusion where authors sum up and review their main point. Understanding and Locating the Topic Sentence Topic Sentence- presents or describes the point of the paragraph; in other words, it is the main idea of a paragraph. It can be located in the beginning, middle, or last part of a paragraph. Strategies in Locating the Topic Sentence ✓ Read the first sentence of the paragraph very carefully because most authors state their topic sentence in the beginning of the paragraph. ✓ Browse the sentences in the paragraph to identify what they describe. The sentence that best describes the topic of the paragraph is the topic sentence. ✓ Find the concept or idea being tackled, which in colloquial term is the “big word” in the paragraph. ✓ Identify the purpose of the paragraph. The sentence that presents or describes the purpose is the topic sentence. ✓ Observe the writing style of the author.