Copyright 2004 © Laraine Flemming.
1. I believe students need to make a distinction between topic sentences and main ideas. They need to realize that the main idea is the essential message of a paragraph, and that message can be paraphrased in a number of different ways. However, when the author puts that message into words, those words constitute the topic sentence. It's a subtle but—I think—necessary distinction. Otherwise, there is no way to distinguish between the student's own paraphrase of a main idea and the author's topic sentence. It helps to follow up this explanation with an exercise that requires students to paraphrase the main idea and identify the number of the topic sentence.
2. I believe it's absolutely essential to emphasize the power of paraphrasing as a way to monitor comprehension and ensure remembering. In truth, if students can't paraphrase, there's no way they can show their comprehension of a writer's ideas. Yet paraphrasing is a lot trickier than it looks, and students need lots of practice learning how to translate somebody else's words into their own.
3. To make sure students realize they are building on what they learned in Chapter 3, tell them to remember the ladders of specificity they worked with on pages 108-110. If paragraphs were diagrammed in the same fashion, the topic sentence would be on one of the highest levels with only the introductory sentence (if there is one) appearing above it.
4. I think students need to know that occasionally there can be two possible topic sentences; however, one is usually better than the other at summing up the paragraph. For example, on page 195 of the text, item one has two possible topic sentences, sentence 1 and sentence 9. Sentence 9, however, does a better job of summarizing the paragraph because it focuses in general terms on the "uses" of bamboo, which is precisely what the supporting sentences identify. Sentence 1, in contrast, talks only about bamboo's importance. Much vaguer than sentence 9, it doesn't summarize the paragraph's content as well. Still, it does summarize it. That's why it's a less successful topic sentence rather than an incorrect one.
Last change made to this page: August 3, 2004