Chapter 5 Critical Reading for college and beyond

• To identify main ideas of the text you must know the difference between topics, main ideas, and details.
A topic is a word or short phrase that summarizes the general ideas presented on a page or in a chapter, book, or journal article. Identifying the topic of reading helps you identify the main idea. But a topic and a main idea are not the same thing. The topic general in scope and is the subject of a reading. Usually the title of an article or chapter will offer a hint about what the topic is; for example, the title of this chapter.
• The main idea is the major point the author makes about the topic. It is usually started in the form of a sentence and is narrower in scope than the topic. It serves as the controlling idea under which other ideas stack as support. These pieces, or supporting ideas, are called details.
Topics are the most general ideas of reading, they are not complete sentences, but words or phrases that sum up the subject you are reading about. A chapter can have any subject as its topic. For example, an astronomy text might have a chapter on the topic of black holes; a book on American politics could include a chapter on the topic of the Republican Party; and o cookbook might devote a chapter to the topic of baking bread. Every sentence in these chapters would relate to its topic; either directly or indirectly.

• Questioning yourself, looking in the usual places, noticing clue words, and categorized an author’s points are four strategies you can use to think systematically about what you read. Noticing clue words and categorized ideas helps you to separate examples and other supporting ideas from the larger, main points, so the relationships between ideas become clear.