UNIT 1

FINDING TOPICS

INTRODUCTION

In understanding a text, you have to find effective ways. Do not translate it into your
language, because it will take time for you have to know all sentence structures and all
vocabuaries inside the text. By one strategy, you can understand a text without too
many efforts. Here, you will learn some skills to develop your ability in comprehending
a text quickly and effectively. You are going to practice finding topics in this chapter.

STRATEGY

The topic is the main subject that the text focuses on. If you want to find the topic of a
text, ask yourself this question: “What does the text talk about?” When the text
consists of several paragraphs, follow these tips:
o Read the first sentences and the final sentence of the first paragraph.
o Read the first sentence of each paragraph.
o Read the final sentence of the final paragraph.

EXERCISE

Exercise 1

Write the topic. One word does not belong to the topic. Cross out that word.
Example:
Topic: rooms in a house
bedroom living room kitchen wall bathroom

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 1. Topic: Currency
dollar bank peso rupiah yen
2. Topic: ___________________________________________________
Indonesia Japan Thailand Hongkong New Zealand
3. Topic: Time
city hour day week month

4. Topic: Jawa Island

Bandung Solo Garut Padang Malang
5. Topic: HITS
great interesting hard simple entertaining

Exercise 2

Read each paragraph. Working with another student, choose the best topic.

Galileo Galilei
1.

Galileo Galilei was one of the first modern scientists. He was born in Pisa,
Italy, in 1564. At first he studied philosophy, but later he studied
mathematics and astronomy. He was interested in the way the earth and
other planets move around the sun. He found out several important facts
about our world. He also started a new way of working in science. Before
Galileo, scientists did not do experiments. They just guessed about how
something happened. Galileo was different. He did not just make guesses.
He did experiments and watched to see what happened.

Topic:
a. How Galileo makes a research.

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 b. How Galileo studies astronomy.
c. The study of the earth and other planets.

2.
Galileo is famous for his study of gravity (how and why things fall). He was
the first person to do experiments about this problem. Before, people
thought that heavy things always fell faster than light things. He found
out that this was not true. He took a heavy ball and a light ball and he
dropped them both from a high place. They fell at the same speed. This
meant that weight was not important. This is the law of falling bodies. It is
an important law for understanding our world.

Topic:
a. The importance of gravity.
b. How Galileo finds the law of gravity.
c. The study of gravity through experiments.

3.
The life of a scientist was not always easy in the 1500s. In fact, Galileo
got into trouble because of his scientific ideas. His ideas were not the
same as the religious ideas at the time. Many religious people did not
agree with him. During his whole life, he had to worry about this. He even
went to prison for a while. But no one could stop him from thinking. He
continued to look for scientific answers to his questions about the world.

Topic:

a. The difficult life of scientists at the time.

b. Galileo’s persistence in doing research.
c. How Galileo lives his life in the 1500s.

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(modified from Reading Power by Beatrice S. Mikulecky & Linda Jeffries.2005)