Q Search this course Reviewing Paragraph Essentials
1. Constructing the Topic with the Author
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One of the first things you should do when you begin to read a passage is to find the topic: what person, event, practice, or subject is the focus of the
passage? One way to recognize the topic is to look for a word or a phrase that the author repeats many times. However, the topic may not always be a
repeated word or phrase, in which case you must infer the topic. Topics that are less concrete may be referred to using similar or related words. In
these cases, you must look at these words and come up with your own phrase to identify the topic. Make sure you include all of the parts of the topic.
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As you read each of the following passages, try to identify the topic. Then answer the questions that follow.
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In a lovely palette of colors ranging from pale ivory to coral and deep red, the starfish is one of the many kinds of sea life that can often
be spotted in tide pools, under piers, and within reefs all over the world. Mistakenly called a fish, the starfish actually a sea star in the
Echinoderm family (a category of sea life that includes sand dollars). Most have 5 arms, but some sea stars can have as many as 40
arms. One of the fascinating features of a sea star is that if it happens to lose one of its arms, it can regenerate, or regrow, a new one.
In fact, some sea stars can create an entirely new body. Fishermen discovered this long ago when they made the mistake of cutting up
sea stars because they believed that the stars interfered with fishing. Lo and behold, when the fishermen returned to the same fishing
grounds the next year, the sea star population had multiplied because so many were able to regrow new bodies from just one arm.
Source: "Sea Stars." National Geographic Nat'l. Geographic Soc., n. d. Web. 2 Mar 2011
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