Lesson: Reading Comprehension Basic - 10

Topic, Scope, Purpose and Main Idea: The Lowdown

There's a strong relationship between Topic and Scope:

• Topic and Scope are both objective terms, meaning they include no specific reference to the author's point of view.
• The Topic is broader. The Scope represents a narrowing of the broad topic into an issue that the author can discuss, self-contained, in a brief chunk of text.
• Topic and Scope often become apparent early in the passage, usually by the end of the first third.
• Scope is particularly important because the (many) choices that depart from it will always be wrong.

There's also a strong relationship between Purpose and Main Idea:

• Every Reading Comp passage has a purpose. Sometimes the author's purpose is merely descriptive: to describe a process, to contrast different theories, etc. Most of the time, however, the author's purpose will be argumentative - i.e., his or her purpose will usually be to offer a personal interpretation on the issue at hand.
• Descriptive passages generally don't have specific main ideas, but argumentative passages do.
• When a specific main idea is in evidence, it'll always be closely related to the general purpose of the text.

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