Finding main idea 8 pot

Being a parent is a lot like being a gardener. Parents

must bathe, clothe, and feed their children. Parents

must also create and maintain guidelines for accept￾able behavior for children. Also, parents must see to

it that their children get a proper education.

Gardeners nurture the plants in their gardens.

They pull weeds and prune them to encourage them

to grow. They feed them and apply insecticides.

They watch them flower and then witness their

demise.

You’ll notice that this passage seems to focus on

differences between gardeners and parents rather than

the similarities. But is this really a fair contrast? Look at

the aspects of A (the gardener) that are described here.

Do they have any relationship to the aspects of B (the

parent) that are described? No. And a compare and con￾trast passage can’t be successful unless the aspects of A

and B are discussed comparably. These two paragraphs

don’t really seem to have a point—there’s no basis for

comparison between gardeners and parents.

Practice

Suppose you were going to write a paragraph that com￾pares and contrasts readers and detectives. The fol￾lowing are five aspects of being a reader and five aspects

of being a detective listed. Only three items in each list

are comparable. Find those three items in each list and

pair them with their matching item. Remember, these

items may be either similarities or differences. What’s

important is that they are comparable aspects.

A reader:

1. Looks for clues to meaning.

2. Has many different types of books to read.

3. Can choose what book to read.

4. Builds vocabulary by reading.

5. Becomes a better reader with each book.

A detective:

1. Has a dangerous job.

2. Gets better at solving crimes with each case.

3. Requires lots of training.

4. Doesn’t get to choose which cases to work on.

5. Looks for clues to solve the crime.

Did you find the aspects that are comparable?

Did you match reader 1 with detective 5 (similarity)?

Reader 3 with detective 4 (difference)? And reader 5

with detective 2 (similarity)? If so, you did terrific work.

Here’s how this information might work together

in a paragraph:

In many ways, readers are a lot like detectives. Like

detectives looking for clues at the scene of the crime,

readers look for clues to meaning in the books that

they read. And, like detectives who get better and

better at solving crimes with each case, readers get

better and better at understanding what they read

with each book. Unfortunately for detectives, how￾ever, they cannot choose which cases they get to

work on, whereas readers have the pleasure of choos￾ing which books they’d like to read.

Why Compare and Contrast?

In addition to following the ABABAB or AAABBB

structure, compare and contrast passages must, like all

other passages, have a point. There’s a reason that these

two items are being compared and contrasted; there’s

something the writer is trying to point out by putting

these two things side by side for analysis. This reason or

point is the main idea, which is often stated in a topic

sentence.

–SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES: COMPARE AND CONTRAST–

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