Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour (Mental Performance)

by Kam Knight

So, how do you find the topic sentence? While it may appear anywhere in the paragraph, it is most often the first sentence, because it introduces what follows. Reviewing the topic sentence in the previous example, Think of paragraphs like hamburgers, you’ll notice it is the first sentence. In fact, a majority of the topic sentences in this book are the first sentence in the paragraph. Although the first sentence in this example may seem like a topic sentence, it is merely a transition sentence that smoothly transitions the reader from the previous paragraph. The sentence that follows is the true topic as it introduces the main thought. And if you notice, it has the word first, which shows up several times throughout the passage. This increases the likelihood that the sentence is the topic. You don’t see the words in the transition sentence, like find, repeated in the passage.