Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

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.

W h y C o m p a r e a n d C o n t r a s t ?
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.
–
S I M I L A R I T I E S A N D D I F F E R E N C E S : C O M PA R E A N D C O N T R A S T
–
7 1

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The main idea of the first paragraph you looked
at in this lesson was, “Planting a garden is a lot like hav-
ing a family.” In this paragraph, you learned that the
writer sees a significant similarity between these two
roles. Likewise, in the previous paragraph, you see a sig-
nificant similarity between readers and detectives.
In both cases, you may never have thought of
making such comparisons. That’s part of the beauty of
the compare and contrast organization: It often allows
you to see things in a new and interesting way. In addi-
tion, it serves the more practical function of showing
you how two things measure up against each other so
that you can make informed decisions, like about which
car to buy (a compare and contrast essay might tell you
which car is better) or which savings bond to invest in
(a compare and contrast essay will show you which
bond is best for you).