Experimental psychologists and reading specialists usually talk about letter and word recognition, but the use of the term seems doubly inappropriate. First, they would hardly consider a word to be recognized unless its name could be given; they would not consider that a child recognized a word if all the child could say about it was "That's the very same squiggle I couldn't read yesterday." Second, the skilled reader can very often attach a name to visual information that he has never met before. As a rather extreme case, do you "recognize" or "identify" visual information rEaDiNg as the word "reading"? You almost certainly have never seen the word written that way before. The weight of evidence would see to favor "identification," and the term is therefore used for formal purposes such as chapter headings. But having made a point of the distinction, we need not be dogmatic about it; "identify," recognize." "categorize," "name," and even "read" will, in general, continue to be used interchangeably; it is the process we are concerned with at the moment, not the flexible way in which language is used (Smith 100-101).
Comments on Smith
This paragraph has one of those topic sentences which prompts the reader to ask "Why do you say that?" The author answers the question by giving two reasons which he clearly marks with a numerical sequence. Deductive organization works best in an expository paragraph such as this.
From: Technical Report Writing Today by Riordan and Pauley
Chapter Title: "Collecting Published Information"
Section Title: "Record Your Findings"
As you proceed with your search strategy, record your findings. Construct a bibliography, take notes, consider using visual aids, and decide whether to quote or paraphrase important information.
Comment on Riordan and Pauly
This is an example of a topic sentence that appears as a "topic paragraph" that previews the contents of the textbook section. Following the preview given in this topic paragraph, the subheading of the section are "Make Bibliography Cards," "Take Notes," "Make Visual Aids," and "Quoting and Paraphrasing."
From: Great Experiments in Psychology
Pavlov's Method
In his studies of the conditioned reflex, Pavlov worked almost entirely with dogs and with the salivary reflex (Garrett 128).
In the topic sentence, the two key terms are "dog" and "salivary reflex." In the paragraph, the salivary reflex gets the greatest emphasis.
In his studies of he conditioned reflex, Pavlov worked almost entirely with dogs and with the salivary reflex. Implicit in all of his work is the notion that everything the dog learns from puppyhood on is a result of the association of certain events (which happen to occur at the same time) with the biologically adequate stimulus to some native response such as withdrawing, struggling, eating, sex behavioir, or the like. What the dog can learn, i.e., what stimuli can be conditioned, how fast he learns, and how rapidly he forgets, is studied by measuring the saliva flow under rigidly controlled conditions. Pavlov chose to work with the salivary reflex mainly because the strength -- or the degree -- of a response and not simply its occurrence or nonoccurrence can be determined from the amount of saliva secreted. Besides, the salivary glands form a simple organ and not a composite one consisting of several muscles; there are no tonic reflexes present to interfere with or complicate the experimental control; and the response, a secreation, can be measured with great precision in units as small as one tenth of a drop.