Lesson 4 | Discern the Core Issue
Sharpen Your Focus
A skillful photographer will carefully adjust a wide variety of elements to set up a shot. Focus, exposure, framing, lighting, and color all help draw your eyes to the intended subject. Pay attention to where your eyes go as you look at the picture below.
Whatever else you first looked at, I am sure at some point your eyes snapped to the flowing stream. The focus and exposure are especially set to capture the current’s motion even within a single frame. Can you hear the sound of the falls in the background and the tumbling water in the foreground? Can you feel the cool air being carried along by the current? If you linger for a while, you may well discover many other elements, but your eyes will keep coming back to the stream—by design.
Likewise, an author may address many topics and themes but will usually have one that is central to his work. Our next Markup lens is called Topics. With this lens, our aim is to discover the various topics in a passage and then discern the author’s central concern.
Lesson Objectives
- To see the importance of getting the author’s message right
- To be able to identify the various topics within a passage
- To be equipped to discern the author’s central concern
- To learn how to use the Markup module’s Topics lens