Based on the example above, the underlined phrase is the subject, word in bolder letter is a verb, and italic words indicate noun other than subject. The example
of question from this sentence is “Who is the sentence about?”
2.1.2 Sentence Comprehension
According to Mifflin 2001:1, a sentence is a group of words that tells a complete thought. To comprehend the sentence, Grellet 1996: 15 suggests that it is
better to understand the meaning of some words constructed in sentence than understand of what the sentence tells about, not only the understanding of word-by-
word, but also the whole words to express a complete thought. McWhorter 1989: 86 also says that every sentence expresses at least one key idea or basic message.
From the explanations above, it can be said that sentence comprehension is the understanding of what the sentence tells about and also include the whole words
to express a complete thought. The students will have no difficulties to get the sentences’ message when they have a good capability to comprehend the meaning of
the sentence. For example:
One of my favorite family experiences was when I went to see Anne Frank’s a Jewish victim of the Nazi persecution during World War II hideout in
Amsterdam, Holland. McWhorter 1989:88 suggests the reader to consider such questions about
the subject or predicate such as what, where, which, when, who, and how. The details of the sentence above are the favorite family experience, and in Amsterdam. The
word “Amsterdam” answers the question “Where was the favorite family experience place?
”
2.1.3 Paragraph Comprehension
A paragraph is a series of sentences about one main idea Langan, 2004:11. Similarly, McWhorter 1989:102, states that a paragraph is a group of related
sentences about a single topic. Then, Wong 1999:336 states that paragraph is a series of sentences that develop one main idea about a specific topic. Here, to get the
comprehension of paragraph, the students should understand every sentence especially topic sentence in a paragraph because both of them are the important
elements in comprehending a paragraph. In order to get the comprehension of paragraph meaning, the reader need to
know the parts of a paragraph, namely a topic sentence, support sentence and a conclusion sentence Wingersky et al. 1999:31. Moreover, to get the meaning of a
paragraph, the reader needs to identify and understand the whole parts in the paragraph. Those parts are topic sentence which states the main point of a paragraph,
then supporting details which support the topic sentence of a paragraph, and the last is a concluding sentence which restated and summarizing the main point discussed in
the topic sentence. Further, identifying a topic sentence, supporting details and a concluding
sentence will be discussed in more detail as follows.
a. Identifying the Topic Sentence
