Lab Activity 14: Central Ideas and Thesis Statements

Chapter 3: Stated Main Ideas
Lab Activity 14: Central Ideas and Thesis Statements

Objective
To identify the central idea and thesis statement of reading selections containing more than one paragraph.

Step 2: Read each of the following excerpts from college textbooks, and then select the best answers.

3. Sex differences in motor skills are evident in early childhood. Boys are slightly ahead of girls in skills that emphasize force and power. By age 5, they can jump slightly farther, run slightly faster, and throw a ball much farther (about 5 feet farther). Girls have an edge in fine motor skills and in certain gross motor skills that require a combination of good balance and foot movement, such as hopping and skipping (Cratty, 1986; Thomas & French, 1985). Boys' greater muscle mass and (in the case of throwing) slightly longer forearms may contribute to their skill advantages. And girls' greater overall physical maturity may be partly responsible for their better balance and precision of movement.
From an early age, boys and girls are usually channeled into different physical activities. For example, fathers often play catch with their sons but seldom do so with their daughters. Baseballs and footballs are purchased for boys, jump ropes and hula hoops for girls. As children get older, sex differences in motor skills get larger, yet differences in physical capacity remain small until adolescence. These trends suggest that social pressures for boys to be active and physically skilled and for girls to play quietly at fine motor activities may exaggerate small, genetically based sex differences (Croakley, 1990; Greeddorfer, Lewko, & Rosengren, 1996).

— Berk, Development through the Lifespan, 3rd ed., p. 215

The central idea of the selection is

a. sex differences in children's motor skills.

b. gross motor skills in boys.

c. fine motor skills in girls.

d. physical maturity in boys and girls.

4. The thesis statement of the selection is expressed in which sentence?

a. Sex differences in motor skills are evident in early childhood.

b. Boys' greater muscle mass and (in the case of throwing) slightly longer forearms may contribute to their skill advantages.

c. Girls have an edge in fine motor skills and in certain gross motor skills that require a combination of good balance and foot movement, such as hopping and skipping (Cratty, 1986; Thomas & French, 1985).

d. As children get older, sex differences in motor skills get larger, yet differences in physical capacity remain small until adolescence.

5.      Contrary to what used to be taught, the humanities are not the record of the "best products of the best minds." Those who advanced such a belief early in the 20th century may have done so in good faith, but they simply lacked information about all the products of all the minds that ever existed. Sufficient information is still not available, but at least the problem has been brought out into the open. Many of us keep trying to discover as much as we can about those who may have created works ignored or suppressed by powerful factions and those who were denied the opportunity to create anything.
     In Greek and Roman society women were either slaves or homemakers responsible for maintaining the "gracious" arts of civilized living. These arts did not include fashioning statues out of heavy stone or carving the facades of public buildings. In the Middle Ages the closest a woman could get to education was learning the duties and prayers of the sisterhood or, again, the gracious arts supervised by the lady of the castle. These skills might include embroidery, tapestry weaving, and playing the lute, but never designing and installing a stained-glass window or painting a triptych on a church altar.
     During the 19th century, when a number of significant female novelists and poets did emerge (although often with masculine pseudonyms), when education beyond home economics was no longer unheard of for a woman, training in musical composition, philosophy, and the visual arts was still considered a strictly masculine activity. Although no one could have prevented a woman from privately composing music or from privately thinking, there would have been no interested publishers.
     Virginia Woolf's title essay from A Room of One's Own contrasted facilities offered to male and female students at Oxford University. She was, for example, denied admission to a library reserved for men. Nor were women allowed the privilege of living in a private room. Many promising male talents attracted outside sponsors who paid their rent, an investment rarely made for a woman, even if she were equally talented.

— Janaro and Altshuler, The Art of Being Human, 7th ed., p. 564

The thesis statement of the selection is best expressed in which sentence?

a. Contrary to what used to be taught, the humanities are not the record of the "best products of the best minds."

b. Those who advanced such a belief early in the 20th century may have done so in good faith, but they simply lacked information about all the products of all the minds that ever existed.

c. Many of us keep trying to discover as much as we can about those who may have created works ignored or suppressed by powerful factions and those who were denied the opportunity to create anything.

d. Many promising male talents attracted outside sponsors who paid their rent, an investment rarely made for a woman, even if she were equally talented.