Thanks masaegu san. I will take note of that. :)

There is a verb that I just came across yesterday but I do not know what it really means, and that is とらえる.

The textbook stated that it means "Catch" but I am not sure what kind of "Catch" is the book referring to?

とらえる has many meanings and "to catch" is one of them.

You said "There is a verb that I just came across yesterday..." but how? In what context? If you seek information, you need to give information first.

The problem is, there ain't any example. For example, my textbook will only show:

要ります - Need

調べます - Investigate/Inspect

直します - Correct

修理します - Repair

電話します - Make a phone call

And for that reason, I have to ask my teacher one by one but sometimes he find it difficult to explain as well. And also, I won't be returning to school untill around April so I need to revise by myself for now. :)

By the way, I am curious if I can use とらえる when I want to say "to catch a thief"?

That would be a rather unusul textbook. It sounds more like a word list. I have no idea why it has to list verbs in their ます forms, though, because you won't be able to find them even if you try to look them up in a dictionary.

Yes, you can.

どうもありがとうございました、masaegu さん。:)