1. Focus on the Basics: Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills explains in an extremely clear, step-by-step way the ten skills most needed for literal and critical reading comprehension. Many examples, practices, tests, and comments are provided to ensure that students understand and master each skill. In general, the focus is on teaching the skills, not just on explaining or testing them.
2. High Interest Level: The readings in the book have been chosen not only for the appropriateness of their reading level but also for their compelling content. They should engage teachers and students alike. Your students will never be bored by the practice materials in this or any other TP book.
3. Integration of Skills: Students do more than learn the skills individually in Part I. They also learn to apply the skills together through the reading selections in Parts I and II as well as through the combined-skills tests in Part III. They become effective readers and thinkers by means of a good deal of practice in applying a combination of skills.
4. Clarity and Friendliness: Exceptional clarity has always been a hallmark of John Langan’s books—in the step-by-step explanations for each skill, in the logically sequenced materials, and even in the care given to the questions and answer choices in the activities.
Countless numbers of teachers have praised the friendly and helpful tone of John Langan’s books—a tone that never condescends to students. This revised book is no exception. In addition, the human content of the paragraphs and longer selections will definitely appeal to you and your students.
5. Helpful Supplements.
• Online Exercises: At the end of each skill chapter, an icon is used to refer students to online exercises that both teach and test the skill. See for yourself how user-friendly they are. Just click “Online Learning Center,” and then click on “Try TP’s Exercises.”
• An Instructor's Edition is identical to the student text except that it also provides hints for instructors, answers to all the practices and tests, and?a greatly expanded feature in this edition? helpful comments on these answers. The annotations are the kind that any good teacher would come up with after a semester or two of teaching the book. The annotations mean that even last-minute adjunct teachers can use the book and do a creditable job of teaching a course.
• A combined Instructor's Manual and Test Bank includes suggestions for teaching the course, a model syllabus, a complete answer key, and readability levels and writing activities for the reading selections. The test bank contains four additional mastery tests for each of the ten skills and four additional combined-skills tests-- all on letter-sized sheets so they can be copied easily for use with students.
6. Price and Service: This full-color book will sell for a net price of $25. College bookstores then typically add 33% for their profit. No competing publisher matches the prices of TP books. Our goal has always been to provide the highest possible quality at the lowest possible price. Note: printed supplements are available at no charge to instructors adopting the text in quantities of 20 or more. Use of our Online Learning Center is FREE.
If you have ever e-mailed or called us, you know we respond to you right away. And orders, including desk copy requests, are typically shipped out on the same day that we receive them. We pride ourselves on prompt, personal service that no competitor can match.
Preface to the Instructor
- Inroduction
1. How to Become a Better Reader and Thinker
2. Some Quick Study Tips
3. The Power of Reading
PART I: Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills
Chapter 1: Vocabulary in Context
End-of-chapter reading: "All Washed Up?" Sara Hansen
Six mastery tests
Chapter 2: Main Ideas
End-of-chapter reading: "How Dual-Earner Couples Cope"
Diane E. Papalia and Sally Wendkos Olds
Six mastery tests
Chapter 3: Supporting Details
End-of-chapter reading: "Baby Love" Mary M. Gergen et al.
Six mastery tests
Chapter 4: Implied Main Ideas and the Central Point
End-of-chapter reading: "Personal Relationships in the Not-So-Good Old Days" Rodney Stark
Six mastery tests
Chapter 5: Relationships I
End-of-chapter reading: "Julia Burney: The Power of a Woman's Dream" Beth Johnson
Six mastery tests
Chapter 6: Relationships II
End-of-chapter reading: "The Influence of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"
Ronald B. Adler and Neil Towne
Six mastery tests
Chapter 7: Inferences
End-of-chapter reading: "Whay Shamu Taught Me" Amy Sutherland
Six mastery tests
Chapter 8: Purpose and Tone
End-of-chapter reading: "Hard Times, a Helping Hand" Ted Gup
Six mastery tests
Chapter 9: Argument
End-of-chapter reading: "Obedience: Milgram's Controversial Studies" Mary M. Gergen et al.
Six mastery tests
Chapter 10: Critical Reading
End-of-chapter reading: "Managing Conflicts in Relationships" Rudolph F. Verdeber
Six mastery tests
PART II: Ten Reading Selections
1. The Professor Is a Dropout Beth Johnson
2. Taming the Anger Monster Anne Davidson
3. He Was First John Kellmayer
4. My Father's Hands Calvin R. Worthington
5. Motivation and Needs Virginia Quinn
6. Effects of the Automobile James M. Henslin
7. Rabies Robert Berkow, M.D., ed.
8. Bad Managers Michael W. Drafke and Stan Kossen
9. Busy As a Bee? Then Who's Doing the Work? Natalie Angier
10. Stepping into the Light Tanya Savory
PART III: For Further Study
1. Combined-Skills Tests
PART IV
1. More About Summarizing and Outlining
2. Additional Tests on Fact and Opinion
3. Four Additional Readings
4. Understanding Bias
5. Writing Assignments
Appendixes
* Pronunciation Guide
* Limited Answer Key
* Acknowledgments
* Index
* Reading Performance Chart
A full-color design. Color has been carefully used throughout, not as window dressing but to add clarity and readability to the different parts of the book.
Numerous cartoons and other graphics. Because so many students today are visual learners, over fifty illustrations have been added to help introduce or reinforce points made in the book.
A new chapter on critical reading. “Fact and Opinion,” a separate chapter in previous editions, is now part of a new Chapter 10, “Critical Reading.” It will give students practice in all of the following: separating fact from opinion, detecting propaganda, and recognizing errors in reasoning.
New practice materials and readings. The book includes five new readings, and practice materials have been freshened throughout. For example, there are now five additional tests in Part Three, “Combined-Skills Tests.”
