Making Sense of Reading [antikvár]

Introductton This book is intended as an introduction to reading skills for intermediate students of English. It is divided into ten units containing passages for reading comprehension and accompanying sets of exercises and activities. Each unit presents a new skill or set of skills which is practised and developed in following units. The texts have been taken from a variety of publications, both British and American, most of which are easily available outside the UK and the USA. These texts are 'authentic' in that they have not been specially written or adapted for the language classroom, and the material in each unit has been selected to exemplify a particular type of writing and to provide a suitable basis for the presentation and practice of a particular set of reading skills. The book begins with brief encounters with short texts such as labels and notices, moves on to glance at newspaper and magazine articles, and finally progresses to more extensive reading of both fiction and non-fiction. The way people read is influenced both by the nature of the text, and by the reader's purpose, interest and reading ability. In each unit there are exercises and activities which aim to make students aware of these variables and to give them practice in choosing and using appropriate reading strategies. Other activities focus more closely on features of the written text, such as the way in which ideas are organized and presented, the use of linking words and the choice of vocabulary. In addition to this, all units contain practical tasks often involving pair or group work. These require students to solve problems, fill in charts or tables, or present and defend a point of view. Making Sense of Reading does not require students to understand every single word of every single text it contains: rather it encourages them to be selective. It aims to equip them to deal with the mass of English writing which is found outside these pages and outside the classroom, to know how to approach this writing and to judge what they want to get out of it. It aims above all to encourage students to move on from the texts in the book and to look for their own reading material in the outside world.