Engage: College Reading

"Read and Talk" readings and activities open each chapter and get students engaged in an interesting reading so that they can see that reading can be something enjoyable.

"Interactions" throughout the chapters in the book give students the opportunity to practice each skill incrementally. Engage Your Skills and Master Your Skills sections allow students to further practice and test their knowledge of skills presented in the chapters.

The "Section Review" feature that ends each major section within a chapter gets students in the habit of looking critically at structure of textbooks by way of visual maps that they have to fill out. This practice will help students navigate more difficult academic textbooks in the future.

At the end of each chapter there is a "Focus on" section that focuses on a specific academic discipline, like criminal justice, health sciences, and communications, accompanied by two readings from that discipline. These academic disciplines were chosen from the most popular courses first year students take so that students will be introduced to important background knowledge in the academic courses they are certain to take. One reading, the College App, is from a college textbook and the other reading, the Career App, is from a popular source to show the real-life application of the discipline so that connections to future careers can be made. Comprehension questions follow the readings that allow students to practice higher level critical thinking. A culminating activity, Your App, gives students the opportunity to further explore the academic discipline by way of an engaging activity provided by the authors.