Connect College Reading

Chapters begin with a Read and Talk Reading that aim to get students reading and talking among their peers about high-interest readings. The readings are supported by vocabulary help within the text, as well as audio and video support on the accompanying CourseMate.

The authors teach students a variety of proven techniques designed to help them master college-level reading skills, including three questions to ask about reading comprehension and the EASY vocabulary strategy.

Throughout the chapter, students encounter a range of reading pedagogy. Pre-Reading the Selection apparatus helps prepare students to read, gets them to connect their prior knowledge, and provides them with any cultural literacy knowledge they might need. Reading and vocabulary prompts during reading help students find the meaning in each paragraph and guide them through unknown vocabulary. Finally, the post-reading apparatus targets comprehension, critical thinking, and vocabulary retention. CONNECT asks more of students by asking "why" of all multiple-choice questions, students are forced to explain their thought processes for selecting an answer, a first step towards metacognition and critical thinking also creates better, more well-prepared readers.

Each end-of-chapter reading includes Critical Thinking Level questions that target all six levels of Bloom's taxonomy to get students in the practice of using the levels and broadening their ideas. These questions force students to identify why they chose their answer and what proof they have that their answer is the correct one.

REVISED Chapter 4 Finding the Main Idea describes a new method for helping students to recognize the main idea in a reading asking three questions for reading comprehension: What is the reading about? The topic. What is the author's point about the topic? The main idea. What is the proof for the main idea? The supporting details.

REVISED Chapter 5 Identifying the Implied Main Idea has been moved to directly follow after Chapter 4 about main ideas to address flow of concepts as many instructors teach the concept of implied main idea directly after main idea.

NEW Chapter 9 Making Inferences includes detailed coverage of what is a very difficult concept for students to understand--the subtlety of making an inference based on what you read.

NEW Part 4 Resource Guides provide specific suggestions for specialized reading situations, like A Guide to Reading Visuals, A Guide to Reading Novels, and A Guide to Taking Tests.

NEW Every chapter features at least one new reading to the second edition to keep students engaged with current topics and issues.

NEW Additional skill practice is available in every chapter with the Connect Your Skills feature where instructors can evaluate students' understanding of chapter skills. Across all the chapters, new Interactions have been added for further practice and many have been revised with new reading excerpts to remain current. End of chapter readings include additional vocabulary activities so that students can interact with new vocabulary from the readings and understand how to use the new terms.

REVISED Chapter Summary Activity feature now models the format of Cornell note taking to get students thinking about how to take effective notes on, as well as recalling key information from each chapter.