Features and Benefits
NEW! Emphasis on Longer Readings. Because students must ultimately develop the skills needed to read lengthy textbook chapters in the rest of their college career, the focus of the mastery tests has been changed to offer full-length readings (instead of short paragraphs and brief passages as the basis for skill application). Therefore, in each chapter, Mastery Tests now feature longer, full-length readings with accompanying activities and exercises so students are practicing their skills with authentic, real world material.
NEW! Revised Issues and Readings in the Contemporary Issues Mini-Reader. The Contemporary Issues Mini-Reader has been revised to include two readings on each of four issues to engage today’s students and engender interest in reading. The new issues are celebrities and athletes as activists, marketing of human organs, and the Internet and technology. Pro–con viewpoints on the issue of reviving extinct species is retained from the preceding edition.
Integration of reading and writing. The text integrates reading and writing skills. Students respond to exercises by writing sentences and paragraphs. Each reading selection is followed by “Thinking Critically about the Reading” questions, which encourage composition. Writing exercises accompany each reading selection in Part Seven.
Reading as thinking. Reading is approached as a thinking process—a process in which the student interacts with textual material and sorts, evaluates, and reacts to its organization and content. For example, students are shown how to define their purpose for reading, ask questions, identify and use organization and structure as a guide to understanding, make inferences, and interpret and evaluate what they read.
Comprehension monitoring. Comprehension monitoring is also addressed within the text. Through a variety of techniques, students are encouraged to be aware of and to evaluate and control their level of comprehension of the material they read.
Skill application. Chapters 2 through 11 conclude with three mastery tests that enable students to apply the skills taught in each chapter and to evaluate their learning.
Also available with MyReadingLab™
This title is also available with MyReadingLab, an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to complement this text by further engaging students and improving results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them develop their reading skills – ultimately promoting transference of those skills to college-level work. Key exercises and readings from McWhorter’s text are available within MyReadingLab, strengthening the connection between the classroom and students’ independent work.
New to This Edition
Emphasis on Longer Readings. Because students must develop skills needed to read lengthy textbook chapters in their college career, the focus of the mastery tests has been changed to offer full-length readings, instead of short paragraphs and brief passages as the basis for skill application. In each chapter, Mastery Tests now feature longer, full-length readings with accompanying activities and exercises so students practice in a more authentic, real-world context.
In chapters 2-10, Mastery Tests now have more extensive pedagogy to help students read and interpret longer readings.
Of the 19 mastery test readings, 11 are new to this edition, and more than half of the readings are now textbook excerpts.
New topics that are engaging and relevant to students include, corporate social responsibility, hunger on campus, the practice of veiling, lottery winners, the trend to remain single, medical practice and the Internet, the right to die, and more
Revised Issues and Readings in the Contemporary Issues Mini-Reader. The Contemporary Issues Mini-Reader has been revised to include two readings on each of four issues to better engage today’s students. The new issues are celebrities and athletes as activists, marketing of human organs, and the Internet and technology. Pro–con viewpoints on the issue of reviving extinct species is retained from the preceding edition.
Revised Chapter 2, “An Overview of College Textbook Reading.” This chapter has been refocused to include greater emphasis on the reading process and has been reorganized to focus on the processes of before, during, and after reading.
It begins by discussing textbook aids to learning and then focuses on previewing, developing guide questions, reading for meaning, testing recall, and reviewing.
The chapter unifies the reading and learning strategies it presents by showing students how these skills, when used in sequence, form the SQ3R reading/study system. It is built around a textbook reading excerpt used for skill demonstration and application.
This chapter also includes a section on understanding graphics and visual aids, an essential part of textbook reading.
Reorganization of the Apparatus for the Full-Length Reading Mastery Tests. Both mastery tests now emphasize reading as a process and include before-and after-reading activities, as presented in Chapter 2 (An Overview of College Textbook Reading).
Before-reading activities include previewing and activating background activities. Students are directed to preview the reading and answer preview questions; they also predict content and connect the ideas to their own experience.
Following the reading, students work through extensive apparatus, now including an Academic Application exercise that guides students in paraphrasing, outlining, or summarizing the reading.
Think As You Read. The second mastery test in each chapter now contains a unique interactive feature that demonstrates the type of thinking that should occur as students read and encourages them to interact with the text.
Students are directed to highlight topic sentences and key details, as well as useful transitions, thereby focusing their attention on structure and meaning.
While reading, students encounter marginal questions that model the thinking that active readers do as they read. These questions encourage students to examine the flow of ideas, recognize connections between and among ideas and images, and think critically about ideas. The categories of questions include the following:
Examining Features of questions ask students to consider the writer's choice of supporting details, examine the writer's main point, or determine the function or impact of the introduction or conclusion.
Factual Recall questions ask students specific facts about the reading to strengthen their understanding.
Critical Analysis questions require interpretation and evaluation of the author's ideas.
Word Meaning and Choice questions ask students to consider the choice of words used in the reading and/or the positive or negative connotations of those words.
Visual or Image questions ask students to consider the meaning and relevance of the visual or image that accompanies the reading and consider other appropriate choices.
Chapter on “Organizing and Remembering Information” now moved to Chapter 3. The essential and high-utility textbook reading/thinking strategies, including highlighting, paraphrasing, outlining, mapping, summarizing and review, are available to students sooner so they can begin using them immediately in all of their college courses.
Revised Chapter 10, “Evaluating: Asking Critical Questions.” The chapter now includes comprehensive coverage of evaluating Internet sources with material on evaluating the content, accuracy, and timeliness of a Web site.