Efficient and Flexible Reading teaches students how to vary their approach to written texts based on the material and their purpose for reading.
In addition to instruction in literal and critical comprehension skills, vocabulary, and study skills, Efficient and Flexible Reading teaches students how to identify text structures and thought patterns for more efficient learning. Emphasizing reading as an active thinking process, the text presents systems for monitoring concentration, comprehension, and recall, encouraging students to assess the reading assignment and to select the appropriate strategy to suit the situation. The seventh edition expands coverage of the most crucial skills in both basic reading comprehension and higher-level critical reading: main ideas, patterns of organization, transitions, and critical analysis.
Features
- Comprehensive coverage of all the traditional topics sought by instructors: main idea, supporting details, vocabulary, patterns of organization, inference, tone, and retention.
- Encourages students to read actively and critically, to approach reading as a thinking process, and to analyze their reading and learning strategies (metacognition).
- Helps students to increase their reading rate and develop reading flexibility--adjusting reading strategy and rate to suit the type, complexity, and familiarity of their reading material.
- Emphasis on discovering and working with one's personal learning style.
- 4-color Insert “Reading in the 21st Century” demonstrates the importance of reading in the electronic age, provides an introduction to online literacy, and discusses new reading and thinking strategies necessary for reading electronic text.
- “Evaluating Internet Sources” guides students in selecting reliable, trustworthy sources of information. Students learn how to evaluate the purpose, content, accuracy, and structure of a website.
- “Checking Your Vocabulary” exercises at the end of each reading selection emphasize importance of vocabulary and integrate vocabulary instruction into each reading selection.
New to this Edition
- A new opening section, “Reading Is for Everyone,” motivates students to become more interested in reading by featuring non-fiction books that demonstrate the wide variety of subject matter available for people who have very different interests.
- More on targeted literal comprehension skills. Coverage of patterns of organization and directional words (i.e., transitions) in Chapter 5 has been expanded to provide greater instructional detail and more examples. In Chapters 4 and 5, on main ideas and patterns of organization, additional exercises in each major section give students more practice with these important skills.
- More on critical reading skills. Chapter 10, on critical analysis, has new sections on denotative and connotative meanings of words, and on the use of figurative language. New exercises provide for more practice in making inferences, recognizing facts and opinions, identifying tone, and using all the skills learned in the chapter to evaluate a piece of writing.
