Read and Reflect Introductory Level: Academic Reading Strategies and Cultural Awareness

By Jayme Adelson-Goldstein

The Read and Reflect series develops academic reading skills through an exploration of U.S. culture. Students develop their reading ability, acquire useful vocabulary, and discuss their own ideas in guided and controlled contexts.
Thought-provoking readings are based on a variety of authentic sources and cover a range of topics across the curriculum from the social sciences to history, technology, and business. Stimulating exercises and group activities promote reading proficiency, critical thinking, and vocabulary acquisition.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0194377318
• ISBN13: 9780194377317
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 138 Pages

Customer Reviews

Nice review of R and R on ELT professional

Read and Reflect (Introductory level) by Lori Howard and Jayme Adelson-Goldstein (series editors) Oxford University Press 2006 0-19-437731-8 This book is suitable for introducing upper teenagers and young adults to some of the reading strategies needed in an academic setting. Skills are taught in the context of learning about American culture, and some topics, such as `Success in the USA', are so specific that it might be awkward using the material in a non-American context. However, much of the rest of the material would have relevance for southern hemisphere students entering the world of western or northern hemisphere academia wherever they need to study in English. Skills taught include predicting content by previewing titles, pictures, headings and questions. The use of pronouns, scanning, using context to understand new words and interacting with the text while you read are also explicitly covered. Less explicit but very useful is the inclusion of pictures that require interpretation, cartoons and comic dialogue. Graphics include a pie chart, graphs, timelines, tables, a Venn diagram and mapping of ideas. There is also the use of a website, word puzzles and a floor plan of a house to read and interpret. These are all vital reading skills that are often missing from my students' education and from textbooks on reading. One of the strengths of the book is the way that vocabulary is recycled. Each topic has 18 exercises, and each of these teaches or practises a different skill, using pre-taught vocabulary or gradually introducing new vocabulary. Carefully constructed oral pairwork that promotes reading, speaking and critical evaluation is also a feature of the book. Each unit ends with a controlled writing exercise, based on a model and making use of the schema acquired in previous exercises.