Basic Skills and Strategies for College Reading: A Text With Thematic Reader

Would you like a book that can help you focus while reading, allowing you to easily retain the main gist of articles, essays, and other material? This basic skills reading book addresses the needs of those who would like to improve their reading, comprehension, and vocabulary-building skills, preparing users to meet the demands of their tasks at work and in life. This book describes the skills necessary and introduces strategies that allow for effective reading; it includes numerous articles, essays, and other selections with varied themes. Skills topics include: previewing books, understanding vocabulary, understanding main ideas, understanding implied main ideas and supporting details, and reading multi-paragraph selections. Because it presumes no advanced inference skills, this book provides an opportunity to learn how to read efficiently and effectively. As such, it's a perfect resource for those involved with Continuing Education and ESL classes; also, managers, executives, and others who need to read manuals, reports, and business-related articles will find this a useful and informative book.

Jane L. McGrath earned her undergraduate degrees in education and mass communications and her Ed.D. in reading education from Arizona State University. During her more than twenty-five years with the Maricopa Colleges, McGrath taught a variety of reading, English, journalism, and computer applications courses. McGrath has received Innovator of the Year honors from the Maricopa Colleges and the League of Innovation in Community Colleges. She has also received Outstanding Citizen awards from the cities of Phoenix and Tempe for her community service work. McGrath now combines talents with her husband Larry on a wide range of writing and computer projects from travel articles to cookbooks to technical pieces for the high-performance automotive industry. She is a member of the National Association of Developmental Educators and the College Reading and Learning Association.