Demystifying Academic Reading

Foundational and accessible, this book equips pre-service and practicing teachers with the knowledge, understanding, tools, and resources they need to help students in grades 4–12 develop reading proficiencies in four core academic subjects―literature, history, science, and mathematics. Applying a disciplinary literacy approach, Fang describes the verbal and visual resources, expert strategies, inquiry skills, and habits of mind that students must learn in order to read carefully, critically, purposefully, and with an informed skepticism across genres and content areas. He also shows how teachers can promote language learning and reading/literacy development at the same time that they engage students in content area learning.

With informative synthesis and research-based recommendations in every chapter, this text prepares teachers to help students develop discipline-specific, as well as discipline-relevant, discursive insights, literacy strategies, and ways of thinking, reasoning, and inquiring that are essential to productive learning across academic subjects. It also provides teacher educators with approaches and strategies for helping teacher candidates develop expertise in academic reading instruction. In so doing, the book demystifies academic reading, revealing what it takes for students to read increasingly complex academic texts with confidence and understanding and for teachers to develop expertise that promotes disciplinary literacy. This state-of-the-art text is ideal for courses on reading/literacy methods and academic literacy and eminently relevant to all educators who want their students to become thoughtful readers and powerful learners

Zhihui Fang is Professor and Head of Literacy and Language Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida, USA. He is the author of several books, including Demystifying Academic Writing: Genres, Moves, Skills, and Strategies (2021).