Guide to College Reading, 11th edition

For courses in Introductory Reading (6-9 grade level).

Proceeds logically from literal comprehension to critical interpretation and response

Guide to College Reading empowers students to develop the skills needed for the diverse reading demands of college courses, and helps them to become active learners and critical thinkers. Organized into six parts, it guides students from comprehension to application–with ample opportunity to practice skills and engage with exercises. Guide to College Reading focuses on the key areas of reading comprehension, vocabulary improvement, and textbook reading; concurrently, it addresses the learning characteristics, attitudes, and motivational levels of reading students.

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.  

Students, if interested in purchasing this title with MyReadingLab, ask your instructor for the correct package ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information.

• 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.

• 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