Includes glossary, bibliographical references (p. [151]-155) and index.

"Reading opens with a wide-ranging discussion of what it means to be a reader in the modern world. The ideas introduced here are illustrated in the second section, which contains innovative ideas on how to approach text study in the language classroom and presents a variety of text-related exercises and activities. The book concludes by inviting teachers to explore the attitudes of their own learners as readers, and to design reading activities for them." (Book Cover)

CONTENTS:

The author and series editors

Introduction

Section One: Explanation - The nature of reading

1 Reading and readers
1.1 What reading means
1.2 What being a reader means
1.3 Reading purpose

2 Written language: text and discourse
2.1 Reading and text
2.2 Reading and discourse

3 Reading and social role
3.1 Reading communities
3.2 Literacy events
3.3 Literacy or literacies?

4 Reading and social context
4.1 The immediate context of situation
4.2 The institutional context
4.3 The wider social context

5. Reading and social meaning
5.1 Genre
5.2 Schemas

6 The reading process
6.1 Reading as a psycholinguistic process
6.2 Reading as a unitary and selective process
6.3 Sociolinguistic factors in the reading process
6.4 The interaction between reader and writer
6.5 Submissive and resistant readers 6.6 Intertextuality
6.7 Conclusion

Section Two: Demonstration - Teaching approaches and materials

7 Early reading: teaching and learning
7.1 Getting started
7.2 Different views of the learning to read process
7.3 A skills approach to learning to read
7.4 Reading strategies
7.5 What do skills and strategies approaches look like?
7.6 Links with later reading strategies

8 The learning context: roles and purposes of second language learners
8.1 The social roles and context of learning of the second language learner
8.2 Reading for specific purposes
8.3 Reading for general purposes
8.4 Reading for pleasure in the second language

9 The role of the text in the second language classroom
9.1 Criteria for selecting material
9.2 Simple versus authentic texts
9.3 Assessing text difficulty
9.4 Simple and simplified texts
9.5 The notion of authenticity

10 Classroom reading procedures
10.1 Access to the context of situation
10.2 Access to content

11 Texts and classroom procedures for critical reading
11.1 Critical approaches to text selection
11.2 Heightening learners' awareness of their strategies and roles as readers
11.3 A critical reading procedure
11.4 Conclusion

Section Three: Exploring reading

12 Investigating reading in your own classroom
12.1 Focus on the reader
12.2 Focus on the text
12.3 Focus on classroom reading procedures

Glossary

Further reading

Bibliography

Index