Includes appendices.

"Inspiring students to take a critical and multi-faceted approach to reading, Perspectives combines skills instruction and authentic academic content to prepare learners for the demands of post-secondary education. A careful and thorough handling of reading skills and strategies-- such as annotating text, managing difficult vocabulary, assessing inferences, distinguishing between facts and opinions, and evaluating techniques of persuasion-- establishes a foundation from which students can anaylze and synthesize information. The reading selections provide exposure to more than twenty academic disciplines, including sociology, environmental studies, mechanical engineering, business, and biology, in themed units that range from "Maintaining Law and Order" to "Living with Nature". A thought-provoking, practical, and versatile resource, Perspectives affords students the tools required to take on their academic reading with confidence" (Book Cover).

CONTENTS:

PART I: ACADEMIC READING SKILLS AND STRATEGIES

Unit 1: Smart Reading Strategies
Reading with Purpose

Interacting with the Text
Summarizing to Learn and Remember
Monitoring Your Readiness to Start the Assignment
Expanding Your Vocabulary

Unit 2: Smart Vocabulary Strategies

Identifying Terms and Their Definitions
Analyzing Word Parts
Guessing Meaning in Context
Ignoring Less-Important Unfamiliar Words
Integrating the Strategies

Unit 3: Main Ideas and Supporting Details
Distinguishing between Main Ideas and Supporting Details
Identifying and Implied Main Idea
Distinguishing between Major and Minor Supporting Details
Identifying Organizational Patterns
Studying Graphical Information
Integrating the Skills

Unit 4: Inferences, Facts, and Opinions
Assessing Valid and Invalid Inferences
Distinguishing between Facts and Opinions
Learning about Informed Opinions
Identifying Biased Opinions
Integrating the Skills

Unit 5: Assessing an Argument
Identifying the Purpose of a Text
Identifying the Audience
Identifying Techniques and Persuasion
Assessing and Argument's Support and Logic

PART II: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY READINGS

Unit 6: Maintaining Law and Order
Punishment in Elizabethan England (History)
Designing Safer Cities (Urban Planning)
House Arrest, Electronic Monitoring, and Global Positioning Systems (Criminology)

Unit 7: Race and Racism
Race (Anthropology)
The DNA Olympics - Jamaicans Win Sprinting "Genetic Lottery" - and Why We Should All Care (Sport Sciences)
The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide (Economics)

Unit 8: Living with Nature

Implications of Climate Change; Melting Ice and Rising Sea Levels (Environmental Studies)
Why Japan Took the Nuclear Risk (Resource Management)
Staying Power (Electrical Engineering)

Unit 9: Transportation
Traffic Jam (Urban Studies)
Ridesharing in North America (Transportation and Sustainability Studies)
How Electric Cars Got Stuck in First Gear (Business)

Unit 10: Ethnocentrism
Prejudice (Psychology)
The Self-Reference Criterion: A Major Obstacle (Marketing)
Terror and Ethnocentrism: Foundations of American Support for the War on Terrorism (Political Science)

Unit 11: Cancer
Cancer Cells: Growing out of Control (Biology)
Infernal Mechanism (Mechanical Engineering)
What Happens When You Live? (Health Studies)

Unit 12: Gender Equality
Women in Internal Marketing (Marketing)
The Global Glass Ceiling: Why Empowering Women is Good for Business (Foreign Policy)
Born to Serve: The State of Old Women and Widows in India (Sociology)

Unit 13: Culture
Culture and the Self (Psychology)
Uncovering the Role of Culture in Learning, Development, and Education (Education)
Managing Conflict (Communication Studies)

Appendix: Word Parts