- •Unit I What to Read? How to Read?
- •Vocabulary Notes
- •Types of Books
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Listening
- •Vocabulary
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •How One Should Read a Book
- •Writing
- •Have your say
- •Reading Is Interaction
- •Act it out
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Writing
- •II. Adjectives applied to books
- •III. Aspects of a novel or a story
- •1. Subject, Theme
- •3. Setting, set
- •4. Characters
- •6. Ideas, views, attitudes
- •7. Style
- •8. Spirit, atmosphere, mood, feeling
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •In each set, find the odd-one-out, explain your choice.
- •My Favourite Escape: Books
- •Listening
- •Reading
- •The queen of crime
- •Act it out
- •Interview with an author
- •Have your say
- •Listening
- •Reading
- •Writing
- •An appraisal of a book
- •Have your say
- •II. Read books, rather than about books
- •IV. Read rapidly
- •V. Read by snatches
- •VI. Read what you like
- •VII. Read what you do not like
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Read the Better Magazines and Books
- •Reading
- •What Does it Take to Be a Good Reader?
- •Listening
- •Writing
- •Familiar Quotations
- •Have your say
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Why Trashy Books Are So Good for Little Boys
- •Writing
- •A letter
- •Act it out
- •Have your say
- •Interview 10 people (first-year students, your relations, friends, etc.) to find out how they select books.
- •Unit 4 how to develop the habit of reading
- •My several worlds
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Listening
- •Writing
- •Act it out
- •Have your say
- •How Shall The Habit of Reading Be Cultivated?
- •Unit 5 will books survive?
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Writing
- •Read a good powerbook lately?
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •In each set find the odd-one-out; explain your choice.
- •Reading
- •In the article, find the words that mean approximately the same as the following definition.
- •Death of the book or a novel way to read?
- •Act it out
- •Birth of the book to end all books
- •Have your say
- •III books shall survive
- •Reading
- •Burn them or bury them, you can’t beat books
- •Writing
- •Have your say
- •Brush up everything you have done and get ready for a round-table talk about books and reading.
Read the Better Magazines and Books
From your magazine reading you will get not only __________ English, but important ideas about the current subjects of the greatest interest. And don’t __________ your magazine reading to the stories and the articles alone. You will find stimulating words and ideas even in some of the advertisements. The copy writers are chosen for their __________ in putting their vocabulary to practical use. For magazine space is expensive, so that a good advertisement must pack a lot of meaning into a few __________ words.
As for your book reading, try to keep it as __________ as possible. History, biography, __________, philosophy, __________ religion, travel, current industry and interests and events – all these subjects will help to __________ your mind and to __________ your chances for success. There are no tools so important for personal progress as a general understanding of the vocabulary in the __________ fields of human endeavor. Speak a man’s language, and you win him over as a friend. You can __________ these languages through your reading. The wider your reading, the __________ your vocabulary, and the better your chances for successful contact with the world __________ many different angles.
Reading
QUIZ
Vladimir Nabokov, a novelist who taught at Cornell University, used to ask his students: “What does it take to be a good reader?”
Now you answer this question, choosing 4 correct answers from the list below:
The reader should belong to a book club.
The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero/heroine.
The reader should concentrate on socioeconomic angle.
The reader should prefer a story with a dialogue and action to one with none.
The reader should have seen the book in a movie.
The reader should be a budding author.
The reader should have an imagination.
The reader should have memory.
The reader should have a dictionary.
The reader should have some artistic sense.
What Does it Take to Be a Good Reader?
Why, for instance, do readers need imagination? When the author has already imagined the story for them? The answer is that no author can ever imagine the whole story for the reader. Writers must be selective, and so it's up to readers to supply some of the details missing from a particular text. It is in fact, “the unwritten” part of a text that invites our participation by prompting us no fill in the gaps and provide the missing connections.
As we read, most of us unconsciously anticipate what lies ahead, just as we draw on our knowledge and experience to interpret characters and incidents. So reading is a creative process, and because we are contributing to the text it becomes a living event.
Perhaps here, to Nabokov's list of readers' tools (imagination, memory and openness and sensitivity to word meanings) we should write an addendum: good readers often read with a pencil in hand.
Reading with a pen stimulates you to respond, to read actively. Good readers, like good listeners, attend, conceiving ideas about what they read, reacting to the story, poem, play or essay, as well as to the way the author is telling it; from these scattered impressions we form inferences and generalizations, in literature and in life.
This is where the final requirement listed by Nabokov, artistic sense, comes in. Reading and writing are reciprocal acts, each commenting on and enriching the other.
anticipate, v see what is likely to happen
addendum, n thing omitted in writing, a speech, etc. that is to be added
scattered, adj. not situated together
conceive (an idea) form in the mind
inference, n opinion reached from fact or reasoning
reciprocal, adj. mutual, exchanged between two people or groups
requirement, n sth that is needed or demanded as necessary