Preface

Opening Doors is designed to help college students move from a pre-college reading level to a college reading level. It presents a systematic way of approaching college textbook material that can make students more efficient in the study skills integral to their college success.

While the scope of this book is broad, the focus is ultimately on comprehension. Comprehension skills are introduced early in the text and are integrated throughout subsequent chapters so that students learn how to apply them. Though the emphasis is on main ideas and essential supporting details (Part Two, Comprehension), the book gives thorough attention to skills that range from predicting and questioning actively as you read (Part One, Orientation), to selecting, organizing and rehearsing textbook material to be learned for a test (Part Three, Systems for Studying Textbooks). In Part III, students learn how to use textbook features to full advantage, how to underline and annotate textbook material, and how to organize material in writing so that it can be mastered for a test.

Although Opening Doors is designed for developmental readers, we have chosen to use only college textbook excerpts and other materials students would be likely to encounter in college. The selections are the result of field-testing with hundreds of our students over several semesters to identify material that is interesting, informative, and appropriate. We believe that this extensive field-testing provides a much more useful indicator of appropriateness than a readability formula. Field-testing revealed that, with coaching and guidance from the instructor, students can comprehend these selections. Equally important is that students like dealing with "the real thing"--actual college textbook material--since that is what they will encounter in subsequent college courses. This type of practice enables them to transfer skills to other courses and avoid the frustration and disappointment of discovering that their reading improvement course did not prepare them for "real" college reading. Finally, these passages help students acquire and extend their background knowledge in a variety of subjects.