Tác giả: Elizabeth Chesla
8TH GRADE READING COMPREHENSION SUCCESS 8TH GRADE READING COMPREHENSION SUCCESS Elizabeth Chesla L EARNING E XPRESS S KILL B UILDERS New York Copyright © 2001 LearningExpress, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by LearningExpress, LLC, New York. Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First Edition ISBN 1-57685-391-8 For more information or to place an order, contact LearningExpress at: 55 Broadway 8th Floor New York, NY 10006 Or visit us at: www.learnatest.com An Important Note to Our Library Readers If you have checked this book out from your school or public library, please do not write in the book itself. Instead, use a separate notepad to write down your answers, so that other readers in your library can reuse this material. Thank you for your help and for your consideration of others. How to Use this Book ix Pretest xi SECTION 1: BUILDING A STRONG FOUNDATION 1 Lesson 1: Becoming an Active Reader 3 Lesson 2: Finding the Main Idea 11 Lesson 3: Defining Vocabulary in Context 17 Lesson 4: Distinguishing between Fact and Opinion 23 Lesson 5: Putting It All Together 31 SECTION 2: STRUCTURE 37 Lesson 6: Chronological Order 39 Lesson 7: Order of Importance 45 Lesson 8: Similarities and Differences: Comparison and Contrast 51 Lesson 9: Cause and Effect 59 Lesson 10: Putting It All Together 65 SECTION 3: LANGUAGE AND STYLE 73 Lesson 11: Point of View 75 Lesson 12: Word Choice 83 Lesson 13: Style 89 Lesson 14: Ton e 9 7 Lesson 15: Putting It All Together 105 CONTENTS SECTION 4: READING BETWEEN THE LINES 113 Lesson 16: Finding an Implied Main Idea 115 Lesson 17: Assuming Causes and Predicting Effects 121 Lesson 18: Emotional versus Logical Appeals 127 Lesson 19: Uncovering Meaning in Literature 133 Lesson 20: Putting It All Together 141 Post-Test 151 Appendix: Suggested Reading for 8th Graders 165 –8TH GRADE READING COMPREHENSION SUCCESS– LearningExpress Skill Builders ix ighth grade is an exciting year full of changes and challenges. It’s also an important year academically. As an eighth grader, you’ll be required to take tests that measure your reading, writing, and math skills. This year is also your last chance to brush up your academic skills before high school. And because you’ll need to read for almost all of your classes, reading comprehension is perhaps the most important set of skills you’ll need to succeed. In eighth grade and beyond, you’ll be asked to read, understand, and interpret a variety of texts, including stories and poems, reports, essays, and scientific and technical information. While a lot of your learning will still take place in the classroom, you’ll be expected to read more and more infor- mation on your own, outside class. You’ll need not only to understand what you read but also to respond to and assess what you read. And as the texts you read become more complex, you’ll spend a lot more time “reading between the lines” and drawing your own conclusions from the text. As you work through the lessons in this book you will build your crit- ical reading and thinking skills. Each of the 20 short lessons should take about a half hour to complete. You’ll start with the basics and move into more complex reading strategies. While each chapter can be an effective skill builder on its own, it is important that you proceed through this book in order, from Lesson 1 through Lesson 20. Each lesson builds on skills and ideas discussed in the previous chapters, and as you move through this book and your read- ing comprehension skills improve, the practice passages will become longer and more difficult. HOW TO USE THIS BOOK E E