Reading to Connect (I): Building Fundamentals is an introductory course designed to provide students with fundamental strategies to read English academic texts more efficiently and effectively. Specific attention will focus on reading comprehension, vocabulary-building strategies, close-reading analysis, and applications of appropriate reading strategies to required readings in students’ disciplinary courses. In addition, crucial analytical skills in relation to various genres of texts will be introduced. All the in-class tasks and discussions are intended to foster students’ metacognitive awareness of reading and analytical skills. The instructional method includes assessing reading comprehension; expanding vocabulary lists; lecturing; and giving large and small group discussions/activities.

This course will consist of three modules and the content of each learning module is organized as follows:

Module 1: Reading for Meaning introduces effective strategies to facilitate the comprehension and development of academic and discipline-specific vocabularies.
Module 2: Reading for Interpretation equips students with analytical skills to improve proficiency in interacting with academic texts and lecture material, includ-ing making inferences and judgements; identifying organizational patterns, purposes, tones; evaluating facts, opinions, bias, and evidence; and reasoning.
Module 3: Reading Across Disciplines focuses on the development and application of appropriate reading strategies to discipline-specific content material in order to effectively comprehend and organize information by paraphrasing, annotating, mapping, note taking, and summarizing textbook material.