Download or read book READING BRAINWAVES 2 written by Smail Bezzazi and published by العبيكان للنشر. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the Teacher This Reading book is for high beginning students of English as a foreign language. It contains 5 units, each containing 4 lessons, featuring not longer than one page reading texts on topics of high interest to university students in Saudi Arabia. The book has been designed with great care taking account of cultural sensitivity. The rationale of this book is that University students in Saudi Arabia need to improve their communicative competence for the purposes not only of participating effectively in tutorials, seminars and teacher-led classes, but also of survival within the system professionally. Therefore, each of the 5 thematic units in this book contains readings which introduce students to their immediate academic environment. In the first unit, students are introduced to resources commonly found in universities. These lessons guide students in dealing with issues such as university registration, using the library and building awareness of the different academic and support departments in universities. The second unit carries on with university resources. In the first lesson of this unit students are guided in the process of using such resources. The unit then promptly shifts to content subjects that university students study in their Orientation Programme –i.e. Mathematics and Computing. This part of the second unit is designed to serve Preparatory Year students by helping them grasp basic principles in mathematics and computing. Therefore, it can be stated that this unit addresses a specific purpose which is acquainting students with their content subject areas through specific reading texts and their accompanying activities. Unit three goes into more detail about these two subject areas by providing reading texts related to these areas. The activities however target students’ understanding of the language forms used in these areas without heavily relying on the jargon associated with these topics. Unit four contains lessons which support students’ understanding of mathematical language and analysis. The approach however emphasises linguistic and communicative tasks which test students’ understanding of the readings. This is done through the introduction of activities which require students to interact with the readings and infer meanings to support their comprehension. Unit five however includes a variety of readings which are not entirely linked to content subject areas University Preparatory Year vii students take in their first year. This unit features selected readings which aim at broadening students’ understanding of scientific processes and some patterns of social behaviour in Middle Eastern societies. This Reading book provides the students with intellectually stimulating readings which are not far beyond their understanding. The focus in the entire book is on strategies that make reading easier for the students. To this end, both vocabulary and grammar have been carefully controlled to be at the students’ level of comprehension. Throughout the book students are exposed to limited vocabulary items which are continuously recycled to enable them to improve rapidly. High frequency vocabulary has been recycled throughout the units of the book to give students the opportunity to see new vocabulary many times and in a variety of contexts. The tasks that students are required to perform are not too exigent. It is hoped that students will move through the units of this book with a growing sense of confidence and achievement as they discover that they can find main ideas, guess meaning from context, make inferences, recognise topics, and understand the vocabulary used. In addition, some of the pre-reading activities allow students to practice dictionary skills in an attempt to foster learning independence through self-directed learning activities.