This course intends to encourage students to become actively involved in their own basic language development, to become independent readers through instruction in the various skills and through intensive and extensive readings. In other words, our central goal is to help students develop the critical reading skills they will need for academic, personal, and/or career purposes. In the course there are pre- and post-reading exercises to develop reading skills and vocabulary. The various topic selections represent the different learning fields in order to prepare students to use academic textbooks. Students practice identifying main ideas, classifying and organizing information, and preparing summaries – skills needed for progressive study and research. They are interacting with the reading selections, with the writers’ ideas, and with others in the class.