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

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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.