Step Up to Academic Reading takes a skill-based approach, with each chapter focusing on a particular set of skills that are developed gradually, often progressing from sentences to paragraphs to longer passages. The book covers skills that are essential for success in the academic world - they teach the reader to approach an academic text in an engaged manner by analyzing the purpose of a text's publication, the opinions expressed by the author, and the ways in which opinions are expressed.

Typically, the students are requested to evaluate the quality of support for the ideas set forth by the author, and to form their own opinions on the issue. Students are taught that they should not read mechanically, processing the printed information merely for the sake of answering comprehension questions. Instead, they learn to employ a series of reading skills that will empower them to think critically about the way in which an argument is presented.

Chapter 5 is unique to this book, introducing a research article as a separate and important academic genre. Students are asked to consider an author's credentials, the disclosure of possible financial interests, a reference list, and other supporting information.

The final chapter integrates the skills through a series of texts, employing academic-style reading activities, such as constructing an outline of a text and summarizing a text. Here, as in other activities throughout the book, the students have to synthesize the information from two texts on a related topic and to contrast them.

Marina Rozenberg's profile page

Marina Rozenberg has been an instructor of academic English skills at Simon Fraser University (SFU) since 2008. Before that, she taught college-level academic English for 12 years in Israel. She has held a number of other positions in ESL instruction and has developed curricula for SFU's reading and vocabulary course, as well as for other courses.