Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

INTRODUCTION
How to Use This Book
ix
PRETEST
1
BUILDING A STRONG FOUNDATION
LESSON 1
Getting the Essential Information
19
How to be an active reader, picking up clues in what you read
LESSON 2
Finding the Main Idea
27
Looking beyond the facts, considering the author’s motive
LESSON 3
Defining Vocabulary in Context
33
Dealing with unfamiliar words without a dictionary
LESSON 4
The Difference between Fact and Opinion
39
Distinguishing between what an author knows and what an author 
believes to be true
LESSON 5
Putting It All Together
45
Practice in combining the skills you’ve learned in Lessons 1–4
Contents
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STRUCTURE
LESSON 6
Start from the Beginning: Chronological Order
53
Working through passages that start at the beginning and finish at the end 
of a sequence of events
LESSON 7
Order of Importance
61
Using the order in the writing to determine what is most important to the author
LESSON 8
Similarities and Differences: Compare and Contrast
67
Using comparisons to determine the author’s attitude
LESSON 9
Why Do Things Happen? A Look at Cause and Effect
73
The relationship between action and reaction
LESSON 10
Being Structurally Sound: Putting It All Together
81
Reviews Lessons 6–9, including identifying the structure used; 
practice with combined structures
LANGUAGE AND STYLE
LESSON 11
A Matter of Perspective: Point of View
89
Purposes of first-, second-, and third-person writing