Course Match

Expanding Horizons (Penguin Academic Series), 1/e

BASIC APPROACH

(Note: This textbook was published by our college division for use by students at post-secondary institutions whose writing skills are below the level needed to succeed in college English. Please review this text carefully to ensure appropriateness of content for your students.)

Expanding Horizons is an off-beat collection of essays, poems, stories, and images certain to stimulate the imagination while improving both reading and writing skills.

Each unusual reading selection and image is presented within a pedagogical framework of pre-reading discussion topics and vocabulary work, post-reading comprehension questions, journal responses, writing topics, and a unique feature Expanding Horizons, which introduces research and encourages students to be curious and critical about what they read. Students are urged to look beyond the given world, giving them analytical skills they need to forge their own connections among reading, writing, and thinking.

FEATURES

• Part of the Penguin Academic Series.
• Unusual Readings. Not your typical "pop culture" reader, Expanding Horizons includes readings that take unusual spins on everyday topics. Each of the twelve chapters, thematically organized, contains four readings, each more interesting than the other.
• Visual Literacy. Each chapter opens with a thought-provoking picture, followed by a writing prompt; other images–photographs, maps, cartoons, and graphs–are also used throughout the chapters, followed up with short questions and writing ideas.
• Expanding Horizons Feature. This unique feature extends past the basics of reading and writing and encourages students to read, write, and research beyond what they have already learned.
• Leveled Readings. All of the readings in Expanding Horizons have been scored and hand-picked for their ease of readability, and are therefore well-suited for basic college readers. With a healthy mix of mid- to low-level readings, Expanding Horizons encourages struggling students by ensuring that they can access at least some of the readings, and, as they progress, by giving them opportunities for more challenging work.
• Pre-reading Features. Starting Out and Words to Watch both help students to focus their attention on the reading itself while engaging them with current knowledge-set and previous experiences.
• The Reading-Writing Connection. In the introduction of the book, the author highlights the importance of the reading-writing connection, and shows students how critical thinking plays an energizing role in both reading and writing. As a means of building on the introduction, a writing activity at the end of every reading and after every image prompts students to write about their reactions from various angles through a progression of different features. From Where I Stand has students write a free-flowing journal response; Just the Facts tests students reading comprehension, and Write On! offers students a list of related writing topics. At the end of every chapter, the Read On! section gives students a list of further reading on the chapter's topic.
• Writing Models. A detailed appendix explains various writing models, defines writing terms that students may not be familiar with, and gives examples of types of writing that students will encounter while in college.
• Research and Documenting Sources. An easy-to-follow primer on college-level research includes looking for the best sources (especially online) and incorporating quotations successfully into a sentence or paragraph, without plagiarizing.
• Rhetorical Modes. An alternate Table of Contents increases flexibility for users by indicating which readings are written primarily in which of the modes.

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