○Level: Upper Intermediate
○Genre: Reading
○Language: English is used for word meanings.


This textbook was created to help intermediate/advanced learners boost their ability to read Japanese text rapidly and accurately through a content-focused approach.


Overview

Reading comprehension lessons at the beginning level emphasize intensive reading focused on grammar and the meaning of words, but this approach doesn’t help intermediate and advanced learners to further develop their reading comprehension.

Through progressive exercises in scanning and skimming, this textbook evolves the learners’ reading style from language-focused (concentration on individual words) to content-focused (emphasis on information), and thus helps them to improve their reading comprehension.

The exercises use more than 100 items of reading material taken from real-life sources, including product ads, a book’s table of contents, pizza delivery and pub menus, product labels, newspaper/online articles, and passages from novels.

Since this textbook increases learners’ ability to rapidly and accurately read long text, it also serves a good tool for preparing for the reading comprehension sections of various exams.

Contents

Section 1. Basic Techniques

1. Learning to Scan
2. Learning to Skim
3. Learning to Scan and Skim Simultaneously

Section 2. Practical Exercises

1. Extracting Specific Information
2. Answering True/False Questions
3. Answering Multiple-Choice Questions
4. Creating Titles, Identifying Main Ideas, and Discussing the Content
5. Predicting Follow-Up Content
6. Reading Headlines
7. Reading the Personal-Advice Column
8. Having a Discussion

Section 3. Challenging Texts:
Four "Short-Short" Stories by Shin'ichi Hoshi

1. Abduction（誘拐/ゆうかい）
2. Little Bokko（ボッコちゃん）
3. My Favorite Watch（愛用の時計/あいようのとけい）
4. Insomnia（不眠症/ふみんしょう）