Ten Steps to Building College Reading Skills

by John Langan

The leader in the field, Emergency Medical Responder, Ninth Edition, provides clear first responder-level training for fire service, emergency, law enforcement, military, civil, and industrial personnel. The new ninth edition retains many successful features from previous editions and includes new topics and concepts that have recently become part of most Emergency Medical Responder programs. The foundation of this text is the new National Emergency Medical Services Education Standards for Emergency Medical Responder, and it also includes the 2010 American Heart Association guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and First Aid.

612 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 1998

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Langan series of textbooks is a solid approach for developmental students in need of improving their college-level reading skills. I used this text in an ESL reading class I taught a number of times over the past decade. The formula is simple: in order to improve, students need targeted work on ten key skills such as learning vocabulary from context or making inferences. Each chapter provides guided readings and copious exercises so that students can learn while reading.

The main criticism I have of this series is it's too neat -- a "training wheels" approach to reading. Many of the exercises are rather formulaic, reducing a complex task to a misleadingly simple multiple-choice format. However, I can also admit that this approach gives developmental students a feeling of accomplishment. Another problem, though, is that students weary of the endless procession of guided exercise, then practice tests, and then mastery tests. Many begin to simply skim for the answer rather than read, which, I suppose, might also be working on a valuable reading skill, but it is not really the point of some of the exercises at all.