Making Connections teaches an extensive range of reading skills and strategies in order to prepare students for college reading.

Making Connections teaches an extensive range of reading skills and strategies in order to prepare students for college reading. The series takes students from a high-beginner to an advanced level of academic reading skill proficiency. The series contains a strong focus on vocabulary-building, including teaching words from the Academic Word List. It emphasizes critical thinking and increased reading speed. The series has a unique unit structure. At the outset of each unit, students are presented with and practice key reading and vocabulary-building skills. As students read the texts following these sections, they apply these skills by completing exercises in boxes in the margins of the readings, so that students literally have to apply the newly-learned skills 'while reading.' CEFR levels - Intro (A2), Level 1 (A2/A2+), Level 2 (A2+/B1), Level 3 (B1+/B2), Level 4 (B2+/C1).

Key features

• Develop students’ skills and strategies for reading academic texts to help them succeed in college classes.
• Expand students’ academic knowledge by teaching key academic words, including words from the Academic Word List. Students also develop understanding of synonyms, word families, and placing words into their correct context.
• Each unit begins with detailed reading skills sections. The readings then provide opportunities for students to apply the reading skills just learned.
• Plentiful post-reading vocabulary exercises, including ones on the Academic Word List develop students general and academic vocabulary.
• Speed reading tasks throughout the books help students increase their reading speed so that they will be able to get through longer readings in college.
• Multiple readings on the same content area in each unit create thematic units within a reading skills approach.
• A longer final reading in each unit prepares students for university reading assignments. These readings in the new advanced level will be authentic texts written by experts in the unit’s academic discipline who are associated with top North American universities.
• A dictionary-like glossary at the end of the book provides students with definitions and examples of all the target vocabulary. The glossary also indicates which words are AWL words.
• Photocopiable unit tests in the Teacher's Manuals allow teachers to monitor their student's progress in learning reading skills and new vocabulary.