Reading Instruction Books

This well-organized volume breaks down the U.S. into 17 distinct regions, including states whose weather is characteristic enough to justify their own chapters (Alaska, Hawaii, California, Texas and Florida). Horne, an experienced pilot, accomplishes something unusual for anyone, scientist or aviator: He explains meteorological terms and weather events in straightfoward, example-laden ways which should be easy for any worthy pilot to comprehend, and cites scientific references for further reading. In the regions where they are most common, various weather phenomena (e.g., downbursts, hurricanes, derechoes, tornadoes, rotors, fog, icing, squall lines, snowstorms, extreme heat and cold, and more) are made relevant to the pilot through plainly written explanations, combined with historic examples of their roles in aviation incidents. While memorizing definitions to pass the FAA knowledge exam may be enough to get one's license; this book takes the pilot an important step beyond by allowing him to *understand* the weather behind those terms on the test. The only significant flaw is the liberal use of website addresses, many of which will change during the several years this book resides on library shelves. Still, Horne's book should be in every general aviator's library.

This review is from the point of view of an adult self learner.

WHAT IT IS
This book is part of a three-book set, which includes:
1. Reading Greek: Text and Vocabulary
2. Reading Greek: Grammar and Exercises
3. An Independent Study Guide to Reading Greek

Think of the set as one book broken up into three parts, with the Greek practice text from every chapter in book #1, the grammar and exercises in every chapter in book #2, the answers to exercises in book #3. Nutty, but it works.

#1 Short passages of Greek text (with vocab lists at the end of each passage). Early passages are modern Dick-and-Jane "easy Greek" written especially to complement parallel sections of Grammar; later passages are simplified (and further on, not so simplified) passages from ancient texts.

#2 Grammar theory, forms, and exercises all keyed to parallel passages in the Text. So when you study middle voice verbs in Grammar, you read the accompanying passage in Text, and see how that form works in real Greek sentences.

#3 A. Translations of Text #1.
B. Answers to exercises in Grammar #2.
C. Hints and insights.

WHICH TO BUY?
This is an integrated set whose whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. You will want all three books. The TEXT complements the grammar, the GRAMMAR makes much much more sense when supported by the text readings. The answers to exercise in the STUDY GUIDE will show you stuff you missed learning--but you won't find that out unless you have book #3 to check your answers.

[There are other JACT RG books with short Greek passages from ancient texts. You don't need them now (or ever, IMHO Loebs are better).]

BAD STUFF
1. In my experience this is NOT a good set for absolute newbies. It was originally designed in the 1970s when students started Greek after a year of Latin, and thus already understood inflected grammars. If you don't understand inflected grammars already, you may get lost. I did. I tried (the old version) of RG as my first learn-Greek-on-your-own book about 18 months ago, and was immediately lost.

I'd suggest starting with Dobson's Learn New Testament Greek, them moving on to RG.

2. Vocabulary selection is excellent, Attic prose wise, but you're forced to make your own flip cards or memorization list. Because Greek diacriticals are a bitch, making your own computerized flip cards is a major pain. In the internet age, JACT really should have vocab flip cards at their web site.

3. Ancient Greek is still hard.

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GOOD STUFF
Since giving up on RG the first time I've been through Dobson's Learn NT Greek and memorized the forms in Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar. Now that I've come back to RG it makes much much more sense, and it seems to me the most excellent book.

1. Simple Readings Cement Forms.
After memorizing all the verb forms in Mounce, I found struggling with Greek text a frustration--passing each word through a memorized translation table. RG's solution is to teach your brain to bypass the form tables and recognize word endings-meanings directly. The reading for the Present Tense chapter is full of simple sentences like: "Dikaiopolis walks on the ship." "Then the captain walks on the ship." and "The sailors walk on the ship." - different word endings in each case. Over and over. Repetition, particularly repetition in the context of a memorable little story, cements recognition. (Of course you do still have to memorize the forms.)

This is a whole additional layer of learning that you simply will not get from table-Greek books like Mounce, or tables-and-rules books like Mastronarde's Introduction to Attic Greek.

2. Sentence Structure.
It's not obvious till you've struggled a while, but ancient Greek has a layer of complexity on top of the alphabet and words. English brains extract word function--subject, verb, direct object--from word order; Greek brains extracted subject, verb, direct object from word endings; Greek sentences used word-order for other purposes. You've got to train you brain to process sentences a whole different way. Again, practice is the key. An RG has lots and lots and lots of text to help.

By the time I was through RG chapter 7, I could pick up Loeb's Xenophon's Anabasis and quickly recognize (via case endings) the structure of each sentence (though of course my vocab still wasn't up to an unassisted reading). This was very exciting.

Again, this is a whole additional layer of learning that you will not get from table-Greek books like Mounce, or tables-and-rules books like Mastronarde .

3. Learn By Reading; Lots Of Readings.
RG is not a tables-and-rules book with an expanded Examples section. It is an integrated system of teaching ancient Greek through a graded series of long and progressively complex reading passages. Again, a whole additional layer of learning that you will not get from Mounce or Mastronarde .

4. Attention To Detail
Someone spent a long time getting the big stuff and the little stuff right.
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COMPARING 2008 WITH EARLIER EDITIONS
1. The books are physically bigger, better laid out, with larger type and better fonts--much easier to read. A small thing that makes a big difference.

2. The Grammar has been entirely redone, and is much much better.

3. The Text readings are the same.

4. The vocabulary has been moved from Grammar to Text, which makes the readings much easier. (In the old version you were constantly flipping book to book.)
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COMPARED WITH ATHENAZE
Neither RG or Athenaze is perfect, but the both have lots of simple readings that I find most helpful. I've bought and used both, and would again.

1. Athenaze also has very good readings.

2. Athenaze is slower, with less complex early readings. Athenaze translations are also in a separate, 2d book.

3. Athenaze has NO ANSWERS TO EXERCISES. The current 2003 edition of the Athenaze main text has exercises, but the workbook with the exercise answers was created but apparently never released. For me this is the TIE BREAKER. RGs exercises are very hard, but very useful. If you ace the exercises, you understood the material. If you didn't you didn't.

I often like to adopt a syntopic reading approach to books in the same genre...partly because it is great fun and partly, I can get more leverage, in terms of learning points, out of the books in the ultimate reading process. I also get to understand and appreciate how two or more independent authors tackle a common issue with, sometimes, different and diverse viewpoints. (For an understanding of the syntopic reading process, get hold of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book.)

In this particularly instance, I read Peter Sotiriou's Integrating College Study Skills syntopically with Jean Reynolds' 'Succeeding in College' book.

On the whole, I found that they can complement each other pretty well, although there are similarities in content as well as contrasts in approach. Both authors demand the reader to take a pro-active approach in the reading process.

Peter Sotiriou's book is more specific to the reasoning process embodied in reading, listening & writing. The many exercises in this respect are deliberately constructed in a cumulative, step-by-step fashion. This makes the book very helpful for the college student reader to follow. The author takes great pain to explain and illustrate the process of summarising and paraphrasing upon reading, which are two vital information gathering skills for college students.

Jean Reynolds' book is more comprehensive in the coverage of the overall 'study strategies' process. It is also more broad-based, as the author very skilfully uses many success stories of athletes, performers, professional men and women, and leaders in diverse fields to illustrate her points.

I particularly enjoy the author's creative treatment of critical thinking with the aid of the pencil. She recognises the pencil as an inexpensive thinking tool. A very interesting concept...practical, too.

In terms of introducing reading techniques, both authors did their job pretty well. Both provided ample exercises.

To sum up, both books can serve as useful strategy guides for college students. Both are designed to to help you enjoy and benefit from your college experiences.

We recently selected this book for an undergraduate course in reading diagnosis. It covers a variety of assessments, such as oral reading analysis, running records, and phonics. The directions are easy to understand, detailed training models are provided, and blank examiner pages can be photocopied for individual use. The book is also reasonably priced for college students. The book does not get into much theory and research, but it provides practical, hands-on experiences for college students.

Selfe and Hilligoss compiled this book in 1994, when the issue of computers in composition was aflame. Six years on, their volume still holds many key ideas and theories with relative currency. Readers should be anxiously awaiting a revised edition, but in the meantime "Literacy and Computers" is a worthwile gateway into the "new" reading and writing of texts.

This is an excellent history of music. It could be more complete; however; I found it to be very useful in the music classes, in the Humanities classes, and the Education classes that I teach at the college level.

The premise above works with this program. As part of a prison reading lab program, we were able to obtain this book of lesson plans and purchased the books in the core book lists for the lab and the visiting room. At the time I was involved we were just launching the program along with other reading programs for the inmates...which included becoming aware of one's visual difficulties. We found that inmates could develop their own programs for their visiting children, or could pass that information on to their family, and it helped the inmates with their own poor reading by getting motivated to help the children. Within weeks using visual tests, exercises and the program outlined we had inmates excited about teaching reading to others and changed their own attitudes in there GED classes.

There are a number of truly excellent, insightful, and must read essays in this book, covering ideas of the other, gender, orientalism, and black women in art history. Which is my only criticism of the book, it is about art history, not contemporary art and not about the theory itself. The theories are employed within the essays which is helpful to see how that is done, but if you are looking for the source of the theories on race and on race in art, this is not the text. However, there are a lot of great essays, very interesting to read, very accessible, not so ladened with theory as to be unapproachable.

If you are thinking about learning Greek on your own, Reading Ancient Greek (RAG) is a good place to start. Do not allow the acronym RAG to mislead you in purchasing discrimination. The two books A Reasonable Approach (ARA)and The Second Year(TSY) are fairly self-explanatory.

The primary problem with TSY is that it refers somewhat regularly to ARA for explanations and definitions.

The books as a set are a great resource, but it would be difficult to use TSY without a copy of ARA handy.

The teacher told us to buy This Book... Reading and all that jazz. Every body from the class got it at the school store for $ 70 dollars... I did not want to spend all that money soo I started looking around, and I found it here in Amazon and some other web site almost at the same price. When I made the order they told me that the book would take 5 -9 business day but it came in 2 days... WoW Soooo I actually saved money getting it from Amazon. I really had to get the book...