Popular selections that challenge and engage make Improving Reading Skills an ideal text for students in introductory and intermediate developmental reading courses.

Highlights of the Fifth Edition

• 18 new readings include Lori Hope’s "Did I Save Lives or Engage in Racial Profiling?"; Eric Schlosser’s "Fast Food Nation: Behind the Counter"; Val Plumwood’s "Surviving a Crocodile Attack"; Bill McKibben’s "The Environmental Issue from Hell"; Jay Weiner’s "Sports Centered"; and Barbara Ehrenreich’s "Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America".
  
• An annotated practice selection helps students get the most out of the text: A walk-through of the first reading—Dave Barry’s "Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy"—introduces students to all the apparatus and exercise materials they will encounter in the text.
  
• Revised introductory material presents essential skills progressively, with each skill building on the skills presented in previous parts. Activities in the introduction to each part and the quiz materials following each reading give students extensive practice in these skills.
  
• Progressive reading level moves students from basic readings to college-level readings over the course of the semester. To encourage and engage reluctant readers, selections address topics of broad interest and appeal.
  
• An alternate table of contents arranges reading selections by broad themes, for example, “Adventure,” “Coming of Age and Initiation Rites,” “Our Working Lives,” and “Saving and Destroying the Environment.”
  
• An Online Learning Center (www.mhhe.com/spearsirs) offers additional exercises, information on vocabulary and word parts, links and recommendations for further reading, and much more.
  
• NEW!An Annotated Instructor’s Edition (AIE) offers Readability Analyses, a Preview, and Suggestions for Teaching for each reading, as well as answers to all the exercises.