The Kingman Comprehension Series
Dr. Alice Kingman
In my lifelong career as an English-language teacher, I have often been disappointed and discouraged to find questions set for comprehension passages stressing speedy location of answers or meticulous reproduction of the text. The formulated questions seldom encourage students to read between the lines or genuinely understand the writer’s choice of diction and intention of writing. In other words, students are often deprived of opportunities to think out of the box and explore implied meanings and examine the purpose of sentence structure.
Hence, it has always been my ambition to produce a comprehension series that can sharpen students’ skills in analytical discernment. The Kingman Comprehension Series comprises high interest selections of different literary genres from classics to renowned children’s literature including fables, folk and fairy tales, poems, legends, myths as well as modern realistic fictions. It is my hope that students will find the works of the outstanding authors in the books not only enjoyable to work on but also interesting enough to spark further independent reading among themselves.
