What Educators Are Saying About TP Townsend Press

Your materials and your service are the very best I have ever experienced in my 20+ years in education.

I love your online activities, which not only help students practice their skills but allow for quick grading for instructors! Townsend Press is, hands down, the best.

I sincerely appreciate your support and expeditious sending of materials. Your professionalism in meeting instructors' needs is far superior to some other companies I have worked with.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the Bluford books!  From a teacher's perspective, it is a most wondrous sight to see: children simply enjoying a good book. Further, I am much appreciative of Townsend's exceptional customer service via Facebook and the amazing wealth of additional resources your company offers online. I truly feel as though I stumbled on a gold mine!

Using Ten Steps to teach fundamental comprehension reading skills proved to be extremely beneficial to my students. The structure of the books allowed for interactive classroom instruction, group practice, and individual practice. The scaffolding of exercises helped students progressively move toward a higher level of critical reading and thinking. The readings not only helped students apply the skills to full-length writings, but they also promoted critical thinking discussions. My class found Ten Steps to be a great source for learning and reinforcing reading skills. On behalf of the students and myself, thank you.  

I teach at Seattle Central Community College, and our intensive English program has used John Langan's Ten Steps series for many years. The books are generally regarded as among the best for preparing students to tackle challenging academic reading. They effectively break down the process into discrete skills that build upon one another in order to help learners master the task of understanding and using information from college-level texts.

The ten steps are introduced in ten chapters: Vocabulary in Context, Main Ideas, Supporting Details, Implied Main Ideas, Relationships, Inferences, Purpose and Tone, Argument, Critical Reading, and Combined Skills. They may be covered in a quarter or a semester. Each chapter includes an ample supply of examples, exercises, review tests, and an extended final reading selection with an exam. Six mastery tests of graduated difficulty appear at the end of each chapter, and these pages are perforated so that they may be torn out and handed in for grading. Ten additional high-interest readings accompanied by tests are featured in an appendix, and even more exercises and exams are available online.

Good teachers know that only by practicing as often as possible will reading skills improve. This reasonably priced book and its companions Ten Steps to Building College Reading Skills and Ten Steps to Advancing College Reading Skills are designed to provide an abundance of material that should keep students engaged and learning throughout a school term and beyond.