Review The Science Class You Wish You Had

Review The Science Class You Wish You Had As Ive written here in the past, I dream of students who begin to prepare for the TOEFLfar in advance of actually taking the test. A huge problem students have with the TOEFL is that they lack the ability to comprehend academic texts in English. And by the time they realize this problem, it is far too late to really do anything about it. All they can do is familiarize themselves with the question styles, learn a few strategies and hope for the best.In my dream world, though, students start preparing for the TOEFL a couple of years in advance. Or they spend all of their undergraduate years working on their English skills. If someone reads a non-fiction book a month for four years, theyll ace the reading section of the TOEFL. Really. That person will develop the required comprehension skills and the required vocabulary to do well without using a single strategy. Not only that, but theyll be totally comfortable reading academic texts (something that even native speakers struggle with).A nyways, Ive been working on a list of books Id recommend to such a student. A little while ago I wrote about Reading for Thinking. Today I want to write about a fun book called The Science Class You Wish You Had. This book fits all of my criteria for recommendation:It covers a lot of the same topics used in the TOEFL reading sectionIt is written using language at a similar level to the TOEFL reading sectionIt is divided into chunks somewhat similar in length to the TOEFL reading sectionIn particular, this book covers scientific topics, and takes a history of science approach, which is something that often shows up on the test. It attempts to introduce readers to the seven greatest scientific discoveries in history which are:Gravity and the basic laws of physicsThe structure of the atomRelativityThe Big BangEvolutionThe cell and geneticsDNAEach of these gets a chapter, and the chapters are each broken into short essays of about 5 to 10 paragraphs in length. Obviously that is longer t han what youll see on the TOEFL, but it is close enough. This is the sort of book that you might give to a recent high school graduate preparing for their freshman year. Thats absolutely perfect in terms of difficulty level, as the TOEFL reading passages are generally designed to look like they came from freshman textbooks.To use your time most efficiently, you may wish to skip the chapter on relativity as that is way more abstract than what you will find on the test but Ive always found the most difficult TOEFL reading passagesare those that deal with abstract concepts, so maybe just struggle through it.There ya go. Read this book. By the time you finish with it, Ill have a recommendation that covers history or the social sciences.