The Academic Approach®

One way that Academic Approach benefits from its partnership with The Economist is by using the magazine’s content to hone our students’ reading comprehension skills. Each week, we offer our students and tutors tips that can be used to make the most out of the magazine.

The exercises that correspond to this week’s issue—subtitled “All Change?”—are as follows:

“Scarcely a cloth cap in sight”: Students might summarize the argument of the article, addressing why greyhound racing is usually thought of as popular instead of aristocratic and why there is hope that this view might soon change.

“Left behind”: Students might survey the article and find specific phrases that indicate Democratic candidates are avoiding addressing this issue on the campaign trail.

“Sugaring the decision”: Although the outcome of the study is simple enough to understand after reading the article, the actual details of the experiment are more confusing. Students might summarize in a few sentences the way that the study worked and, ideally, how the specifics of the study relate to the study results.