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 “The Great American Slowdown”—are as follows: “Our nomadic future”: Students might analyze and rephrase the assertion that “the old tyranny of place may become the new tyrrany of time.”

“Something smells a bit fishy”: Students might explain or paraphrase the quotation that ends the antepenultimate paragraph. What is meant by the statement “Aw, shucks”?

“The new oases”: Students might elaborate on the statement that “21st-century aesthetics will probably be the exact opposite of the sci-fi chic that 20th-century futurists once imagined.” What evidence in the article supports this assertion?