This combined skills course is designed to improve vocabulary and build reading skills. High-frequency vocabulary is learned in context along with word collocations, word families, prefixes and suffixes. Techniques and strategies needed to understand new vocabulary in a variety of contexts from simple passages up to academic texts will be practiced. Reading skills are practiced in reading passages that help expand reading comprehension and build reading strategies such as summarizing, skimming, scanning, inferring and predicting. Through practicing these reading skills, students gain experience understanding simple reading passages, building up to academic level writing and passages.