Daily Reads-43 (Level-2)

Reading Skills Exercises: You only improve your reading skills by reading more!

Searching for the ideal Reading Skills Exercises? You have landed at the right place! In case you are preparing for various entrance exams, and are searching for daily reading recommendations, you have landed at exactly the right place. Our ‘Daily Reads’ section offers you the best reading material available and helps you prepare for a variety of exams by collating and showcasing the best reading material available online. We make sure we cover a variety of topics in this section and make sure you are prepared to the face the challenge posed by the reading comprehension section of various exams. Remember, this selection of articles that we put up every day is essentially one of the best reading skills exercises that you can take up for your comprehension preparation. Why so? Because the one sure-shot way of improving your language skills is reading and reading extensively. Over a period of time, your mind develops skills and abilities related to reading that you cannot even envisage at the start of your reading journey.

The best way to gain from this daily reads sections is to make sure you visit us every and your read on an everyday basis. Remember, all reading skills exercises and related activities that you take up fail in case you do not READ. It is as simple as that!

Reading Skills Exercises: What you need to do for following articles?
The key reading skills exercises that you can take up while reading include the following activities:

Identifying key subjects in the article
Identifying the main idea of the passage
Identifying key sentences in the passage

Once you are on the lookout for these three things, the brain trains itself to look out for the relevant details in the passage and makes sure you do not get bored while reading. Effectively, the switch always remains turned on while reading; your mind does not wander and in the end, your reading comprehension powers increase.

Well, let’s get started with the reading suggestions then and you can put the above reading skills exercises in use.

Reading Suggestion-1

Article Name: Between Everywhere and Nowhere
Author Name: Bernd Brunner
Source: The Smart Set
Category: Art,Culture and Literature

Summary for this article:

The writer starts by describing how a Frenchman who was under house arrest made the best use of his circumstance and started touring about his room for 42 days and wrote a book on it. This experience taught him to see the world with new eyes also giving travel a new definition. The writer now questions if this account is relevant today after more than hundred years. The obsession with minute details holds good even today. The author now talks about his favorite essay by Natalia Ginzburg, titled “Clueless travelers”, in which the Italian writer describes people who just can’t travel and take refuge at the hotel when arriving on foreign soil.

According to the writer, the reasons for anyone to travel are manifold. The author goes on to say that how times have changed and today, although with the advent of the internet, things have become smoother yet fear and uncertainty are reshaping the landscape of travel. “Has the idealist world-wide travel gone?”, asks the author. Maybe, but he still loves traveling to a new place and learning their language.

According to Andre Aciman, the writer of the essay “the Contrafactual traveler” home is always elsewhere. For Paul Theroux, something seems to have changed. His passion for the foreign appears to have been lost after witnessing the depressing circumstances on his trip to Africa that forced him to return back midway.

The author concludes by saying that till the world gets normal, let’s stay and be comfortable at our own home and states reasons for the same provided by Pierre Bayard Freud and other psychiatrists.

Words to learn from this article:

Duelling: Fight a duel, as over one’s honour
Infirm: Having weakness, one who vacillates or is irresolute
Inclement: Rainy and stormy weather
Bandit: Thieves who steal things from travellers.
Precipices: Very steep side of mountain or cliff.
Sedentary: Not involving much physical effort or movement.
Detours: Travelling to different places generally for longer durations than usually planned

Reading Suggestion-1: Click to read full article

Reading Suggestion-2

Article Name: The Future of Media is Here, and I Was There
Author Name:Sean Cooper
Source: Tablet Magazine
Category: Society

Summary for this article:

This article is all about the transformation of the media industry. The author of the passage outlines his experience at a lavish content-marketing conference and goes on to highlight that how journalism is being over-taken by content-marketing. In fact, he goes on state several reasons why this trend is only going to increase and showcases how the world of media is undergoing a transformation.

Those of you who do know what content marketing is should look it up before reading this article and it will help you understand this piece better.

Words to learn from this article:

Powwow: A conference or meeting for discussion
Swanky: Imposingly fashionable
Plundered: Wrongfully emptied or stripped of anything of value
Burgled: Commit a burglary; enter and rob a place
Jocundly: Full of or showing high-spirited merriment

Reading Suggestion-2: Click to read full article

Reading Suggestion-3

Article Name:Coca-Cola’s ‘health by stealth’ wheeze is sneaky. But if it works so be it
Author Name: Gaby Hinsliff
Source: The Guardian
Category: Health

Summary for this article:

In this article, the writer talks about how Coca-cola slowly started reducing sugar in its drinks without officially informing the consumers. The net result was that not only did it go unnoticed amongst its consumers but also it ended up saving tax that the government had levied on sugars, the latter being the reason Coca Cola decided to reduce sugar content.

People definitely do not like health and safety interventions by the governmental bodies, but outrage soon turns to grudging acceptance and it later surprises you if things were ever any different. She goes on to say that people hate being told what’s good for them. But when things are done secretly, just like what the Coca Cola had done, it goes unnoticed and if this works, then so be it.

If not anything else, this article lets you know about the issues relating to Coca-cola and other food related products.

Words to learn from this article:

Knackered: Very tired
Tedious: So lacking in interest as to cause mental tiredness
Disconcerting: Causing an emotional disturbance
Equivalent: A person or thing equal to another in value or measure
Astonishing: Surprising greatly
Sneaky: Marked by deception