William Grabe is Emeritus Regents Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University (NAU). He has been exploring research on reading comprehension, reading development, and reading instruction for over 40 years. He was President of AAAL from 2001-2002, and Vice President for Research at NAU from 2012-2017.

Preface; Part I. Foundations of Reading: 1. The nature of reading: Defining reading; 2. How reading works: Building blocks of fluency and comprehension; 3. How reading works: comprehension processes; 4. Cognitive issues in reading; 5. Neurocognitive processes and reading ability; 6. Explaining reading comprehension: Models of reading; Part II. Patterns of Variation in Reading: 7. Reading in different languages; 8. L1 and L2 reading relationships; 9. Social contexts of reading; 10. Motivation for reading; Part III. Developing Reading Comprehension Abilities: 11. Vocabulary and reading comprehension; 12. Building main idea comprehension: syntax and strategies; 13. Becoming a strategic reader; 14. Building awareness of discourse structure; Part IV. Expanding Reading Comprehension Skills: 15. Reading to learn and reading/writing relationships; 16. Reading in digital contexts; 17. Reading fluency, reading rate, and comprehension; 18. Extensive reading ; Part V. Applications of Reading Research: Instruction and Assessment; 19. Reading curriculum and instruction; 20. Reading assessment; References; Indexes.