Brenda Smith’s Bridging the Gap was the first college reading text to focus on reading for college, and through its eleven editions has been the most popular textbook choice of developmental reading educators.
Originally written to help college readers develop into independent learners, Bridging the Gap has kept up with the demands of contemporary college reading courses by evolving the “bridge” theme. Brenda expanded on this concept by creating schema for content courses with academic readings, and ultimately linking textbook readings to recent news in the popular press and representing new “bridges” of text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self. All the while, Brenda never lost sight of what is important to both college reading instructors and students: comprehensive skill instruction, dependable exercises and examples, vocabulary development, and wealth of high-interest readings (pulled from a variety of academic disciplines) that provide meaningful practice.
 
This edition of Bridging the Gap is supported by an enhanced MyReadingLab course, which offers text-specific exercises within the Learning Path, all of which feed into the MyReadingLab Gradebook.