This book is a collection of the reading sections of the exam papers prepared in the Department of Basic English in the last ten years. It is intended to provide students with supplementary material for EFL reading practice and exam preparation as it is believed that the reading material in the main textbooks is not always sufficient for this purpose. In their English-medium academic mainstream reading will be of utmost importance for our students; therefore we believe that they should be encouraged to read as much as possible outside class and we hope that this book will equip both the students and the teachers with enough means to emphasize reading comprehension and vocabulary development.

The material in this book has been graded according to text difficulty and the level of the exercises so that it will serve the needs of our students - from the beginner level to intermediate - in the first semester. There are 204 passages in the book which will enable each student to read extensively at his own level and to move on to the more advanced texts for challenge. In selecting the passages an attempt has been made to include a variety of topics and text types so as to promote reading for pleasure as well. Finally the material has been edited to maintain a reasonable level of consistency in the exercise types throughout the book. Although it is prepared with the students of the Department of Basic English in mind we believe that this book will help any enthusiastic student of English as a foreign language. If the book proves to be beneficial we will consider ourselves useful.