The Kingman Comprehension Series: Elementary Level

By Dr. Alice Kingman and Jazzy Barry

About the Series

The Kingman Comprehension Series aims to enhance students’ essential reading skills and abilities to exercise critical judgment to help improve progressively their understanding of written texts.

A traditional and contemporary approach is used by the author with questions set in the formats of:
– Filling in the blanks
– Underlining the correct answers
– Multiple choice questions
– True or false questions
– Matching
– Drawing inferences
– Open-ended questions and
– Sequencing

Suggested answers to the questions are provided at the back of the book.

The series comprises six books catering to the levels and needs of the targeted students:

Elementary Level – Book 3 (for students eight to nine years old)
– Book 4 (for students nine to ten year old)
Intermediate Level – Book 5 (for students ten to eleven year old)
– Book 6 (for students eleven to twelve year old)
Advanced Level – Book 7 (for students twelve to thirteen year old)
– Book 8 (for students thirteen to fourteen year old)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781543772807

Dr. Alice Kingman

Having taught English since 1976, Dr. Alice Kingman is an experienced English language teacher who is now director of her own English tutorial centre and teacher of the Kowloon International Baptist Church English Class. Dr. Kingman attained her Bachelor’s Degree in the United States and her Certificate of Education, Master’s Degree and PhD. Degree in Education at the University of Hong Kong.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Alice Kingman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

To Teacher and Parent

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Belling the Cat

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

The Frog Prince

Winnie the Pooh

The Elves and the Shoemaker

The Slave and the Lion

The Dog and the Cook

The Story of the Fisherman

The Journal: Or Birthday Gifts

The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Buster Bear Goes Fishing

What Is Pink?

The Little Mermaid Story

The Poor Sick Mother

Hansel and Gretel

The Velveteen Rabbit

Cinderella

Beauty and the Beast

My Father’s Dragon

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank Jazzy, the illustrator of the Kingman Comprehension Series, for her beautiful artistic drawings which bring every story she has worked on to life.

My great appreciation is also to be extended to my two daughters, Stephanie and Audrey, who helped me from the very beginning in the typing and formatting of questions for every reading passage.

A big thank you to my beloved husband, Matt, for his continuous support, encouragement and professional assistance in the computerised structuring of the book.

I am also grateful to all my students for their contributions to this project, working on different passages, testing out questions and providing invaluable feedback.

With no reservation, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my beloved late father, Joseph, who spared no effort in teaching me English since I was seven years old.

Thank you to all other members of my family who spurred me on to take this big step in realising my dreams of becoming an English-language author. I thank them for their love and patience throughout the whole process. Thank you to my wonderful church family as well for their uplifting prayers and support.

Last but not least, I thank God, my Heavenly Father, every day for His unfailing presence and spiritual guidance, without which this project would not have happened.

To Teacher and Parent

In my lifelong career as an English-language teacher, I have often been disappointed and discouraged to find questions set for comprehension passages stressing speedy location of answers or meticulous reproduction of the text. The formulated questions seldom encourage students to read between the lines or genuinely understand the writer’s choice of diction and intention of writing. In other words, students are often deprived of opportunities to think out of the box and explore implied meanings and examine the purpose of sentence structure.

Hence, it has always been my ambition to produce a comprehension series that can sharpen students’ skills in analytical discernment. The Kingman Comprehension Series comprises high-interest selections of different literary genres from classics to renowned children’s literature including fables, folk and fairy tales, poems, legends, myths as well as modern realistic fictions. It is my hope that students will find the works of the outstanding authors in the books not only enjoyable to work on but also interesting enough to spark further independent reading among themselves.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Albert Goodwin

In a town of Persia lived two brothers, sons of poor men: one named Cassim, the other, Ali Baba. Cassim, the elder, married a wife with considerable fortune and lived at his ease, but the wife of Ali Baba was as poor as himself. They dwelt in a mean cottage in the suburbs, and he