Masamo ya Kisasa is designed to enable students at the intermediate and advanced levels to read and understand authentic texts in Swahili. Appropriate for classroom or independent use, this book provides a transition to unassisted reading of journalistic, scholarly, and literary works in Swahili.
The lessons in the book include contemporary texts on a wide range of topics from cooking and courtship manuals to politics and poetry. Each lesson includes glosses in Swahili that define the vocabulary introduced in the lesson. Grammatical and cultural notes as well as comprehension questions supplement each text. The final section of each lesson is a list of suggested class activities. These activities are intended to facilitate conversational interaction and foster the development of pragmatic and cultural skills.