WU

Reading techniques

It might sound odd that reading requires a technique but it does.

1. Before you read, set aside enough time free from distractions.

Read long, heavy-going material when your mind is fresh, usually early in the day. Leave the shorter or lighter material for when you are not so fresh. Make a plan for how long you will take to read each item and get your supervisor’s help to set realistic but challenging targets. And make sure there are no distractions--no matter what anybody says, you will not concentrate your best with TV or music on or with little children around your feet.

2. Prepare to make your own notes.

Have notepaper nearby. It’s a bad habit to mark the book with underlining or comments, even if you own the book. It makes books into disposables, and your markings and comments can distract you from sections that later turn out to be very helpful.

3. Get a clear idea of the item’s content and direction.

Before you start reading, find out a little about what it is is about. The parts will make more sense when you understand their context.

If it is a journal article, the title and abstract will quickly give you a very good idea of the topic.

If it is a book, read the introduction and the table of contents, and skim the section headings in the chapters. The blurb on the back cover or dust jacket might also tell you a little of what the book is about. Take notice of the author's purpose, background and approach to the topic. You might also find that some chapters are far more relevant to your needs than others, so don't waste time reading those that are unhelpful.

4. Read the item carefully.

Some items, especially monographs, can only be read slowly, but in general, you should work on increasing your reading speed. As you read, make notes of important points and ask yourself several questions:

What are the issues with which this author is grappling?
What are the main things the author would want me to learn from this item?
What do I need to learn from it?
What do I already know about what this author is discussing? Is this author confirming what others have said or disagreeing with it?

5. Reflect.

When you’ve finished reading, write your thoughts out and reflect on them. Make notes of your thoughts on the topic as they develop. Ask yourself:

What did I learn from this?
Do I agree with this author? Why or why not?
What’s my personal opinion of the ideas in this item? Why? ("Liked it" or "Didn’t like it" are not adequate answers.)
What can I put into practice?
What questions arise from reading? (Look for new questions; don't lock yourself into pre-determined questions.)
What conclusions can I draw?

6. Keep useful notes.

Keep neat, well-organized records and note bibliographical details. Make notes of any particularly helpful articles, assumptions, insights, and weakness in the literature. What do you think? Which ideas could be improved?

If you are writing a thesis or dissertation

To save time and graduate sooner, try to increasingly focus your reading and writing as you progress through the literature review. You can safely omit reading (and writing) anything that is unrelated to your research questions. If you have already written anything that is irrelevant, take it out of your main document and save it in a separate file and folder for items that appear to be no longer relevant. (It is usually unwise to delete it completely; as your understanding of the topic deepens, it might become useful later on in a way that you could not have anticipated.) If you spend three pages of in your literature review refining your discussion of something that is not relevant to your final research question, you have cost precious time in your journey to graduation. (Based on “Working Backwards: Moving Past Brain Freeze and Writing Your Problem Statement.” Mοliver, Nina. Unpublished paper.)

Learning a new field

Unless your topic is interdisciplinary, you will generally relate to only one body of literature and will have limited freedom to choose the body of literature you work with.

You might find, however, that you need to learn a new field from scratch because it has become relevant to your research. This is not normally recommended, but is sometimes unavoidable, especially at higher levels. Most American schools will simply require that you take a coursework unit. In European-style programs, you will be left to learn it on your own, and the inverted pyramid is the way to do it.

The idea of the pyramid reading strategy is simply that you do some basic reading, then progress to more sophisticated material, and then spend most of your time reading the research literature.

Level 1. Read a couple of general introductions. These are usually textbooks for first-year undergraduate students, and are not difficult to read. (They are tertiary sources.)

Level 2. Then read specialized introductions that are related to your topic. These are usually written for advanced undergraduate subjects. You will need to read more of these. By this time, the assumptions of the field will be clearer, and you will notice that the names of leading thinkers are coming up increasingly often. You should be getting a good idea of the distinctives of their ideas. (These are mostly tertiary sources, but may contain some secondary source material. Some specialised texts from leading experts are sometimes used as primary sources.)

Level 3. Do much more reading in the recent research literature that relates specifically to your topic. Level two should have given you enough background so that it is easy enough to understand. At this level, you should get a fairly detailed knowledge of the present state of relevant discussion. These are primary sources.

Critique

Don't just read; describe and report what others have written. You need something new or insightful to say, so give your readers a reason to read your version of the literature and offer critique. Write a critique. This does not necessarily mean find fault; you might find that the source is excellent. Identify any of the following that are helpful to the purpose of resolving your research problem or drawing conclusions on your topic:

strengths,
unique or unusual features
things that don’t make sense (logical fallacies, gaps),
topics where it contradicts itself (inconsistencies),
constituent elements
assumptions, and,
major implications.

It is really a matter of balance between being overly critical and being unwilling to offer valid critique. Here are some hints ...

Be critical enough

The most obvious form of critique is to point out weaknesses or mistakes in the literature. Mistakes can be incorrect logic, hidden assumptions that are quite dubious, or incorrect facts. Some authors don't correctly identify the causes for observed effects. Don't be awed by authors who have doctorates or professorships and have published something. Treat them as your scholarly peers, with respect, but aware that they are fallible. In fact, mistakes are an ordinary part of the research process.

Don't be overly critical: some dos and don'ts

Be polite. Use the same kinds of expressions that you'd have others use to critique you. (But be direct enough for your readers to get your point.)

For example:

Don't: "He doesn't have the data to prove it."
Do: "He does not seem to have sufficient weight of evidence for his conclusion. He has not yet shown that … "

Don't: "The logic is clearly wrong."
Do: "The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the previous paragraphs."

Don't go on a proverbial witch hunt. You'll look silly pointing out mistakes that aren't there. Unfortunately, it's easy to feel that you need to find mistakes to produce a good critique, but an unfairly critical tone won't help.

Do point out strengths, especially those that are quite unique.

Don't set up caricatures and knock them down. You might want to clearly point out relevant issues to your readers, and in so doing crystallize them. But you are in danger of setting up a caricature, which, by definition, inaccurately represents the original by exaggerating selected characteristics.

Do offer what you think is a better alternative if you point out a mistake.

When you look at the literature, evaluate and operate from different theoretical positions. As you go, make notes of assumptions. You will agree with some and not others. Besides, facts based on one set of assumptions look like fiction when different assumptions are available. Your list of assumptions will be very valuable when you write your introduction later on, but you'll forget lots if you don't write it down now.

Do differentiate between limitations and mistakes. Some very good writings are products of their circumstances, but they're so good you might want to apply them to your research topic. It's fair for you to point out their limitations, but don't call them weaknesses. (In fact, the reason why you are using them is because they are so good and you're stretching them out of their original circumstances.) For example:

Don't: Brown's suggestion was a mistake.
Do: Brown's comments were written in a context of nineteenth century Europe, and many of them are now inappropriate in twenty-first century Asia.

Don't: Greens comments, written in 1950, were later shown to be wrong.
Do: Green was a pioneer in his time, being the first to note that …

Appraise yourself

How well proven are your conclusions? What research value do they have? The table below progresses through a series of levels. It starts with the quite unproven, and moves up through opinion paper, then the undergraduate essay, graduate discussion, and finally to research.

The levels are not really watertight. For example, somebody could present a self-contradictory opinion and yet identify assumptions. As another example, somebody could also assert a very sound opinion, yet offer no supporting evidence at all and fail to identify any assumptions.

Appraise your critique. The column on the left describes what you did. The column on the right says how you are going.

What you did	Comment
You are unaware of relevant debates.	Oops! Go back to the literature.
You describe in general outline the relevant debates in the field.	Getting better. You're on track.
You describe in detail relevant debates in the field and the original works of its main thinkers.	A very good start. You need to do it well to progress to higher levels.
You actively engage in the relevant debates. You give appropriate critique by identifying; significant issues and grappling with them.	You are doing well if you do this at undergraduate level.
You contribute to those debates by creating new perspectives or providing original insight and interpretation.	This is real research.

Presentation

Annotated bibliographies follow normal guidelines for typing and layout. Good practice is to write four parts:

Preliminaries. The preliminaries are simple:

a title ("An annotated bibliography on …"),
your name,
the date of submission, and,
your supervisor or tutor's name.

Introduction. It is recommended that you write a brief introduction identifying your topic and say its significance.
The main body of text.The annotated bibliography is the main body of the coument. Contents are arranged as a bibliography, that is, in alphabetical order of author's surnames. In this section for each source:

Give the give bibliographic details of the source.
Give your notes, clearly reporting the salient points and your comments.
Any of the following that are relevant to your research topic:

any pertinent quotes, with your comments,
critique,
any pertinent assumptions,
any identifiable and distinctive background or contextual features that are necessary to a correct interpretation of the source.

Conclusion. Write a conclusion so your readers know what you concluded from it all.

Present your conclusions in an advanced a state as you can justify from the literature.
The conclusion should relate to resolving the problem that you described in the introduction.
You should mention general patterns, trends, or themes that you can see in the literature. You might also suggest an appropriate categorization or hierarchical arrangement of the material reviewed.

Annotated bibliographies