Reading

Ross Woods, 2022

Why read?

Start by asking, What do you need to learn? What about it is interesting? Then look at your motivation. Intrinsic motivation is most effective; it means that you enjoy the subject and want to learn as much as you can. The other kind of motivation is extrinsic motivation. It means that you are only doing it to get some kind of reward or meet someone's expectations?

What do you need to read?

You need enough regular time for reading and a comfortable place with no disturbances.

You also need a way to get books. (Sounds kind of obvious.) In some cases, you need a budget to buy books. In some cases, what you most need is a way to get books cheap, such as second-hand. You can also get lots for free. So much is now published on the internet that you might seldom have to pay for anything, especially journal articles. It is helpful if you are good at getting the most benefit from your library.

If reading makes your eyes tired or gives you headaches, have your eyes checked. You might need glasses.

Kinds of sources

When you get a source, ask what kind of document it is. (Some assignments specify primary and secondary sources.) Sources generally fit into the following categories:

1. Primary sources are materials that contain the thoughts of people as they originally thought them. That is, they are in the original form before a translator, reviewer, commentator, or editor interpreted them. Use primary sources wherever possible. They include:
1. Published sources: journal articles, monographs (a book of research written by one person), books of research articles, and published dissertations. It also includes many articles published on the Internet.
2. Published sources such as journal articles, monographs, books of research articles, and research articles published on the Internet.*
3. Research theses and dissertations.
4. Unpublished sources: original minutes of meetings, letters, reports, diaries, official records, archives, conference proceedings, many dissertations, etc.
5. Fieldwork records: observation notes, questionnaire answers, interview notes, etc.
2. Secondary sources are materials that contain the thoughts of primary sources in a form interpreted by a translator, reviewer, commentator, or editor. Use these whenever necessary, which usually means when primary sources are unavailable.
• Your Bible is a secondary source because it is a translation of the Hebrew and Greek texts.
• Governments often publish official explanations of laws. A government officer has approved it, but is it still only a secondary source. (The primary source is the leglislation or court ruling.
3. Tertiary sources are explanatory sources, such as textbooks and popular reading. Some basic courses allow tertiary sources because they only require that you understand the textbook and can apply it.
4. Tertiary sources are explanatory sources, such as textbooks and popular reading. A few major textbooks are so reliable that they are considered standard works and your supervisor will probably allow them. As a general rule, use tertiary sources only when unavoidable and if your supervisor permits.
5. Mixed sources are explanatory sources in which the author has interpolated original thought and critique. This is most likely when researchers write specialized textbooks. Check with your supervisor.
6. Blogs, personal opinion sites, and general website pages. While some articles are very good, many are worthless, being little more than advertisements, articles that are not good enough to sell, or statements of personal opinion. In particular, treat blogs with suspicion. Blogs and opinion sites are usually quite unreliable because they lack factual information altogether or contain biased, unconfirmed, or out of date information. They are only useful in very rapidly changing fields and when you can check facts; check with your supervisor; a few are valuable and useful.

* Journals are published in several different categories:
• Refereed journals are those where one or more peer experts reviewed the article before it was published and recommended it to an editor as being worthy of publication. (Some journals are not refereed and are considered of lower quality.)
• Research journals contain reports of original research (or reviews of original research) and are intended for researchers.
• Professional journals are intended for practitioners who are not doing research, but want to know how to incorporate new techniques and ideas into practice.

How to read lots of books quickly

Start by getting a clear idea of exactly what information you are looking for. That way, you will be able to ignore anything irrelevant to your purpose and spend your time only on what suits your purpose. This allows you to select sources carefully so that you don't reading anything irrelevant to your purpose. Most internet search engines use key words to search.

Then apply one of two specific techniques:

• Scanning is to go through very quickly to find particular information. If the item is a book, you only need to read the title, the table of contents, and perhaps the chapter subheadings. If you find a journal article, you only need to read the title, the abstract and perhaps the findings to know whether you need to read the whole article.
• Skimming is to go through very quickly to get the general idea of what the whole thing is about. If the item is a book, you probably only need to read the title, the table of contents, and perhaps the chapter subheadings.

Read carefully

Make notes. They need to be neat and legible enough to be useful afterwards when you’ve forgotten what you read and depend on the notes. In your notes, summarize the main points, and make notes of things that make an impression or spark other ideas, questions, or disagreement.

Discuss what you read with others.

Evaluate

Evaluate what you read, for example:

1. What is the author’s the main purpose for writing the book or article?
2. What are the main points of the book or article? What are the main ideas that make up the point of the whole book?
3. What did you find most interesting? Why?
4. What are its unique features?
5. What are its strengths?
6. What are its weaknesses?
7. Is there anything that doesn’t make sense?
8. Is it inconsistent or does it contradict itself?
9. Does it make any interesting assumptions?
10. Does it have any interesting implications?
11. Does the book have a particular background that is necessary to understanding it? For example:
1. What aspects of the writer's background are helpful to interpreting the particular perspective of the author? For example, if an author wrote about a particular country, is he/she a local person or a visitor?
2. Did they work in the field they are describing? If the author was a military veteran writing about a battle, you will interpret what they say quite differently from a young armchair amateur, or a prominent academic writing on the same topic.