Reading Academic Texts

Why Evaluate Academic Reading Strategies?

Reading is fundamental to writing and research at University, but often gets
overlooked – lecturers assume that students know how to read, and students
assume there’s only one way to read – but neither of these things is necessarily
true! There are ways to read that can improve information processing, can help
with building an argument, and importantly for many students, can save lots of
time!! — Academic Literacy Workshops, University of Cape Town[1]

The passage above makes an important point: most of us assume we know how to read
for school. However, methods that may have been fine in the past (skimming, quick
reviews, relying upon class lectures or notes) won’t hold up well as we move further into
higher education.

Academic reading is a specific category of reading. It’s helpful to remember that

academic reading is an act of performance. Rather than sitting back and passively
receiving information we read in college, we will be asked to directly act upon that
information in some way. We will be quizzed or tested. We will be asked to debate,
analyze, or critique what we read. We will need to read closely, remember the text
accurately, and compare it to other texts for style and content.

Purpose of Academic Reading

Casual reading across genres, from books and magazines to newspapers and blogs, is
something students should be encouraged to do in their free time because it can be
both educational and fun. In college, however, instructors generally expect students to
read resources that have particular value in the context of a course. Why is academic
reading beneficial?

 Information comes from reputable sources: Web sites and blogs can be a
source of insight and information, but not all are useful as academic resources.
They may be written by people or companies whose main purpose is to share an
opinion or sell you something. Academic sources such as textbooks and scholarly
journal articles, on the other hand, are usually written by experts in the field and
have to pass stringent peer review requirements in order to get published.
 Learn how to form arguments: In most college classes except for creating
writing, when instructors ask you to write a paper, they expect it to be
argumentative in style. This means that the goal of the paper is to research a topic
and develop an argument about it using evidence and facts to support your
position. Since many college reading assignments (especially journal articles) are
written in a similar style, you’ll gain experience studying their strategies and
learning to emulate them.
 Exposure to different viewpoints: One purpose of assigned academic readings
is to give students exposure to different viewpoints and ideas. For example, in an
ethics class, you might be asked to read a series of articles written by medical
professionals and religious leaders who are pro-life or pro-choice and consider the
validity of their arguments. Such experience can help you wrestle with ideas and
beliefs in new ways and develop a better understanding of how others’ views differ
from your own.

Reading Strategies for Academic Texts

Recall from the Active Learning section that effective reading requires more
engagement than just reading the words on the page. In order to learn and retain what
you read, it’s a good idea to do things like circling key words, writing notes, and
reflecting. Actively reading academic texts can be challenging for students who are
used to reading for entertainment alone, but practicing the following steps will get you
up to speed:

 Preview: You can gain insight from an academic text before you even begin the
reading assignment. For example, if you are assigned a nonfiction book, read the
title, the back of the book, and table of contents. Scanning this information can
give you an initial idea of what you’ll be reading and some useful context for
thinking about it. You can also start to make connections between the new reading
and knowledge you already have, which is another strategy for retaining
information.
 Read: While you read an academic text, you should have a pen or pencil in hand.
Circle or highlight key concepts. Write questions or comments in the margins or in
 a notebook. This will help you remember what you are reading and also build a
personal connection with the subject matter.
 Summarize: After you an read academic text, it’s worth taking the time to write a
short summary—even if your instructor doesn’t require it. The exercise of jotting
down a few sentences or a short paragraph capturing the main ideas of the
reading is enormously beneficial: it not only helps you understand and absorb
what you read but gives you ready study and review materials for exams and
other writing assignments.
 Review: It always helps to revisit what you’ve read for a quick refresher. It may
not be practical to thoroughly reread assignments from start to finish, but before
class discussions or tests, it’s a good idea to skim through them to identify the
main points, reread any notes at the ends of chapters, and review any summaries
you’ve written.

The following video covers additional active reading strategies readers can use before,
during, and after the reading process.

Reading Strategies for Specialized Texts and Online Resources

In college it’s not uncommon to experience frustration with reading assignments from
time to time. Because you’re doing more reading on your own outside the classroom,
and with less frequent contact with instructors than you had in high school, it’s possible
you’ll encounter readings that contain unfamiliar vocabulary or don’t readily make
sense. Different disciplines and subjects have different writing conventions and styles,
and it can take some practice to get to know them. For example, scientific articles
follow a very particular format and typically contain the following sections: an abstract,
introduction, methods, results, and discussions. If you are used to reading literary
works, such as graphic novels or poetry, it can be disorienting to encounter these new
forms of writing.

Below are some strategies for making different kinds of texts more approachable.

Get to Know the Conventions

Academic texts, like scientific studies and journal articles, may have sections that
are new to you. If you’re not sure what an “abstract” is, research it online or ask your
instructor. Understanding the meaning and purpose of such conventions is not only
helpful for reading comprehension but for writing, too.

Look up and Keep Track of Unfamiliar Terms and Phrases

Have a good college dictionary such as Merriam-Webster handy (or find it online) when
you read complex academic texts, so you can look up the meaning of unfamiliar words
and terms. Many textbooks also contain glossaries or “key terms” sections at the ends
of chapters or the end of the book. If you can’t find the words you’re looking for in a
standard dictionary, you may need one specially written for a particular discipline. For
example, a medical dictionary would be a good resource for a course in anatomy and
physiology.

If you circle or underline terms and phrases that appear repeatedly, you’ll have a visual
reminder to review and learn them. Repetition helps to lock in these new words and
their meaning get them into long-term memory, so the more you review them the more
you’ll understand and feel comfortable using them.

Look for Main Ideas and Themes

As a college student, you are not expected to understand every single word or idea
presented in a reading, especially if you haven’t discussed it in class yet. However, you
will get more out of discussions and feel more confident about asking questions if you
can identify the main idea or thesis in a reading. The thesis statement can often (but not
always) be found in the introductory paragraph, and it may be introduced with a phrase
like “In this essay I argue that . . .” Getting a handle on the overall reason an author
wrote something (“to prove X” or “to explore Y,” for instance) gives you a framework for
understanding more of the details. It’s also useful to keep track of any themes you
notice in the writing. A theme may be a recurring idea, word, or image that strikes you
as interesting or important: “This story is about men working in a gloomy factory, but the
author keeps mentioning birds and bats and windows. Why is that??”

Get the Most of Online Reading

Reading online texts presents unique challenges for some students. For one thing, you
can’t readily circle or underline key terms or passages on the screen with a pencil. For
another, there can be many tempting distractions—just a quick visit to amazon.com or
Facebook.

While there’s no substitute for old-fashioned self-discipline, you can take advantage of
the following tips to make online reading more efficient and effective:

 Where possible, download the reading as a PDF, Word document, etc., so you
can read it offline.
 Get one of the apps that allow you to disable your social media sites for specified
periods of time.
 Adjust your screen to avoid glare and eye strain, and change the text font to be
less distracting (for those essays written in Comic Sans).
 Install an annotation tool in your Web browser so you can highlight and make
notes on online text. One to try is hypothes.is. A low-tech option is to have a
notebook handy to write in as you read.
Look for Reputable Online Sources

Professors tend to assign reading from reputable print and online sources, so you can
feel comfortable referencing such sources in class and for writing assignments. If you
are looking for online sources independently, however, devote some time and energy to
critically evaluating the quality of the source before spending time reading any
resources you find there. Find out what you can about the author (if one is listed), the
Web site, and any affiliated sponsors it may have. Check that the information is current
and accurate against similar information on other pages. Depending on what you are
researching, sites that end in “.edu” (indicating an “education” site such as a college,
university, or other academic institution) tend to be more reliable than “.com” sites.

Pay Attention to Visual Information

Images in textbooks or journals usually contain valuable information to help you more
deeply grasp a topic. Graphs and charts, for instance, help show the relationship
between different kinds of information or data—how a population changes over time,
how a virus spreads through a population, etc.

Data-rich graphics can take longer to “read” than the text around them because they
present a lot of information in a condensed form. Give yourself plenty of time to study
these items, as they often provide new and lasting insights that are easy to recall later
(like in the middle of an exam on that topic!).

Vocabulary-Building Techniques
Gaining confidence with unique terminology used in different disciplines can help you be
more successful in your courses and in college generally. In addition to the
suggestions described earlier, such as looking up unfamiliar words in dictionaries, the
following are additional vocabulary-building techniques for you to try:

Read Everything and Read Often

Reading frequently both in and out of the classroom will help strengthen your
vocabulary. Whenever you read a book, magazine, newspaper, blog, or any other
resource, keep a running list of words you don’t know. Look up the words as you
encounter them and try to incorporate them into your own speaking and writing.

Make Connections to Words You Already Know

You may be familiar with the “looks like . . . sounds like” saying that applies to words.
It means that you can sometimes look at a new word and guess the definition based on
similar words whose meaning you know. For example, if you are reading a biology book
on the human body and come across the word malignant, you might guess that this
word means something negative or broken if you already know the
word malfunction, which share the “mal-” prefix.

Types of academic writing

The four main types of academic writing are descriptive, analytical, persuasive and critical. Each of
these types of writing has specific language features and purposes.

In many academic texts you will need to use more than one type. For example, in an empirical
thesis:

 you will use critical writing in the literature review to show where there is a gap or opportunity
in the existing research
 the methods section will be mostly descriptive to summarise the methods used to collect and
analyse information
 the results section will be mostly descriptive and analytical as you report on the data you
collected
 the discussion section is more analytical, as you relate your findings back to your research
questions, and also persuasive, as you propose your interpretations of the findings.

Descriptive
The simplest type of academic writing is descriptive. Its purpose is to provide facts or information. An
example would be a summary of an article or a report of the results of an experiment.

The kinds of instructions for a purely descriptive assignment include: identify, report, record,
summarise and define.

Analytical
It’s rare for a university-level text to be purely descriptive. Most academic writing is also analytical.
Analytical writing includes descriptive writing, but you also re-organise the facts and information you
describe into categories, groups, parts, types or relationships.

Sometimes, these categories or relationships are already part of the discipline, sometimes you will
create them specifically for your text. For example, if you’re comparing two theories, you might break
your comparison into several parts, for example: how each theory deals with social context, how
each theory deals with language learning, and how each theory can be used in practice.

The kinds of instructions for an analytical assignment include: analyse, compare, contrast, relate,
examine.

To make your writing more analytical:

 spend plenty of time planning. Brainstorm the facts and ideas, and try different ways of
grouping them, according to patterns, parts, similarities and differences. You could use
colour-coding, flow charts, tree diagrams or tables.
 create a name for the relationships and categories you find. For example, advantages and
disadvantages.
 build each section and paragraph around one of the analytical categories.
 make the structure of your paper clear to your reader, by using topic sentences and a clear
introduction.

Persuasive
In most academic writing, you are required to go at least one step further than analytical writing, to
persuasive writing. Persuasive writing has all the features of analytical writing (that is, information
plus re-organising the information), with the addition of your own point of view. Most essays are
persuasive, and there is a persuasive element in at least the discussion and conclusion of a
research article.

Points of view in academic writing can include an argument, a recommendation, interpretation of

findings or evaluation of the work of others. In persuasive writing, each claim you make needs to be
supported by some evidence, for example a reference to research findings or published sources.
The kinds of instructions for a persuasive assignment include: argue, evaluate, discuss, take a
position.

To help reach your own point of view on the facts or ideas:

 read some other researchers' points of view on the topic. Who do you feel is the most
convincing?
 look for patterns in the data or references. Where is the evidence strongest?
 list several different interpretations. What are the real-life implications of each one? Which
ones are likely to be most useful or beneficial? Which ones have some problems?
 discuss the facts and ideas with someone else. Do you agree with their point of view?
To develop your argument:

 list the different reasons for your point of view

 think about the different types and sources of evidence which you can use to support your
point of view
 consider different ways that your point of view is similar to, and different from, the points of
view of other researchers
 look for various ways to break your point of view into parts. For example, cost effectiveness,
environmental sustainability, scope of real-world application.
To present your argument, make sure:

 your text develops a coherent argument where all the individual claims work together to
support your overall point of view
 your reasoning for each claim is clear to the reader
 your assumptions are valid
 you have evidence for every claim you make
 you use evidence that is convincing and directly relevant.

Critical
Critical writing is common for research, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate writing. It has all
the features of persuasive writing, with the added feature of at least one other point of view. While
persuasive writing requires you to have your own point of view on an issue or topic, critical writing
requires you to consider at least two points of view, including your own.

For example, you may explain a researcher's interpretation or argument and then evaluate the
merits of the argument, or give your own alternative interpretation.
Examples of critical writing assignments include a critique of a journal article, or a literature review
that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of existing research. The kinds of instructions for critical
writing include: critique, debate, disagree, evaluate.

You need to:

 accurately summarise all or part of the work. This could include identifying the main
interpretations, assumptions or methodology.
 have an opinion about the work. Appropriate types of opinion could include pointing out
some problems with it, proposing an alternative approach that would be better, and/or
defending the work against the critiques of others
 provide evidence for your point of view. Depending on the specific assignment and the
discipline, different types of evidence may be appropriate, such as logical reasoning,
reference to authoritative sources and/or research data.
Critical writing requires strong writing skills. You need to thoroughly understand the topic and the
issues. You need to develop an essay structure and paragraph structure that allows you to analyse
different interpretations and develop your own argument, supported by evidence.