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Burns and Sinfield (2016) Chapter 4 How to Survive Academic Reading
Scott and Garrison (2017) Chapter 1 Read and Write to Understand Politics
Reading is a big part of your education. Most of what you learn comes from reading, regardless of speech, video, audio, gaming, simulation or other means of teaching and learning. Text remains the most direct and effective means of conveying verifiable and accurate information. Improving the effectiveness with which you read and spending more time reading will improve your career and your life.
This begins by getting organized to read, improving your capacity to read and reflect on material, being discerning about what you read, and developing critical skills applied to specialized content.
In this section we’ll focus mainly on reading, and later we’ll look at research and writing, including finding what to read.
Where you read affects how fast you read and how much you retain. Consider posture, lighting, screen time, eye relief, time of day, distractions, and aids to note taking. Think about the organizing principle for your notes. Is it based on the book, a course, an assignment or your sequence of reading? Having a clear idea about how you will organize your notes makes it less likely that you will waste time finding notes and references. (Burns and Sinfield, 2016, 57)
A basic decision you might want to make concerns the form of your library. Most students still seem to prefer paper books but read most journal content online. My library before 2010 was mainly paper, but since then has been almost entirely electronic, first on Kobo and now on Kindle. I have a small Adobe DRM library as well, but I find that less useful because the pages don’t scale. Having e-books that show real page numbers rather than just locations was the reason I switched from Kobo to Kindle. Now I do most of my reading on my iPhone with highlighting, and most of my note taking on my laptop. Being able to copy and paste from books and keep your reading notes makes e-books a powerful study tool. Most books only allow two locations, so I use laptop and cellphone rather than tablet, because I often read while commuting, and I use books on my laptop for writing. You can use collections to organize your e-books, as you would bookshelves. But collections don’t always sync between devices. This isn’t a big deal because searches make it easy to find books.
E-book samples are a great way to get fast access to recent academic books. Samples usually include the table of contents and usually at least the introduction and first chapter, which lay out the contents and argument of the book. Often you can get immediate access to a recently published book, while libraries take months or years to acquire them. E-books, like paper books, often come down in price over time. $40-$60 (Sage, Oxford, Cambridge, Routledge, etc) is common for a new academic book. After a few years they often come down to the $20-$30 range, which is more normal for mass-market books.
Figure 1 Organizing kindle library in collections (kindle library screenshot)
The advantage of an electronic library is that it’s easy to carry with you and you’ll never be short of reading material. Word searches make it easier to find key content and marginal notes and highlights that you have added.
The big disadvantages of e-books may yet be revealed. Paper libraries can burn down or get wet or mouldy, but changes to e-libraries might wipe out access. Who knows what will happen to Kindle or Kobo in the future?
By request, here are some links to other tools that you might find useful for reading and note-taking.
Liquidtext is a sophisticated app which can be used in a lot of ways to improve your reading of PDFs. It works best on a tablet especially an iPad with an Apple Pencil, and it takes a bit of investment to get to know all its features, and figure out how to use it. This review explains the way you can use it within a study system, organizing papers and notes in folders and projects. But note the key problem is that every PDF is copied as soon as you use it, and the file size increases as you add notes. This demonstration by AriAmore explains how to use Notability and Liquid Text to take notes on an iPad with an Apple Pencil.
LiquidText is free as a basic app, and about $24 for the pro licence, which allows you more options for manipulating and saving text in different forms.
Notability is a great general purpose app for marking up PDFs - I use it for marking student papers and signing PDF forms. When I submitted your registration forms, that was done in Notability.
Notability vs Goodnotes5 comparison by Kharma Medic, and another one by Mike and Matty. These are from 2019 and 2020, so you have several perspectives on recent versions of the apps.
OneNote vs Evernote - beware the monthly fees for cloud storage!
MarginNote3 versus liquidText - I have used LiquidText, but MarginNote3 is new to me. The review suggest that MarginNote3 is designed for study, while LiquidText is for professional purposes. Some of the problems identified with LiquidText seem to have been solved with the versions used by JCSP students. Those who use it regularly swear by it, but I haven’t developed that level of sophistication.
My preferred note taking method is typing, because I have reasonably good keyboard skills. If I was starting over now, I’d be looking for something that turns handwritten notes into text. There are several good options. This review is a good start, comparing iPad note taking software - Tom Solid’s Paperless Movement.
All the options above assume that you have a good tablet and stylus combination. Last year I bought an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, and probably use about 20 percent of their capabilities. My workhorse for writing and course preparation is still a laptop. I do most of my book reading with ebooks on my iPhone (Kindle, Kobo, iBooks, and Adobe). I read PDFs and online papers and journal articles on my laptop, and download useful PDFs to an offline library file. When I’m taking notes in a lecture or seminar, I put the Zoom screen on my iPad over my laptop, and take notes on my laptop in AppleNotes. The only advantage of AppleNotes is that it synchronizes instantly and seamlessly across platforms, so I can snap a screenshot on the iPad, paste it in Notes and continue on the laptop. If I only had one screen, it would be the laptop. Although I have a keyboard for the iPad it is the most dispensable of my three devices, but if it was my primary note-taking device I would find another way to organize online classes and presentations.
Average reading speed is about 200 words per minute, or 2-3 minutes per page. To keep up with the reading typically assigned in senior university courses you should be reading about 400 words per minute. We calculate two hours of preparation and assignment time for each hour of contact time, so if you are a slow reader either you will work harder or miss stuff.
http://www.readingsoft.com This site will allow you to test your reading speed and comprehension.
But remember, it’s not just about speed. There are things that can be read and absorbed quickly, and things that you may have to chew through slowly and digest or read several times. Some books are appropriate to be listened to as audiobooks (allowing multitasking) but if they are substantive, you may want the physical or e-book as well so you can skim some parts and make notes in others. I just got Piketty’s massive book Capital and Ideology, which is 48 hours of listening. Even at hamster-amphetamine speed (2x) that’s a lot of exercise! I have the e-book text as well as the audio, and when I hear something I want to go back to, I highlight it in the e-book.
Five ways to improve your reading (Thomas Frank) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmDMrxUSXKY
1. Read often, read widely, read challenging material – develop your vocabulary and background knowledge
2. Find an interest hook to keep you engaged and focused
3. Pre-read to identify the structure, putting together a set of mental categories and questions that will inform your reading
4. Skimming (or pseudo skimming) – looking for the key elements – introduction and outline chapters, conclusions, headings, first and last sentences of paragraphs.
5. Focus on learning rather than speed reading!
The big difference between libraries and the wild wild web is that libraries, especially university libraries, are curated. Librarians are information management and curation specialists. They know how to find good stuff, and they work with specialists in each field to keep the most up-to-date and credible sources on hand—budgets and shelf-space permitting. Budgets and shelf-space are a problem. If you haven’t spent time with librarians, you are missing an important resource.
FIRST (adapted from several sources) -
F - Funding – who funded it?
I - Investigation – how was the study structured? Small n, Large N, correlation, causation?
R - Results – presentation of results, balanced? Circumspect? Sensational?
S - Subjects – broad, narrow, over-generalized?
T - Time and place – when and where was it published? Does the URL belong to a larger, credible organization (like a university, government, museum, NGO – this is about reputational and the risk of reputational damage, but also the capacity to produce reliable information.
1. Wikipedia is like an old eccentric uncle – knows a lot, but some is wrong or weird
2. Assume everyone is fake
3. Scammers only need to fool a small fraction of people once in a while
4. Most popular links aren’t necessarily the most informative
5. Media may be lazy; don’t assume they have checked
6. Not everything is online
7. If it’s free, you are the product being served to advertisers
8. Internet is more about free audiences than free speech
9. Online data collection aims to manipulate you as a consumer and political actor
10. Top 10 lists are marketing gimmicks
On number 9, see also Shoshana Zuboff (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Public Affairs.
Always start your reading with an overview. How long is the piece? Where are the references? Do the footnotes contain substantive information or just sources? How old are the references? What sort of publications are they from? Who is the author? Are author(s) or their organizations recognized authorities? (who says?) If you are picking up a book, this means going beyond the testimonials, to look at references, index terms, table of contents, about the author.
When you start with a journal article or book chapter, look for an abstract or executive summary. If there isn’t an abstract, the first 500 words or so should tell you where the piece is going – read this carefully. Now look at the headings or major sections of the article. If there are no obvious breaks or headings, look for signposts to the main ideas in the introduction or conclusion. Think of these as boxes to put the main facts in. Now look at the footnotes – where are they from, how old are they, what sort of evidence is behind this article? If it’s an original study with new collected data, the research may be described in a methods section rather than in footnotes. Who is the author? How credible? A young academic from a prestigious university may carry more weight than an older scholar with no particular pedigree. You have now spent about 10 minutes and have a sense of how to start reading the article or chapter for content.
Critical reading does not mean rejecting or questioning everything you read. You have to start with an open mind and understand before critiquing. Start with open-minded questions: where did that come from? What’s the evidence for that? How does it relate to other stuff you have read? Is this what I thought it was, and is it still worth reading? Now you have done a full skim and can start digging into the pieces that will answer your questions.
Few people can remember everything they read. There are two sorts of memory that are particularly useful for academic work. The first is “source” memory – where did I read it? Source memory helps you to find the right references for footnotes. If you don’t organize to record this you will waste a lot of time looking for references, or risk accusation of plagiarism. The second is content memory – what did you read? I find notes are essential for this. When I’m working on a major paper, I keep a running annotated bibliography. We’ll do an exercise on this later.
Sample annotated bibliography - this is a bibliography for a course I developed this summer. It’s more extensive than anything you’ll need to develop for your courses, but it illustrates several ways to use annotated bibliographies.
Now you’ll have a chance to review and critique a journal article in each of three subject areas: psychology, history, and political science.
As an interest hook for this first article, let’s say that you are registered in PSE312 Military Psychology, and you are reading this to present in a seminar. Your deliverable is a verbal 5-minute summary and critique, for which you are preparing notes.
Griffith, J. (2002). Multilevel analysis of cohesion's relation to stress, well-being, identification, disintegration, and perceived combat readiness.Military Psychology,14(3), 217-239. Abstract: “Using hierarchical linear modeling, the relation of cohesion to well-being, identification, disintegration, and perceived individual and group combat readiness was examined simultaneously at the individual, soldier level and at the group, company level. Enlisted soldiers (N = 7,892) who were members of 104 combat arms companies responded to questionnaire items (75% response rate) concerning their military experiences. Variance in the study outcomes was explained for the most part by individual soldier reports of cohesion rather than soldier reports of cohesion when grouped by company. In addition, cohesion's moderating effect on the relations of stress to study outcomes was observed at the individual, soldier level. Results were consistent with the notion that soldiers' experience of supportive unit leadership and cooperative peer relations, both individually and as a group, build their identification with the unit, lessen the likelihood of their leaving the unit and the Army, and enhance their perceptions of combat readiness. Results and future directions for research are discussed in relation to findings in military and organizational psychology literatures.” Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1207/S15327876MP1403_3?casa_token=le9WAtgNo8gAAAAA%3AN1o_c4AIcsxyvyx17g4RoeZBX4jV-1_bjlw84_IqIQRZEFbcAsQpdHxbPmq5C_VQrf7LLH-PaDO_Zw
Who wrote it? From what academic discipline? Where is it published? On what kind of evidence does it draw (secondary sources, primary data)? What is the purpose and method of the study? What are the conclusions of the study in general? What is the one big surprising take-away? (This is probably your bottom line up front – BLUF)
For an interest hook on this article, you are taking HIE477 Introduction to the History of Terrorism, and you are looking for an essay topic.
Kaplan, J. (2011). History and terrorism. The Journal of American History, 98(1), 101-105. Link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeffrey_Kaplan4/publication/261980480_History_and_Terrorism/links/549dba450cf2b803713a7bbd/History-and-Terrorism.pdf This article doesn’t appear to have an abstract, so you do the usual skimming first to figure out what it’s about, then decide how much and how fast to read it.
Who wrote it? From what academic discipline? Where is it published? On what kind of evidence does it draw (secondary sources, primary data)? What is the purpose and method of the study? What are the general conclusions?
Does this help you to frame a research topic? Can you go as far as the first round of the QADOR, or do you need to do some more reading before that? Does it give you good material for brainstorming or mind-mapping?
For an interest hook on this article, you are enrolled in POE410 and looking for sources for your major paper on whole-of-government approaches. This means you want to use the Leprince article not just for its own content, but also as a gateway to related sources and search terms. Your notes for this review focus on developing your bibliography for the paper. Pay particular attention to the footnotes. Can you access the references used by the author?
Leprince, C. (2013). The Canadian-led Kandahar provincial reconstruction team: a success story? International Journal,68(2), 359-377. Abstract: “The record of the Canadian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the efficiency of Canada’s recently adopted whole-of-government approach to conflict situations. This study maps the evolution of the interagency dynamics of Canadian departments and agencies during their six-year involvement with the PRT, and reveals that the Canadian- led PRT had to undergo significant changes before real interdepartmental collaboration actually could take place. While the first two years of the implementation of the whole- of-government approach have been described as a failure, this article argues that the publication of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan was the turning point that significantly improved interagency collaboration in the PRT.”
Burns and Sinfield (2016) Chapter 4 – Surviving Academic Reading
Here are some of the key points in the reading:
• Read with the assignment or objective in mind
• Don’t panic if it feels incomprehensible at first- it will become clearer with effort
• As you are putting in the effort to understand a difficult piece, try to identify what’s making it hard to understand: is it language—words you don’t understand? Obscure grammatical constructs and long convoluted sentences? Words used to mean different things or new concepts you haven’t encountered before? Sometimes putting the author in context can help. Different eras had different styles of writing.
• As you read further within a field, don’t treat each piece in isolation. Try to keep track of key ideas and key people associated with them. Sometimes a flowchart of who influenced who is helpful. Websites and Wikipedia can help with this if you are cautious about it.
• Use writing to understand what you are reading. Personally, I find physical writing more helpful than electronic marginalia, when I am struggling. If I’m reading on a screen, I’ll have a notebook beside me.
• Burns and Sinfield (2016, 54-57) describe QOOQRRR: Question, overview, overview, question, read, re-read, review.
“If reading a whole chapter: read the introduction and the conclusion – these sum up a chapter or an article, they tell you what it’s about. Read the first sentence of every paragraph – these outline what each paragraph is about. Once you have gained the overview of your course and the overview of the text – pause and question again: so, why am I reading this, now? You are now ready to read actively – with clear goals in mind.” (55)
• Many study guides will urge you to keep index cards on sources. Paper has advantages, and for years that was my mainstay. Now, it’s all electronic, and I think differently about how to find things, relying less on structure than on word searches. My thesis work relied on source cards and subject cards (just like the two sets of card index files you find in old-style libraries). Now I tend to use annotated bibliographies, with highlighting and colour-coding, done in word. I have also tried Zotero, Manderley, and Evernote. Now I mainly use Apple notes, because it’s the easiest to sync and keep with me. More on that in note taking.
This is a privately hosted personal website. RMC, DND, and Government of Canada are not responsible for its content. Last updated July 2020.
David Last, CD, PhD
Associate Professor, Political Science
Royal Military College of Canada
Call: +1(613)532-3002
