Reading Strategies for Writing Your Dissertation

Make Your Reading Count!

Rebekka AndersenUniversity Writing Program, Workshop Program

November 6, 2010

Question: how often do you read an article or book and later forget the main arguments and/or significance of those arguments?

How you read articles, books, and other scholarship will influence what you’re able to write, how you’re able to write it, and how effective or persuasive that writing is.

Reading texts in particular ways affects how and what you learn, know and are able to communicate to your readers.

Reading/Writing Connections

Reading is an active process, one that requires you to respond to, question, and think critically about all texts—articles, books, blog posts, etc.

An active reader sees the page not as a repository of words to be learned, but as a dynamic discourse that calls for questioning, analysis, interpretation, and response.

Active Reading

Active Reading: Example

Active Reading: Example

Active Reading: PDF Annotation Software Options Foxit Reader 2.0 (free):

◦ http://www.proz.com/forum/software_applications/56158-free_tool_to_annotate_pdf_files.html

Allows you to annotate (or comment on) a PDF document, draw graphics, highlight text, type text, and make notes; you can also print out or save the annotated document.

PDF Exchange Viewer (free):◦ http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/pdfx_viewer/

Adobe Acrobat: Commenting Tool◦ http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat.html

Active Reading: PDF Annotation Software Options

To annotate a text means to talk back to a text—to make notes in the margins.

Use annotation to ◦ Identify main ideas/arguments◦ Define key terms◦ Summarize key points◦ Ask questions◦ Challenge ideas/points◦ Make connections to other arguments, perspectives, studies,

authors, discussions, etc. When you annotate a text, you create an active

relationship with what you are reading.

Active Reading: Annotate as you Read

When you read a text from a rhetorical perspective, you analyze its audience, purpose, and context.  Audience: To whom is the author writing?

Purpose: Why is the author writing? Persuade? Educate? Inform? Entertain? Describe? Define?

Context: How do histories, cultures, communities, and individual experiences influence the writing of the text (and your own reading of the text)? Context is anything outside the text that influenced its writing.

Active Reading: Read from a Rhetorical Perspective

Non-critical perspective: you simply examine what a text says [you restate key points]

Critical perspective: you examine what a text does (offers background? alternative arguments? study results?) [you discuss aspects of the discussion itself]

Critical perspective: you examine what a text means [you analyze the text and assert a meaning for the text as a whole—an interpretation]

Active Reading: Read from a Critical Perspective

Active Reading: Preparing for the Writing Process

Active Reading: Preparing for the Writing Process

Annotate texts as you read Document main arguments, key concepts,

connections to other readings, contributions to the larger discussion

Store your active reading notes in some kind of filing system

Organize your active reading notes for easy access and use

Active Reading Now Will Help You Write Your Dissertation Later