GSG_3

Reading

About this free course

This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course Q86 English Literature and Creative Writing: www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q86.

This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised for your device.

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/literature-and-creative-writing/reading/content-section-0

There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to demonstrate your learning.

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Contents

- Introduction

- Learning outcomes

- 1 The experience of reading

- 2 Getting round obstacles

- 2.1 Unfamiliar words

- 2.2 The ‘academic’ style

- 2.3 Coping with difficult parts

- 2.4 Disagreeing with the author

- 2.5 Poor environment

- 3 How quickly should you read?

- 3.1 Skimming

- 3.2 Reading to learn

- 3.3 Choosing a reading speed

- 3.4 Time chunks

- 4 Reading actively

- 4.1 Underlining and highlighting

- 4.2 Notes in the margins

- 4.3 Does writing on a book seem wrong?

- 4.4 Questioning what you read

- 4.5 When you get stuck

- 5 Reading critically

- 5.1 Critical questions

- 5.2 Thinking for yourself

- 6 Are you a good reader?

- 6.1 What is a ‘good’ reader?

- 6.2 Specific difficulties

- 7 Conclusion

- Keep on learning

- References

- Acknowledgements

Introduction

Reading is easy, isn't it?

On any ordinary day without even noticing, you read shop signs, newspaper headlines, TV listings, a magazine, or a chapter of a paperback. So why would a message like this one appear in an online student chat room in the early weeks of a course?

Clearly, reading for higher level study is quite different from everyday reading. The most obvious differences are:

- Quantity As a student you can find yourself reading for many more hours a week than usual.

- Difficulty Instead of the message slipping easily into your mind, as when you read a newspaper or a paperback, you find yourself having to concentrate to grasp it.

But there are also more subtle differences:

- Purpose Instead of reading to pick up information, or to be entertained, with studying your aim is to introduce yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking, which will enable you to understand the world differently.

- Active engagement Studying involves actively working with new ideas, not just racing through the words. You have to look for the meaning as you read, asking yourself ‘what is the author trying to say?’

Research into how students read (see, for example, Entwistle 1997, p. 19) has shown that to be successful you need to understand these more hidden aspects of the reading process.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course Q86 English Literature and Creative Writing.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course you should be able to:

- ask questions to encourage analysis of personal reading material

- think about what the key concepts and issues are

- detach from disagreements with the author's views.

1 The experience of reading

The best way to develop your understanding of the reading process is to follow the principles of the Kolb learning cycle, by doing some reading and then reflecting on your experience. To this end, Activity 1 asks you to read an extract from an article by Richard Layard (2003) titled ‘The secrets of happiness’ which appeared in the New Statesman. To keep the task manageable I have reduced the article to half its original length and, for ease of reference, paragraph numbers have been added.

It is important that you read the article as a lot of discussion in the course assumes you have done so.

Click here to view Reading 1

Activity 1

First note down the time you start, then print out and read the article ‘The secrets of happiness’ by Richard Layard. It may be worthwhile to print out more than one copy of the article as you'll be asked several times to make notes on it. As you read, jot down a few thoughts on the first five questions below. Don't skip this note taking - it will help you to reflect on your reading afterwards.

- 1. What are your feelings about reading the article?

- 2. Are you experiencing any difficulties as you read?

- 3. Are there parts of the article you find unclear?

- 4. Does the article seem interesting? Does it seem worth the time you are spending on it?

- 5. Where and at what time of day are you doing the reading?

When you have finished reading the article, jot down your answers to these final questions:

- 6. How long did you take to read it?

- 7. Did you make any markings on the article as you read it (using a highlighter pen, ballpoint, or pencil), or write notes?

- 8. In a sentence, what is the article about? (Don't look back, work from memory.)

- 9. What can you remember from the article? Write down two or three points that stood out for you.

- 10. Do you think you will be able to remember what was in the article this time next week?

View discussion - Activity 1

Key points

Reading for study purposes is a demanding activity. You will learn best if you:

- take an interest in what the text is about;

- make a determined effort to understand the main arguments;

- work actively on the text as you read.

2 Getting round obstacles

2.1 Unfamiliar words

Salim, Erin, Lewis and Kate all mentioned various difficulties encountered as they read the Layard article. Perhaps your experience was similar. If so, how did you respond? Was your progress held up, or did you manage to keep going? With lots of reading to do, it is important to have ways of finding your way round the obstacles you encounter.

Kate was put off by the word ‘paradox’ and Erin did not know what ‘marginal tax’ meant. I, too, noted down ‘real income’, ‘norm’, ‘habituation’ and ‘non-monetary benefits

2.1.1 Should you stop reading to look words up?

It depends. Looking up words slows you down, and you may be able to make reasonable sense of their context without having to. For example, I found it fairly easy to guess the meaning of ‘habituation’ in paragraph 8, from the way it was discussed. However, I looked it up on the internet anyway, as I happened to have my computer on. I also looked up ‘real income’ and ‘marginal tax’ and found useful clarification of their meanings.

You have to decide how important a word seems to be. Do you feel you are missing something by not knowing it? Does it keep appearing? If you just carry on reading, the word may become clearer as you experience it being used (after all, that's how we get to know the meaning of most words).

Sometimes it's not one particular word that's difficult, but a string of them. For example, when I read ‘clinical depression, assessed professionally through population surveys’, I had to slow down. Having taken in the meaning, it seemed to me that ‘depression’ was the main word I needed to pay attention to, so I underlined it. (See Section 4, Reading actively.)

2.1.2 Dictionaries

One way to tackle the challenge of unfamiliar words is to use a dictionary. You could use a traditional printed dictionary, or an online dictionary, or both. A printed dictionary is easy to keep beside you wherever you happen to be reading. But an online dictionary holds the advantage when it comes looking up words quickly as you can look up a word in three or four online dictionaries simultaneously, to compare the definitions they offer.

You also have a choice between using a general dictionary, or a specialist dictionary for the subject that you are studying. How helpful you find either will depend on your subject, so it is worth doing a little exploring to find out. Note down a few ‘difficult’ words from one of your main textbooks. Then visit a bookshop, or go online and find a few dictionaries. Look your words up to see if they are included and whether the definitions make sense to you.

Dictionaries are an invaluable resource but don't expect them to be infallible. A general dictionary will often not include key words from your subject area, or will give a definition which is misleading because the nuances of meaning are not right for your subject. On the other hand, specialist dictionary definitions can be difficult to understand.

2.1.3 Concept cards

Another way to tackle unfamiliar words is to start a ‘concept card’ system, using index cards. When you meet a word which seems important, take a new card and write the word at the top, followed by any useful information you have found. File the cards alphabetically and add details as you come across new information. (It is worth getting an index card box anyway, then you can try out various ways of using it to organise your studies.)

Figure 1 Sample of a ‘concept card’

View description - Figure 1 Sample of a ‘concept card’

If, on the other hand, you prefer to use your computer, you could search online for index card software. Try http://www.download.com, which reviews free software and provides download links. Just type ‘index card’ into the Search box. The example in Figure 2 is from PS CardFile Pegasus.

(Source: PinderSoft, 2004)

Figure 2 Sample of an electronic ‘concept card’

Of course, making concept cards is time consuming. You need to weigh up, as you go along, how much benefit you are getting and how much time is worth investing.

2.2 The ‘academic’ style

You might also be put off by the ‘academic’ style of writing. In everyday life, what you read is usually written to grab your attention and get a message across quickly before you ‘switch channels’. By contrast, academic texts often raise broad, abstract questions and are unconcerned about arriving at quick answers. For example, where a newspaper headline might say:

Layard actually says:

The headline makes its point quickly, but it says far less. It presents little basis for analysis and debate. You can agree or disagree, but you can't easily discuss the proposition. Layard carefully teases out a variety of issues, but the headline simplifies everything down to a well-established formula: free markets or public spending – which side are you on? Unlike general public debate, academic debate advances through finely tuned language and disciplined methods of argument. The Layard paragraph may be a lot longer than the headline, but it is not ‘wordy’ for the sake of it. It is very precisely argued; it would be quite difficult to cut out words without altering the meaning.

Box 2 Academic writing

Academic writers use cautious, considered language in an effort to be as exact as they can in their analysis. They try to say only what they mean and what they think can be justified. In daily life we cheerfully use language as a blunt instrument, to cudgel our way through the discussions that spring up around us. By contrast, academic writing uses language as a scalpel, to cut precisely between closely related arguments, so that they can be prised apart and analysed in detail. Learning how to read, think and write in this way is a central part of learning at degree level.

2.3 Coping with difficult parts

Salim and Lewis mentioned that they found some sections of Layard's article difficult. So did I; for example, anyone without a background in economics would have difficulty grasping the arguments in paragraphs 13 and 14.

So what should you do when you can't make sense of what you read? Should you search online to find out about taxation theory? For my own satisfaction I searched for a definition of ‘marginal rate of taxation’ just to get the gist of it. I also tried to write down the main steps of the argument in paragraphs 13 and 14 in my own words; however, I soon felt I wasn't doing much more than copying out the original words, without getting any closer to the nub of it. So, I decided to move on; but first I made a stab at summarising what I had read. This is what I wrote:

Top levels of tax should be higher, to discourage people from ‘polluting’ the happiness of others ? then more can go into public expenditure. Europeans seem to accept 60% as top tax rate (including indirect tax).

As the article is about ‘happiness’ not ‘tax’, it did not seem worth investing any more time in these two paragraphs. I felt I understood enough to follow the general gist of Layard's argument. You don't have to understand fully to benefit from reading when you study but you do have to constantly keep weighing up:

- why you are reading that particular text,

- what you need to get out of it, and

- whether you are making enough progress to justify the time it is taking.

How long did you spend on paragraphs 13 and 14? Did you feel you were able to understand enough for the purposes of getting through this article? Or did you just skip ahead to the last paragraph? If you weren't ‘getting it’, that was a good decision. It's important not to let the tough bits beat you. They often make more sense when you come back another time.

Box 3 Glimpses of understanding

When you are new to a subject, your ideas keep being shaken up and reshaped. A thought comes briefly into focus then dissolves into confusion again. It is rare to feel you understand something fully. Instead you learn to get by on glimpses of insight.

2.4 Disagreeing with the author

It is clear from Kate's responses that from the outset she felt hostile to Layard's article and to Layard himself. As she later explained in a seminar, she felt that he looked down on people with low incomes, such as herself. She felt she was being told that she wasn't happy with her life and that she envied people with lots of possessions. In her philosophy, she said, happiness had nothing to do with wealth. She was just as capable of being happy as the richest people in the country. Because of her hostile feelings she read quickly, writing sarcastic ripostes on to the text.

Reacting to what you read is good; it gets you thinking. It can be very helpful to write ‘dead right’, or ‘rubbish’, or ‘what about the effect of …?’ in the margins of a text. However, Kate did not, in reality, react to Layard's arguments, she reacted to what she expected him to say. Kate was so convinced that Layard knew nothing of what he was writing about, and that his evidence was biased, that she took in very little of what he actually did say.

Yet, on the face of it, her position was not so different from Layard's. They both agree that wealth does not bring happiness and both favour redistribution to the less well-off. Although Kate referred to him as a privileged ‘fat cat’, with nothing useful to say about her world, his expertise is in policies to improve the prospects of unemployed people such as herself. Kate had important points to make about the way research can belittle the lives of ‘ordinary people’, by reducing the richness of their experience to tables of numbers. But the strength of her commitment to this point of view seemed to exclude her from participating in any discussion about the issues Layard raises.

We are, of course, all entitled to our own views. However, if you want to access a body of knowledge, you have to be ready to enter into the ways of thinking in that discipline. To benefit from reading a text you have to be prepared to get alongside the writer and think their thoughts with them. You have to be ready to try out the writer's point of view in order to understand what they are saying. Then you can pause to reflect and react.

Many ideas seem unappealing when you first meet them, but if you only read what you already agree with, you won't learn much. Part of the skill of studying is learning to cope with not feeling happy with what an author is saying, distancing yourself from your hostile feelings, so that you can read on. It isn't easy, because reading is like a conversation with a very talkative person, who leaves no breaks for you to speak. If you disagree with the writer, this can feel very oppressive. However, to participate in academic debate you have to be able to think on all sides of an argument.

Box 4 A detached stance

Logic is supposed to work best when it is not distorted by emotions. When you read academic texts you are supposed to be able to detach your thoughts from your feelings. You are expected to put your personal bias to one side and judge arguments on their soundness. However, you cannot be completely detached, or you wouldn't have a position from which to think about what you read. So first you have to get ‘inside’ the author's point of view, then stand back and compare it with other points of view. You can learn a lot by thinking and arguing from points of view that you don't actually hold.

2.5 Poor environment

Were you held back at all in your reading by the environment you were reading in? Were you reading in bed, in the bath, sitting at a desk, on the bus, or in the park? Any of these could be a good time and place, but did it actually work for you?

Were you able to maintain your concentration for a good long spell? Did you have all the materials you needed to hand, such as pen, paper and dictionary? Did you need a surface to write on as you read? Do you read best in a regular spot, or do you need to keep moving to different places? Don't just take your reading environment for granted. Think about whether you are giving yourself a reasonable chance of success. You may not be able to arrange a ‘perfect’ reading environment, but there are often significant things you can do to improve the one you have.

Key points

To get through large amounts of reading you have to be ready to cope with obstacles. You need:

- strategies for coping with difficult words and with passages you can't understand;

- patience with the academic style of writing;

- an ability to detach yourself from disagreements with the author's views;

- a well set-up reading environment.

3 How quickly should you read?

3.1 Skimming

Did you read the Layard article quickly enough, or perhaps too quickly? Reading speed is a persistent worry when you study. There always seems to be much more to read than you have time for, so you feel a tremendous pressure to read faster. But then, if you go too fast, you don't learn much. So what is the ‘right’ speed? The answer is – it depends on what you are trying to achieve.

It's surprising how much you can pick up if you push on quickly through a few pages.

Box 5 Skimming first sentences

You can get a rough idea of what a piece is about by skimming quickly through the first sentence or so of every paragraph, looking for key words. Doing this for the first nine paragraphs of the Layard article, I came up with:

society richer – people not happier

happiness – enjoying life

rich people happier

depression risen

evidence from different countries

why – income norm rising

two things drive up norm

habituation – adjust to good and bad

keeping up with Joneses.

This gives me a sense of what this section of text is about, but it doesn't convey what Layard's arguments are. It certainly doesn't save me the job of reading the article, however skimming in this way is useful in:

- helping me to decide whether to read the article ‘properly’;

- putting me in a frame of mind able to understand the article;

- reminding me afterwards of what the article was about.

There will be many times in your studies when you need to look through texts quickly, scanning through lots of pages to get the gist of the issues, or to find specific information. It is very useful when you pick a book off a shelf, for example, to be able to review it quickly so that you can decide whether or not to read it. You just skim through the contents list, glance at details about the author, look for familiar names in the reference list, scan the preface and dip into a chapter or two.

Similarly, when you are about to start reading an article or a book, you can prepare your mind by skimming through chapter headings, contents lists, introductions, summaries and conclusions. This helps you construct a framework within which to make sense of what you read. It also helps you think strategically about how to tackle the reading: whether to read the whole thing or just sections, how long to allow yourself, and whether to take notes. Rather than simply wading in you prepare yourself so that you can work intelligently on the text.

It is important to be clear however that this rapid scanning of texts is not reading. Skimming can tell you about a text, but you will not learn what is in it.

3.2 Reading to learn

In order to learn you need to follow the argument as you read. With an important text, you should slow right down and take it bit by bit. Here is a student describing how he tackled a particularly challenging chapter:

This intensive kind of reading is at the opposite end of the scale to skim reading. It plays an important part in getting you to the heart of the subject.

Box 6 The purpose of reading

When you are studying the underlying purpose of reading is to develop your thoughts – to weave new ideas and information into the understanding you already have and to develop new points of view. If you try to bypass this thinking, you are not really learning as you read.

3.3 Choosing a reading speed

As a student you cannot afford to read at just whatever speed comes naturally. If you are trying to keep abreast of a course, you have to push yourself. However, reading speeds range from a lightning skim through a whole book to intense concentration on a difficult paragraph. You need to become skilled at working at speeds right across the range. How quickly you need to read will depend on:

- what you already know about the subject,

- how difficult the text is, and

- how thoroughly you need to understand it.

Kate said she spent ten minutes on the Layard article, while Salim said he spent three times as long. Lewis, though slowed by dyslexia, spent twenty minutes. How long did you spend?

If, like Erin, you spent fifteen minutes on the article, you may have picked up as much as you wanted. On the other hand if you stopped to think you could easily have spent more than Salim's half hour. If you were also taking notes perhaps you took an hour. And if you read the article more than once, you could have spent an hour and a half.

Because of my special interest in the article for the purposes of this course, I have spent several hours on it. The longer I worked on it the more interesting I found it, and the more clearly I grasped its arguments. This shows that there is no ‘correct’ amount of time to spend. It depends what you are trying to achieve. You might find the target reading speeds in Table 1 helpful as a rough rule-of-thumb.

Table 1 Reading speeds

Text type

Words per minute

Pages per hour

Easy, familiar subject matter

100 or more

12 or more

Moderate, fairly familiar subject which you want to follow reasonably closely

70

8

Difficult, unfamiliar subject matter which you want to understand in depth

40 or fewer

5 or fewer

For the Layard article these three speeds translate into reading times of 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and 35 minutes (roughly the times taken by Erin, Lewis and Salim; Kate being faster). As all four were new to the subject and the ideas quite challenging, this was a difficult text. I would suggest that Salim came closest to the speed required for picking up the main arguments, and he said he would re-read the article if he wanted to remember it.

Box 7 Time investment

In choosing to study, you have decided to invest time in developing your intellectual powers. Sometimes you will get a good return by investing in a very detailed reading of a small section of important text. At other times you will get a good return by dipping into several texts and skim reading in order to broaden your ideas. You have to weigh up the tasks ahead of you, then distribute your time in a way that gives you a good overall return. A key test is to ask yourself, ‘Is this making me think?’ If the answer is ‘No’, then your investment is being wasted. You need to switch to a new activity.

3.4 Time chunks

Apart from sheer speed, there is the question of how to parcel out your study time. With a two-page article you would assume a single study session, but a chapter of a book might be spread over several sessions, depending on the content and on your own time constraints.

This is a message from a student to her online tutorial group in the second week of a course. Three hours is a substantial chunk of serious reading and it seems that she has taken in as much as she can for the time being. She might as well stop worrying and switch to something else, such as planning her assignment, or sorting her notes. Or she could take a complete break and come back to the chapter later in the day. I would guess that this student's studies went well – firstly, because she is actively engaging with the study materials, and secondly, because she is thinking about her study strategy and her use of time.

It is important to recognise that your span of concentration is limited. You can't learn intensively hour after hour, so it is better to divide your reading time into several shorter sessions than a few longer ones. However if your reading sessions are too short, you don't get properly into the frame of thinking before breaking off again. You might find two hours a reasonable span for a study session after a day of work. Or you might find that after an hour of intensive concentration you need to take a short break, or switch to another task.

Reading habits are very personal, take time to reflect on your own. Practise setting targets of various numbers of pages to see what works best for you ithin the contours of your life.

Key points

There is no ideal reading speed. Skill in reading slowly is just as important as skill in reading quickly. To manage your reading effectively you need to:

- pitch your reading speed according to your purpose and the degree of challenge presented by the text;

- set yourself targets (number of pages per session);

- monitor your progress and keep adjusting your strategy.

4 Reading actively

4.1 Underlining and highlighting

To be able to make sense of what you are reading, you need to read actively. One method that can help is to use a pen.

Activity 2

Did you underline or highlight any words as you read the Layard article? If not, go back over the first three paragraphs and use a biro or a highlighter pen to mark important words. Try not to mark too many words; pick out just enough, so that you still get the main points if you read only those words.

View discussion - Activity 2

4.1.1 Too much underlining and highlighting

The challenge, especially when you are new to a subject, is to avoid underlining or highlighting everything. Everything seems important, so how do you know what to leave out?

If you make too many markings, you defeat your purpose; nothing stands out. The trick is to highlight or underline sparingly. See how few words you can mark and still be able to find the markings helpful. Aim to pick out key words, not whole sentences; don't worry about capturing everything. You can always go back to the original words if you need to.

Some passages of text need more marking than others. You might have a couple of heavily marked pages followed by several with very little at all. Sometimes underlining slows you down, or makes reading boring; it depends on the type of text and why you are reading it. You have to work all this out by trial and error. Experiment with different amounts of marking, then go back later and weigh up what seems to have worked best for you. Reflect on your experience.

4.2 Notes in the margins

It is easy, with underlining or highlighting, to find that you have switched to autopilot without noticing. The process becomes too passive and you follow the flow of the text without asking enough questions. Writing comments or questions in the margins is a way to keep yourself more actively engaged.

4.3 Does writing on a book seem wrong?

Obviously you have to take into account whether you own the text you are studying and, if so, whether you intend to keep it. Does it seem extravagant to write on a book and make it unfit for selling on? How important to you is selling it? Is it really a saving? If a book is important, why not assume you will keep it anyway? Then you can think of writing in it as an investment; you invest significant amounts of your time and mental energy in studying the book, in any case. If writing in it means you can quickly reconnect with the ideas and information you have studied, that investment is greatly enhanced. The marked-up book becomes an item in your personal system of knowledge. Part of this system is in your head and part on your bookshelf. Within the overall cost of studying, creating your own personalised versions of significant books can represent excellent value.

Key points

Underlining or highlighting words as you read is a powerful study technique:

- it focuses your attention on the text;

- it forces you to think about what the key concepts and issues are;

- it leaves a record on the page of the meaning you found in the words as you read them.

When you return to a marked text you can quickly tune back in to those earlier thoughts – especially if you have written occasional comments in the margin.

4.4 Questioning what you read

Another way to keep your mind active while you read is to ask yourself questions about what you are reading.

4.4.1 Engaging with the content

For example, when I read in paragraph 3 of Layard's article that ‘41 per cent of people in the top quarter of incomes are ‘very happy’’ I asked myself:

- Why is ‘very happy’ in quotation marks?

- Is 41 per cent about what I'd expect?

- What is this telling me?

As soon as I thought about it, I realised that ‘very happy’ could be a response that people had ticked on a questionnaire. Perhaps they had been asked a question such as: ‘Thinking about your life in general, how happy are you? – (1) very unhappy, (2) unhappy, (3) middling, (4) happy, (5) very happy’. I wondered which of these answers I would tick, if asked, and which might be ticked by other people who I know. It then struck me that 41 per cent is quite a high figure for very happy – that's four people in every ten, right up at the top of the scale. This made me wonder how large the proportions were for ‘happy’ or ‘middling’, and whether many people would answer ‘very unhappy’. (In the next paragraph I got more information on this when I read that almost three in ten young women were reported to be depressed.)

Then I noticed the 26 per cent figure for people in the lowest quarter of incomes. I thought to myself, ‘That's a quarter of the least well-off saying they are very happy. That does seem surprising’. Obviously, happiness doesn't directly depend on wealth. I tried to think of the least and most wealthy people I know and how happy they might say they were; this reminded me of all the other things in life that contribute to happiness and sadness. I also thought about how people want to feel that they are happy, and concluded that perhaps the high proportions saying they were very happy weren't so surprising after all.

These thoughts helped me to get a general sense of scale of the figures in paragraph 3. It's not important to remember the actual figures 41 per cent and 26 per cent, I can always look them up again if I need them. The important thing is to get the general picture. I wouldn't pause to ponder over every number, if I felt I was slowing down too much, but these seemed to be significant to the argument.

When I came to the third sentence of paragraph 3, I found myself challenged. ‘The proportions in each group who are very happy’ is quite an abstract idea to hold on to; but then I also had to think about these proportions not changing and about ‘real incomes in each group’ rising. It was too much for me. When I asked myself ‘What is this really saying?’, I couldn't answer. As this was clearly an important part of the argument, I decided to try to write it down in my own words:

- Huge rise in real incomes for all groups

- But no change in % very happy in each group

- So society getting much richer but not happier

This helped me feel that I had grasped the point. But I still found it difficult to hold this idea in mind at the same time as the point about richer people being on average happier than poorer people, so I wrote down:

- On average richer are happier – yet getting richer hasn't made us happier.

I felt I needed to think more about this to take it in properly. Later, as I read about habituation and keeping up with the Joneses, it all began to make more sense. In fact, I found myself getting very interested in this later discussion about rivalry over incomes in families and organisations. I found myself thinking about rivalry within my own family and in organisations for which I have worked. The more you can make what you are reading ‘real’, by linking it to what you know and care about, the more your mind enters into working with the new ideas you are encountering.

I have tried to illustrate here how reading can trigger questioning and thinking. Reading for study purposes is an argumentative dialogue in your head. No doubt you would ask quite different questions. The specific questions are not important – it's the process of questioning that is.

Key points

Questions are what make reading interesting and challenging. They give a sense of a ‘quest’ to find answers. They help you to engage with what you are reading about.

You need to ask questions of the kind:

- What is this telling me?

- What do I think of this? (Am I surprised; How does this relate to me and my life; Does this help to make sense of the world as I know it?)

- How does this fit in with what I already know?

4.5 When you get stuck

Sometimes as you read you will get stuck. When this happens, don't sit staring at the page; find a way to tackle the problem.

Reading requires you to ‘project’ meaning onto the words on the page.

When you are stuck it means that you have lost track of the argument and can no longer see what meaning to project. So, you have to find ways to reconstruct the argument in your mind. One way is to cast around for clues by looking elsewhere in the text.

You might look back to the earlier parts:

- Check the title, the contents list and the introduction to remind yourself what the writer set out to discuss.

- Re-read some of what you have already covered to firm up the arguments.

Or you might look ahead:

- Skim a few pages to see what is coming up.

- Turn to the conclusion to see where the argument eventually leads.

Another tactic is to use your pen:

- Write down the main issues you think the text is addressing.

- Try to summarise what you have read so far, particularly the part just before you got stuck.

- Underline words that seem important in the section you don't understand.

- Try to summarise the underlined words.

If you are still stuck:

- Search for clues on the internet.

- Look in other books on the subject.

- Scan through your lecture notes.

- Contact other students by phone, email or internet chat room.

Whether or not what you write is ‘correct’, the process of writing notes helps you get into the text. It makes you take hold of ideas and put them in your own terms. It helps you force meanings on to the subject matter and construct a base from which you can launch another assault on the text.

And if all this doesn't help, just skip ahead and try to pick up the thread somewhere else in the text; or leave it altogether and start on another piece of work. It may all seem clearer another day. In any case, there is no point in sitting achieving nothing.

Key points

When you are stuck:

- Make an active attack on the problem.

- Look for clues in earlier or later parts of the text.

- Make detailed notes on the bit you are stuck on and on the preceding section.

- Cast around for ideas from other sources.

5 Reading critically

5.1 Critical questions

As well as making sense of what you read, you have to think about whether or not you are convinced by the arguments being presented. At degree level, you don't simply accept what you read – you read ‘critically’, weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of the case the author makes. This means asking another set of questions, such as the ones discussed here.

5.1.1 How much trust can I put in this text?

You would generally assume that any set texts for a are trustworthy. But when you find a text through your own research you need to run a few checks to assess the soundness of its content.

Who is the publisher?

If an article is from an academic journal, you can assume that its quality has been vetted by the journal's editors. Also if a book is published by a major academic publishing house, you would expect it to be ‘respectable’. And if it's a book from an academic series, you would expect the series editor to have vetted the quality. However, in other cases you need to run a few checks. Richard Layard's article is published in a weekly magazine. This does not guarantee academic soundness, so I need to consider other information.

Who is the author?

At the end of Layard's article, a note says that he is Co-Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. This gave me confidence in the quality of his scholarship. I did a little further research on the internet and found out that he is an advisor to the government, particularly with respect to its New Deal for the unemployed, and that he has been made a Lord.

5.1.2 In what context was the text published?

This amounts to asking, when was it written and for what audience. Academic texts are written to make a contribution to the debates going on within the field. To understand where an author is coming from and why arguments are being presented in a particular way, you need to be able to place the text in context. Layard's article was published in 2003 in the UK, and was drawn from a prestigious series of public lectures. So the context is a major statement by a prominent academic to colleagues and policy leaders, during the sixth year of a New Labour government, after nearly 25 years of growing incomes inequality.

5.1.3 Does the argument follow logically?

As I was making sense of paragraph 3, I did pause to consider whether it was logically possible to say that on average richer people are happier, yet getting richer has not made us happier. Later, when I read that women in the US were less happy since their incomes had come closer to men's, it occurred to me that they would be unlikely to volunteer to revert to previous levels of inequality. This made me question what happiness really means, if it is not necessarily a state that a person would opt for. I then wondered whether the measures of happiness that Layard was quoting were as straightforward as they might seem. That did not stop me from taking a strong interest in his arguments, it just made me a bit more cautious about accepting them. Generally, though, I found Layard's logic stood up very well to the questions I posed.

5.1.4 What evidence is offered?

Layard frequently offers evidence for his main points. I had the impression that this was just a sample from a wide range of relevant evidence that he had reviewed. Because of the prestigious context, I tended to assume that the evidence would be reliable and that Layard's interpretations would be pretty watertight. Nothing in the evidence seemed to conflict with my existing knowledge. However, if I were studying the subject more thoroughly, I would go back to the lectures from which his article was taken, as published on the internet, so that I could look more closely at the kind of evidence being quoted and how it was gathered.

5.1.5 Is there an alternative school of thought?

I guessed that plenty of economists would disagree with Layard's point of view, if he is right that they have not used measures of happiness and have treated rises in real incomes as an unquestioned ‘good thing’. If I were studying this topic seriously, I would search for an article which tackled Layard's arguments from another perspective. When you encounter new ideas, it is useful to get more that one perspective on them, so that you can weigh one against the other.

5.1.6 Are the conclusions justified?

Though I was interested in the idea of treating high incomes as ‘pollution’, I did wonder whether taxing people to pay for the pollution caused by their rising incomes would work. In general though I was reasonably convinced by the conclusions Layard drew. On the other hand, if I was studying the subject more seriously, I might find that wider reading and further thought would make some of the conclusions seem less convincing.

5.2 Thinking for yourself

These are the kinds of questions you need to ask in order to read critically. As a higher-level student, you don't read simply to ‘find out facts’. It is assumed that you will think for yourself and question what you read and hear. The ‘truth’ is taken to be uncertain, so you weigh up ideas and arguments as you read about them. According to Marton and Saljo (1997, p. 49) research shows that successful students read as if they are constantly asking themselves questions of the kind: ‘How do the various parts of the text relate to each other? […] Is the argument consistent or are there any logical gaps? […] How does this relate to what I already know?’.

Critical reading lies at the heart of good learning.

Key points

At degree level you are expected to read critically; you don't simply accept what you read. Ask yourself:

- Can I trust what I'm being told here?

- In what context was this published?

- Do the arguments follow logically?

- What evidence is offered?

- What do those on the other side argue?

- Are the conclusions justified?

This questioning approach will help you become a more effective and enthusiastic student.

6 Are you a good reader?

6.1 What is a ‘good’ reader?

If you ever worry about:

- your rate of progress as you read

- how much you understand

- how much you will remember later

then join the club. Here is one student offering support to another who expressed self-doubt in an online chat room:

Some approaches to reading are better than others, of course. Research has found that less successful students take a ‘surface’ approach to reading, while more successful students take a ‘deep’ approach.

Surface approach

‘Students who did not get ‘the point’ failed to do so simply because they were not looking for it’.

‘Instead they concentrated on trying to learn discrete bits of information’.

Deep approach

Successful students were ‘more concerned […] to make sense of the article as a whole. [They] focused […] on what the text was about: the author's intention, the main point, the conclusion to be drawn’. Entwistle (1997, p. 18)

Instead of worrying about whether you are naturally a good reader, it is far more useful to work at making yourself the best reader you can be. The secret is to search for meaning as you read, taking the active, questioning approach described in this course.

6.2 Specific difficulties

Some students contend with physical difficulties in reading. Here is one:

And here is another being offered advice by a friend:

Other students, like Lewis in Section 1, experience dyslexia. Some face the challenge of studying in a second language, or in a different dialect from the one they speak in everyday life. Many students who experience difficulties with reading are able to get support. You could look for support on the internet; for example, if you search for ‘dyslexia’ you will find several websites offering a wide range of advice and support.

7 Conclusion

Reading is a core activity in most courses of study. The purpose of it is to enable you to learn. But learning is not a passive process, you don't just let ideas wash over you. You have to make sense of them as you read and then use them to think with.

Key points

Reading for study purposes is not merely a matter of passing your eyes over hundreds of words. It is a set of practices which enable you to engage with the ideas in a text, including:

- setting targets

- underlining or highlighting as you read

- asking questions to make yourself think about what you read

- stopping to look ahead or look back when you lose the thread

- reading critically

- monitoring your progress from time to time, and

- changing tack when things are not going well.

You need to experiment with different ways of doing things, in order to develop a robust, flexible, all-round style.

Keep on learning

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References

Entwistle, N. (1997) ‘Contrasting perspectives on learning’ in Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. (eds) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in Higher Education, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press Limited.

Marton, F. and R. Saljo (1997) ‘Approaches to learning’ in Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. (eds) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in Higher Education, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press Limited.

Layard, R. (2003) ‘The secrets of happiness’, New Statesman, 3 March 2003, p. 25.

PinderSoft (2004) Software, http://www.pindersoft.com/Software.htm (accessed 26 June 2007).

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Activity 1

Discussion

Below you will see the responses to Activity 1 given by four students: Salim, Erin, Lewis and Kate. Like you, they were busy with other coursework. Compare your notes with theirs and reflect on the reasons for any differences.

1. What are your feelings about reading the article?

Notice that Lewis and Kate seem to have approached the article as ‘work’, something to ‘get through’. Neither looks forward to reading it. (Lewis explained later that he receives support for dyslexia and feels daunted when confronted with several pages to read.) Salim and Erin, on the other hand, focus on what the article is about, rather than what the pages look like. They take an interest in what it has to offer, though Salim is flagging towards the end.

2. Are you experiencing any difficulties as you read?

They all seem to agree that the article is demanding. Salim and Erin feel that they are being made to think hard. Lewis is wondering whether he is just having a bad morning. Kate, meanwhile, is already recoiling by the fourth word. She doesn't sound very keen to immerse herself in what the article is about.

3. Are there parts of the article you find unclear?

Salim, Erin and Lewis have all got stuck at particular points, while Kate says she finds the whole article unclear.

4. Does the article seem interesting? Does it seem worth the time?

In spite of the challenges the article presented, Salim and Erin seem to have found it stimulating. Lewis has a more mixed response and Kate, once again, expresses hostility.

5. Where and at what time of day are you doing the reading?

The four have found the opportunity to do the reading at very different times of day. Clearly there is no ‘correct’ time for reading. It depends on you and the patterns of your life.

6. How long did you take to read it?

Since the article was not ‘coursework’, the students did not have an incentive to spend much time on it. However, Salim spent three times as long on it as Kate. Both Salim and Erin, in later answers, indicate that they would have spent further time re-reading the article, if they needed to remember what was in it.

7. Did you make any markings on the article, or write notes?

8. In a sentence, what is the article about?

Salim and Lewis show a grasp of one of the key themes of the article. Erin's answer is a bit vague. Kate's is accurate, but could be taken from the first paragraph alone.

9. What two or three points stood out for you?

Salim has captured some of the central points. So has Erin to a lesser degree. Lewis has focused in on specific elements in the article which he found interesting. Kate's response is flippant and suggests she didn't approach the article very seriously.

10. Will you be able to remember the article next week?

Interestingly, Salim and Erin, who both seem to have engaged quite effectively with the article, suggest that they would need to do more work on the article to remember it. Kate thinks she will remember the main points, though her responses don't indicate having grasped much beyond the opening paragraph.

A pattern seems to emerge here. Salim and Erin appear to have worked actively on the article and tried to understand its main themes. In the process, they found the article interesting, could remember it better and wanted to continue with further reading. Lewis was feeling somewhat the worse for wear and tended to focus on particular parts of the article that interested him, but he nevertheless gained a reasonable grasp of what it was about. Meanwhile Kate seems to have taken against the article from the outset, spent little time on it, read fairly superficially and learned little. It would be a mistake to draw firm conclusions from just these brief notes.

How did your responses compare with those of Salim, Erin, Lewis and Kate? Did reading their responses cast light on your own approach to reading the article?

Back

Activity 2

Discussion

My selection

I chose to underline rather than highlight. You can see my underlining for paragraph 3 in Box 5.9. Does it look anything like yours? Why do you think I used double underlining in several places?

Text underlined while reading paragraph 3 of Layard

There is no ‘correct’ way to underline. You may have had excellent reasons for marking quite different words. It depends what your mind focuses on as you read.

To me it seemed that the first sentence was telling me that the paragraph was about happiness in a society, rather than the happiness of individuals, so I double-underlined ‘within’ and ‘society’. The focus of the paragraph then stood out clearly. I also underlined ‘any’ to remind me that we were not just talking about the UK. I then tried to pick out words that I would be able to read more or less as abbreviated sentences. Here are all the words I underlined in Box 5.9:

Within any society – rich happier than poorer – 41 per cent top quarter very happy – 26 per cent bottom. Over years proportions not changed – though real incomes risen hugely – all western countries.

On reaching the end of the paragraph I decided that the main point was about the proportions of happy people not having changed, so I double-underlined those words.

Now when I look at the paragraph, its meaning seems to come out to meet me halfway. The thinking I did while reading is visible to me in the underlining, and I quickly connect back to those thoughts when I read the underlined words. If that doesn't work, I can go back to the original words.

I often use underlining rather than highlighting because of its flexibility. I can accurately target specific words, double or treble underline, put an asterisk in the margin to emphasise an important point, put numbers against points, or write brief notes. If a text is particularly important, or I'm gathering material for writing purposes, then I might go through again with a highlighter, picking out a few key passages.

We all work differently. Some people prefer to highlight rather than underline, because they feel it looks nicer and has a less intrusive effect. Experiment with different approaches to find out what works for you.

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Figure 1 Sample of a ‘concept card’

Description
Figure 1
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