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Studying Independently (Open Learning)

Effective reading

Not every article or book you find when you've completed your literature search will be relevant to the topic you are researching or for your assignment, so it's important not to spend valuable time in reading articles and books from cover to cover - you could find yourself totally snowed under with reading.

Books

A good place to find relevant texts is on your reading list. Often your tutor will have highlighted a particular chapter for you to read. However, you will  be expected to search and find other books in your subject area.

If you are unsure whether a book or part of a book will be useful try the following:

  • make sure you are clear on what you are looking for
  • look at the contents page, the preface, the introduction and the index to find out if any of the pages or chapters are relevant
  • skim read the first and last paragraphs of the pages or chapters you have selected
  • decide if these pages or chapters are actually relevant and worth reading in depth.

Journals

In order to decide if an article is relevant you don't need to read the whole article - this is just time consuming and not necessary.  Follow these steps to be much more efficient in reading journal articles:

Start here.

The abstract is presented at the top of the article and is a concise summary of the whole article highlighting the focus, study results and conclusion(s) of the article.

 Read it in depth, It will help you identify whether the article is useful to you.

Start

The introduction

In this section, the authors introduce their topic and explain the purpose of the study and present their main argument and hypothesis.

Looking at a screen

                          

Scan over the Introduction for key ideas which provide a background to the study, look for why its important and how it adds to existing knowledge in the field. Also scan for a summary of previous research in the field that the authors may have found in their 'Literature Review'.

pouring from flask into test tube

The methods section covers what kind of research was carried out and how. Read about the Methods/Methodology. If what you've read addresses your research question, consider the following questions.

  • How did the author do the research?
  • Is it a qualitative or quantitative project?
  • What data is the study based on?
  • Could I repeat their work?
  • Is all the information present in order to repeat it?

GraphsRead the results and analysis, this section gives the detailed findings. Sometimes these can appear off-putting so try to identify the main points.

There are often tables of data as well as text, you might find it quicker to look at the tables of data for an overview. However if graphs and statistics are confusing, focus on the explanations around them.

The conclusion is near the end of the article, it may have other names, such as discussion.

Reading this section will enable you to see the main findings from the paper.

 Man studying a screen

It may include how the study addressed the author's hypothesis, how it contributes to the field, the strengths and weaknesses of the study, and recommendations for future research. Its good to understand these conclusions before reading the detail of the results and the methodology

 

Review the references

Pair of glasses on an open bookThese give credit to other scientists and researchers and show you the basis the authors used to develop their research

The list of references, or works cited, should include all of the materials the authors used in the article. The references list can be a good way to identify additional sources of information on the topic