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Before Reading a Paper, Write Down What You Want to Learn From It

What this handout is about

This handout suggests reading, note-taking, and writing strategies for when you need to use reading assignments or sources as the springboard for writing a newspaper.

Reading strategies

  • Read (or at least skim) all parts of the reading. Sometimes the cover, title, preface, introduction, illustrations, appendices, epilogue, footnotes and "most the author" sections tin can provide you with valuable information.
  • Place the genre of the reading. What kind of a reading is it? (Journal article? Mass media? Novel? Textbook?) Why was information technology written? Who does the author presume is going to read this piece of work? (Books about politics written for an audience of political scientists, for instance, might exist very different from books about politics written for the general public, for historians, or for sociologists.)
  • Consider the author. What do you know or what can y'all learn about this person? Why did he or she write the book? What sources of data and/or methods did he or she use to gather the information presented in the book?
  • Approximate why your instructor assigned the reading. How does information technology fit in with other readings, class discussions, major course themes, or the purpose of the form?
  • Go out a agenda and program your reading. Go out a calendar and programme your reading. Plot the number of days or hours that it may take you lot to complete the reading. Be realistic. It may help to read one chapter of the reading and so revise your agenda—some readings accept longer than others of a like length. Make an appointment with an academic charabanc at the Learning Center if yous'd like to learn more about scheduling your work or reading more quickly and finer.
  • As you read, record your reactions and questions. Any reaction or question is valid, from the specific ("What's that give-and-take mean?") to the full general ("What's her point?"). Write them down now so that you'll remember them later. These reactions and questions can serve as fabric for class discussion, or they tin be the jumping off point for brainstorming a paper.
  • Read with a friend. Find someone else who is reading the same book. Fix reading goals together and program to share your reactions to sections of the reading before course, after class, over e-mail, and and then on.
  • Visit your instructor during part hours to discuss the reading. Your instructor will set aside hours when he or she will be available to meet with students. This is a great time to talk about the reading, ask questions, share your reactions, and get to know your teacher. Yous can do this with a friend or in a small group likewise.
  • Recollect nigh what is missing in the reading. Issues, events, or ideas that are missing, left out, avoided, or not discussed/addressed in the book might be of import. Thinking about these omissions can give you a critical perspective on the reading past showing you what the author (consciously or unconsciously) doesn't want to bargain with.
  • If you know y'all will have to answer a particular question in response to the reading, read with that question in mind. Sometimes kinesthesia will give you lot essay questions in advance. As you read the text, refer back to those questions and remember about your emerging answers to them.

Writing strategies

While reading

  • Write as you read. Record your reactions informally and briefly afterwards you've read for a while. When you're washed reading a section, write for five minutes to capture your personal thoughts, reactions, and questions as you lot go along.
  • Keep your notes with your book. Tuck a few sheets of newspaper or a notepad within the volume to record your ideas as you read.
  • Share your informal writing with a friend. Trade notes/questions/reactions to the volume. Write five-minute responses to one another about the reading. This can exist washed by due east-post.
  • Draw while y'all read. Drawing pictures, maps or diagrams of relationships or important issues that you see emerging from the reading tin help you understand them. Be willing to revise or redraw the map equally you read.

After you read

  • React to the whole reading. Have twenty minutes to record your reactions to the reading as a whole. (Render to the reading strategies list to go you started if y'all need to.) Don't exist afraid to approximate, hypothesize, or follow a tangent.
  • Reread the writing assignment. The Writing Centre has a useful handout on understanding assignments that may help.
  • Get out a calendar and schedule the time you volition need to write your newspaper. Working backwards from the due date, plot a timeline for producing the paper. Include time for at least one rough draft and one chance to receive feedback from others (a friend, your educational activity assistant, your professor, the Writing Middle, etc.) before turning information technology in.
  • Plan your research and think almost citation. If the assignment requires library research, decide upon a strategy for collecting and citing sources as y'all research and write. Be sure to cite any quoted information or information that was not generated by your ain analysis. Your instructor can answer all of your questions well-nigh this important step.
  • Write a draft, preferably a few days before the newspaper is due. Instructors can ordinarily tell the deviation between papers that take been carefully drafted and revised and papers that have been hurriedly written the night before they are due. Papers written the nighttime before frequently receive disappointing grades.
  • Get feedback from at to the lowest degree 1 person, and preferably several people, before yous finalize your draft. When possible, give your readers a copy of the consignment, too. E-mail can make this process easier. See the Writing Center'southward handout on getting feedback.
  • Proofread your newspaper to catch errors earlier handing it in. Taking the time to spell-check and proofread volition brand your paper easier to read and show your reader that you lot cared almost the assignment. The Writing Middle'south handout on editing and proofreading may assist.

When you lot become your newspaper back

  • Read all of your instructor's comments. Assess your strengths and weaknesses in completing this reading/writing consignment. Programme what adjustments you lot'll make in the process for the side by side reading/writing assignment y'all volition undertake. It may help to save all of your old papers so that yous tin refer back to them and look for patterns in your teacher's comments. You may as well want to keep a small notebook for your own cess—writing down that you lot didn't leave ample time for revision on one paper, for instance, may help you remember to schedule your fourth dimension more finer for the adjacent paper.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Eatables Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
You may reproduce it for not-commercial use if yous utilise the unabridged handout and aspect the source: The Learning Heart, University of North Carolina at Chapel Colina

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Source: https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-to-write/

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